Maria Finitzo is a two-time Peabody Award-winning social issue documentary filmmaker. She has been producing and directing documentary films for network television, public broadcasting, cable TV, and the Internet for over 25 years. Her work has been screened in festivals and theatres around the world and won multiple major broadcast awards, including most recently the Alfred E. duPont Award for the series “Hard Earned.” She is an associate of four-time Oscar-nominated Kartemquin Films, as well as a screenwriter and fiction film director.
“The Dilemma of Desire” was scheduled to screen at the 2020 Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival. A digital version of the fest has been organized due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The Dilemma of Desire” will screen in Hot Docs Festival Online, which will launch May 28 and is geo-blocked to Ontario, Canada. More information about the program and how to tune in can be found here.
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
MF: “The Dilemma of Desire” is a film about power, and how power is easily taken when the truth is replaced with a lie. The film takes much of its inspiration from the ground-breaking essay “Uses of the Erotic” by feminist Audre Lorde. In her essay, Lorde tells us that the erotic is a force within all of us, including men. Women are warned against it all their lives by the male world, and so as a result, for women this means a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information in our lives.
So yes, “The Dilemma of Desire” talks about the clitoris — where it is, what it looks like, and what it is for, but this is not just a film about the clitoris, or even sex. Instead, it is a film that connects the knowledge of clitoral facts — the truth of female empowerment way beyond sexual satisfaction. This is at the heart of “The Dilemma of Desire,” and why I believe deeply that this film is timely and important.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
MF: I grew up in the ’60s during the sexual revolution –when everything was supposed to have changed for women. Birth control gave women the freedom to be sexual if they wanted, and for a while, at least, it seemed that women now had the right to claim their sexuality, and act on their desires without being shamed for doing so.
But the truth is, in 2020, dominant and outdated sexual narratives that have mostly gone unexplored and unchallenged remain in place. To name just a few: Women need to feel emotionally secure and attached to want sex. Female Eros is much better made for monogamy than the male libido. Women’s bodies are the objects of pleasure, but not necessarily the recipients of it, and it is “normal” for women to lose lusty desire in long-term, monogamous relationships.
Science has shown that woman have as robust a sex drive as men — they are simply told lies about it to reinforce social constructs. I was very interested in exploring how we have gotten to where we are today, and why despite the real gains that came with the ’60s revolution, women must still navigate a powerful and at times outright misogynistic patriarchy. It is a dangerous time for women’s rights and sexual equality.
Sexual freedom is central to the promise of human dignity and self-determination. The feelings of bearing a woman’s body, both physical and emotional, comprise the most intimate sense of selfhood. And yet the world over, women’s bodies remain subject to the will and dogma of predominantly men in power. It take a lot for women to express their sexual desire in the face of the cultural, religious, and political forces that punish them for wanting sex.
Even as we see mounting evidence that women want what men want, antiquated sexual scripts remain in place and women are caught in a catch-22, a double bind, a quandary, a dilemma of desire.
W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?
MF: I want people to think about how and why we have a system in place that thinks it is okay to teach boys the truth about their sexual anatomy and sexual desire, and denies girls the right to the same knowledge. Sex education teaches us all about male anatomy and male pleasure, and nothing about female pleasure and female anatomy unless it has to do with reproduction.
The clitoris, the organ of female sexual pleasure, is omitted entirely, and so a girl begins her sexual life with the lie of omission so powerful that it will resonate deeply throughout her entire life — cutting her off from information about her body and a vital source of her power.
I hope people will think about the profound impact this lie has on our lives as women, beginning when we are young and continuing into adulthood, and how there is a real connection to women’s struggle for power, personal and political, and the suppression of their human right to be sexual.
The way women are viewed sexually in the world cannot be separated from the way they are treated. Enjoying sex and talking about it often and openly is an empowering, liberating act that spoken over and over becomes a way to speak truth to power.
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
MF: The biggest challenge for me is always finding funding to support my films. This was particularly true for “The Dilemma of Desire” because the content of the film challenges the status quo, and that frightens some people.
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.
MF: The film was funded the way many filmmakers are forced to fund their films, with personal debt and deferring producer and director fees. We did receive funding from an investor, early on, whose support was crucial in keeping the film going.
We launched a very successful Kickstarter campaign that helped us connect to and build our audience, and we were fortunate to receive grants from two foundations. We never did raise all of the money needed, and the film is still in debt, and so like all filmmakers, we need to sell the film.
W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
MF: I am first and foremost a storyteller. I grew up in an Italian and Irish home in an immigrant neighborhood in Chicago. Some of my earliest memories are of the stories my Italian father told my sisters and me as we sat around the dinner table. I learned early on about the power of story to connect us to our shared humanity, but it wasn’t until I sat in a darkened movie theater for the first time to watch a film that I realized that I would tell my stories using the medium of film. I was completely smitten with its power to connect an audience of strangers to a shared emotional experience.
Many of my films, both documentary and fiction — such as “5 Girls,” “In the Game,” “A Taste of Life,” — have explored the lives of women and girls revealing the barriers they face in the quest for personal autonomy. I am interested in telling stories that have at their core a driving desire for liberation — sexual, economic, and psychological — from the cultural domination of men.
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
MF: Hmm, hard to say. I rarely listen to advice, good or bad.
W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?
MF: Don’t be naive about the obstacles in your path. This is not a level playing field. You will hit the wall and land on your ass many times in pursuit of your goals. Expect setbacks, plan accordingly, and then stand up and keep going.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
MF: Too many to have a favorite, but here is a list of women filmmakers whose work I admire: Barbara Kopple, Laura Poitras, Chloé Zhao, Amma Asante, Agnès Varda, Dawn Porter, Kim Longinotto, Shirley Clarke, Renee Tajima-Peña — the list is endless. I admire them for their courage; many of them broke down barriers for all of us and I admire them for the unwavering strength of their point of view.
W&H: What differences have you noticed in the industry since the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements launched?
MF: I guess the first thing that has changed is that women are feeling more empowered to speak up, and that is a good thing. But I don’t think opportunities for women filmmakers are anywhere close to where they should be, and where we all deserve them to be: 50/50.
Misogyny and racism still have a firm grasp on our culture and real change — not just “token” opportunities — will not happen voluntarily. If we want things to change, we need to demand that they do.
