Alaska + Lawale + Candida

[The] film’s interplay of old and new is striking. Undoubtedly, its sensuous, floating beauty makes it a treasure to those who revel in a language of cinema that can create images of the world anew through cinematic means. But also: reading the film’s broad movements alongside its smaller eddies yields a richer experience that is not limited to that of its maker but extends to a long, valuable, intellectual history of women experimenting with film form and meaning.

While the film received minimal and at times dismissive attention… it can be seen to have been a touchstone in women’s experimental cinema through its formal and conceptual ties to the films of Yvonne Rainer, Marjorie Keller, and Chantal Akerman that appeared in its immediate wake. Taking on the substance of melodrama but replacing the appealing excesses that characterize the genre with challenging form, the filmmakers point to the lost object of irrecoverable but still intensely resonant female experience.