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RETURN TO Helena Amiradżibi The Career

Probing into the fashion industry, which Helena Amiradżibi explored a year earlier in Who Wants a Dress/Komu sukienkę, this film again starts with a freeze frame. We see faces of young girls glued to the glass of a door marked ‘Exit’. The Career  uncovers the dark side of the fashion industry, where women are treated as anonymous objects. Their dream profession becomes a dreary, uncomfortable nightmare. Feminine bodily features are commodified to satisfy the taste of the market rulers.

The Career

  • Kariera
  • 1964
  • dir. Helena Amiradżibi
  • 10 min

Probing into the fashion industry, which Helena Amiradżibi explored a year earlier in Who Wants a Dress/Komu sukienkę, this film again starts with a freeze frame. We see faces of young girls glued to the glass of a door marked ‘Exit’.

As the girls begin to move, we see them knocking on the door. The camera changes perspective to reveal a long queue standing in the snow. The anonymous crowd is shown through a montage of shots of winter hats, headscarves, coats, and feet in high heels and flat shoes. Finally, a man opens the door to let in some of the girls.

A cut to the interior allows for a brief glance at some of the girls fixing their hair in front of a mirror before they enter the next door. A hall with a staircase is tightly packed with young women, whom the camera now observes from above. Again, they mould into one mass of people with no individuality recognisable in the crowd.

Amiradżibi takes us to yet another room with a stage where a modelling casting takes place. From here, the film cuts back and forth between the women in the queue and the jury observing the female candidates for the job.

In front of the jurors, the girls are measured, stripped to their underwear and interviewed. The woman and the man who run the casting reject many of them. Some try to beg for another chance, others argue their case, yet others sneak in for a second chance despite having been disqualified in the previous round.

This doesn’t discourage the crowd in the hall, whose voices now play off-screen. The young women exchange views on their dream job and personal lives, as the camera pauses on individuals nervously biting their nails and smoking cigarettes.

The personalised voices and the close-ups of the faces contrast with the judgemental, soulless atmosphere of the casting, where the viewer takes the perspective of an uninvolved, distant observer.

Just like the rejection notes, the film is a wake-up call for those who might have been drawn to the modelling career. For Amiradżibi it holds no allure. Her film uncovers the dark side of the fashion industry, where women are treated as anonymous objects. Their dream profession becomes a dreary, uncomfortable nightmare. Feminine bodily features are commodified to satisfy the taste of the market rulers.

In the end, the camera shows a few chosen girls, who parade across the stage, as they learn from the jury that to start with they’ll be paid minimal wages.

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