Short Description “Let’s Play Prisoners (1988) explores power between women through a story about two girls whose childhood rituals and dares take on a distinctly sadomasochistic tone. The story, read by an adult woman (the story’s author, Jo Anstey) sitting on a couch, tells of childhood games of imprisonment, physical restraint, humiliation, and pain from the victim’s point of view, probing how the girl’s masochism and desire for approval compel her to comply with her friend’s increasingly cruel requests.”
Liz Kotz, “Anything but Idyllic: Lesbian Filmmaking in the 1980s and 1990s,” Sisters, Sexperts, Queers: Beyond the Lesbian Nation, ed. Arlene Stein, Plume, 1993, p. 77
Collaborators: Julie Zando, Director. Josephine Anstey, Writer and Performer.
Video: 22 minutes, b&w, sound, 1988
Available from: Electronic Arts Intermix and The Video Data Bank
Permanent Exhibitions:
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Centro d’Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
The Long Beach Museum, Long Beach, California
Reviewed in:
Liz Kotz, “Anything but Idyllic: Lesbian Filmmaking in the 1980s and 1990s,” Sisters, Sexperts, Queers: Beyond the Lesbian Nation, ed. Arlene Stein, Plume, 1993
Judith Mayne, Framed: Lesbians, Feminists, and Media Culture, University of Minnesota Press, 2000
Michael Renov (Editor), Erika Suderburg (Editor), Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, University of Minnesota Press, 1995
Awards:
Best Experimental Video at the 13th Annual Atlanta Film & Video Festival ( 1989) Grand Prize at the Black Maria Thomas Edison Film & Video Festival (1989).