Strike a Light

Twenty womanyears of sexual emotional adventures, told in the first person by eleven young New York women. Her quest for Mr Right started sometime in the Seventies, when the boy she liked didn’t want to go to bed with her, because she was still a virgin. A life of searching, dreaming, being desperate and rejecting men ensued. A journey that took takes her from the inner city to the outer suburbs and back, via psychedelia, tattoos, piercings and mobile phones. On the way, the woman fortunately becomes a little wiser: she becomes less dependent on the man and even spends a couple of years of celibacy. In the end she only sees one solution: why not try a woman?Giovanna Sonnino found eleven women willing to perform the monologue in front of the camera. Almost all of the women some actresses, others not recognised something in the adventures of the protagonist. Sonnino filmed the women in their own surroundings. The images were later processed with colourful special effects and accompanied by girlie music (varying from Marianne Faithful to ‘Barbie Girl’ by Acqua). The only men in the film are passersby who Sonnino asked to recite a statement by famous men. From Baudelaire to Mick Jagger and Sigmund Freud, they all wonder one thing: ‘What does a woman really want?’ None of them have the answer.