In 1954 Marilyn Bell, an unknown athlete made world headlines when she became the first person to swim across Lake Ontario in a contest sponsored by the Canadian National Exhibition. Our Marilyn recreates this swim, every agonizing stroke across a cold and hallucinatory lake while meditating on the complex construction of public images of female corporeality. At the same time, another Marilyn, the blonde one, entertains troops in Korea.
(Co) Winner Grand Prize at Oberhausen, 1988.
"The film's [Our Marilyn's] two Marilyns are not mythic figures for us to incorporate into our own pantheon of heroes and heroines. They are examples of the process of fetishizing the historical. They pose alternative possibilities for the female body, while the film refuses to represent either as an unproblematic icon, waiting for adoption."
(Bill Nichols)