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My Film History - Daniela Comani's Top 100 Films
Texts by Daniela Comani, Charlie James, Ludwig Seyfarth (de, en, it)
21 x 15 cm, 208 pages, 100 photos, color, paperback, 24 EUR
Revolver Publishing, Berlin, 2013
ISBN 978-386895-301-5
www.revolver-publishing.com

In response to canonical lists like the "AFI Top 100," Daniela Comani has created her own list of timeless film masterpieces, and illustrated that list with the movie posters for each film. In Daniela Comani's Top 100 , however, gender assignments are reversed: Buñuel's Belle de Jour  becomes Beau de Jour , and Catherine Deneuve is suddenly mustachioed. All The President's Men  becomes All The President's Women , the lovely Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, now wear red lipstick. Comani intends the series to unfold slowly, one by one, like a wave of historical reversals. At first glance a witty feminist subversion, collectively the pieces drive moments of recognition of where women exist in film history, and where they do not. Film narratives are reconsidered along gender lines - what if the Godfather  was a woman, or Almodóvar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown  were men? This kind of détournement is typical of Comani's practice: In previous projects she has applied her subversive touch to the Western literary canon, to contemporary European magazines, and in fact to the key events of the twentieth century.
Text by Charlie James, Los Angeles, 2013

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