Name: My Life Without Steve
Director: Gillian Leahy
Released: 1986
Duration: 53 min

Almost as controversial as it was lauded, this gorgeous, rigorously composed reflection on a break-up is a landmark work of Australian feminist cinema.

“After you left, I moved in here for a year, hoping that the view would pull me out of the misery.” Over a series of domestic tableaux – a copper kettle on the boil; a bulging vase stuffed with white daisies – a woman delivers a discursive monologue: the musings of a wounded heart, rich with intertextual references from Roland Barthes to Laurie Anderson and Bob Dylan. The speaker is Liz, a semi-fictive creation voiced by Jenny Vuletic but seen only fleetingly, as a night-time reflection in the window of her apartment overlooking Sydney’s bustling Blackwattle Bay.

Inspired by the works of Chris Marker and Chantal Akerman and made during a notable period for women filmmakers in Australia, Gillian Leahy’s singular, sophisticated essay film – shot on lush 35mm – was honoured at MIFF, the Sydney Film Festival and the AFI Awards on its release. However, My Life Without Steve also ruffled feathers, with Liz’s exploratory and sometimes accusatory monologue critiqued by some as failing certain feminist ideals. Forty years later, in a culture attuned to prickly autofiction, the conversation seems to have finally caught up to Leahy.

“A story of solitude, pain and obsession, of raw emotions elegantly presented and endlessly interrogated.” – Senses of Cinema

Director Gillian Leahy is a guest of the festival and will be in attendance at the Wednesday 19 August session of the film.