Out Lookers

In Out Lookers, Verena Blok portrays older women who reclaim their space in public. Witnessing these women age while she herself was maturing into womanhood, the dominant Western discourse privileging youthful femininity rendered them slowly invisible. The elderly women in this film, anonymous and unnoticeable, are made present by assuming dark shades of sunglasses that filter their gaze. As such, they become commentators on the meaning of womanhood through time. The film uses snippets of candid conversation between the artist and the women about the transitional nature of femininity. At times they speak through and around a book they love, Olga Tokarczuk's “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” (2009), a bleakly comic mystery novel about a post-menopausal woman who raises fierce questions about human behavior. 

Music by Haron Aumaj

Editing by Jesse Bom & Verena Blok