In a world dominated by male filmmakers, delve into the enigmatic journey of a trailblazing American woman who redefined cinema through her groundbreaking contributions to the realm of sexploitation films.
SYNOPSIS
Fearless, experimental, and groundbreaking in her filmmaking process and technique, Doris Wishman is the most prolific American female director of the sound era. With her work spanning from the 1960s to 2002, this cinematic force, who made her mark directing sexploitation nudies and roughies, is an inspiration, fascination, and conundrum for feminists and cinephiles alike. Through interviews with Doris and those who knew her, AKA DORIS WISHMAN will present a vivid portrait of this funny, 4’ 11” larger than life movie-making dynamo who shot most of her films in and around her luxury Queens apartment building and created her own unique visual style.
Born in the Bronx, Doris relished telling tall tales from the start. The youngest of five children in an immigrant Jewish family, she recalled, “I didn’t lie. I just made up stories.” Using Doris’s own words, from never-before heard interviews, the documentary will recount her childhood and unlikely route from housewife-turned-exploitation director. Traumatized by the sudden death of her husband, the 49-year-old widow took up filmmaking in 1959 as a means of “distracting” herself. With a $10,000 loan from her sister, Doris shot her first film, HIDEOUT IN THE SUN, at a nudist camp in Florida. Intoxicated by moviemaking, Doris went on to make more nudist films than any other American director.
There was nothing typical about Doris and there was nothing typical about her process. While her films featured nudity, Doris wasn’t really interested in sex, but rather used the genre as a means of telling her stories. Doris’s sex scenes have been described as “the least sexy thing I’ve ever seen” and “seemingly written by someone who has never had sex.” She incorporated strange angles, inanimate objects, nonstop music, and intriguing plots, tinged with sci-fi, Freud, and fetishism. Unlike most directors, she came up with a title and a catchy slogan for the promotional poster first and then figured out a plot to match. Neither cast nor crew were given a script in advance of a shoot, but instead found out what they were filming when they arrived on set. Doris shot her films without sound and worked with different actors in post-production to dub the dialogue, sometimes rewriting entire scenes or plot lines while editing. Directing, writing, and producing her films, Doris often used pseudonyms in the credits to make the crew seem more robust. "I would make up a lot of fictitious names and credits to make it look like the picture had a bigger budget. Of course everybody always knew it was me. They would say Lou Silverman, a.k.a. Doris Wishman.”
Keeping her age a secret from those she worked with, Doris kept her personal and professional life completely separate. Her cinematographer at the time said “Everyone knew Doris, but no one knew anything about her.” Doris struggled in the mid ‘70s as hardcore pornography became mainstream in the aftermath of DEEP THROAT’s global success. “I just felt that it went too far. I’ll get letters for this, but I think sex should be private” she said. By the 1980s, Doris was on the verge of bankruptcy and moved to Florida to live with her sister and niece.
What Doris didn’t know was that her films - which she’d sold the rights to out of financial necessity- had been released on VHS in the 1980s, and had garnered her a cult following. In 1992, one of her fans, a musician named Tom Smith, was shocked when he went to buy his girlfriend a gift at the Pink Pussycat, a sex shop in Miami, and discovered his favorite director working behind the counter. Still hoping to make movies, Doris turned her newfound fame and enthusiasm from Gen X into resources to make three more films, never revealing to those around her that she was in her 80s. She made media appearances (two on Conan O’Brien), traveled to film retrospectives of her work, and was given a lifetime achievement award by the New York Underground Film Festival.
Among the many who became fascinated by Doris’s work in the 1990s was Michael Bowen, a Ph.D. student at Brown. The two began an unlikely friendship and Doris, who was typically tight-lipped about the details of her past and personal life, began to open up for the first time. Talking on the phone regularly over the course of the next eight years, Michael amassed recordings of over 30 hours of revelatory audio conversations that were intended for a biography about Doris. With access to these never-before-heard conversations, clips from Doris’s films (NUDE ON THE MOON, BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL, DILDO HEAVEN, to name a few), archival photos, archival interviews with Doris from the '90s, and interviews with Doris’s friends, scholars who praise her work, and filmmakers who have been influenced by her, AKA DORIS WISHMAN will finally shine a light on one of the most intriguing filmmakers of all time.
Director Statement
I consider myself a champion of women and am embarking on this project to highlight this overlooked trailblazing filmmaker. I feel that it is imperative that this story, which is both about the representation of women in sexploitation films and the representation of Doris (which too often has been one-note), be told by a woman who can bring a nuanced perspective to this conversation. While Doris Wishman’s films have long been disregarded due to their genre (whether as sexploitation or pornography), I am approaching the subject matter and content with the utmost respect for the films and the actors involved. AKA DORIS WISHMAN will explore and highlight the ways in which Doris Wishman challenged traditional gender roles, both in front of and behind the camera.
Doris’s life and work are an intersection of the two topics about which I am most passionate: film history and women. I earned my masters degree in cinema studies at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and have been a producer/director at The Criterion Collection for over a decade, where I create feature supplements, including interviews with cast, crew, and film scholars. Throughout my work, I hope to use film as a lens for finding fresh perspectives on the social dynamics and cultural context of a time period.
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Director Elizabeth Pauker
Elizabeth Pauker is a filmmaker who has produced hundreds of documentaries for The Criterion Collection and the Criterion Channel and independently produced three critically-acclaimed documentaries: DEATH METAL GRANDMA, about a 95-year-old Holocaust survivor who performs with a death metal band, I AM THE REVOLUTION, about feminist movements in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, and THE MATCHMAKER, about a woman who recruits Western women to marry ISIS fighters.
DEATH METAL GRANDMA premiered at SXSW Film Festival and was acquired by The New York Times Op-Docs (followed by The Atlantic Selects) and was an official selection at over 30 film festivals across four continents. I AM THE REVOLUTION premiered at DOC NYC. THE MATCHMAKER premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
Judith Mizrachy is a New York City-based independent producer. Her most recent film THE MARTHA MITCHELL EFFECT, about the Watergate whistleblower who was gaslighted by the Nixon Administration, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for a 2023 Academy Award® for Best Short Documentary. Her previous film THE BOOKSELLERS, a behind-the-scenes look at the rare book world, premiered at The New York Film Festival in 2019. It was released in the U.S. by Greenwich Entertainment and sold internationally by Magnolia Pictures. Her work has been shown on big screens around the world including Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Bertha DocHouse London, and on small screens via Netflix, The Criterion Channel, The New Yorker and more. Judith previously served as the Director of Marketing and Communications at Women Make Movies.
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