Abandoned by her lover, a young woman finds comfort and safety in her basement apartment. Mundane routines, a diet of junk food and the warmth of the television insulate her from the pain and betrayal of her ill-fated relationship. Eventually, The Basement Girl emerges – transformed and ready to “make it on her own.”
The Basement Girl breaks new cinematic territory by employing multiple formats from traditional 16 mm film to toy cameras including a modified Nintendo Game Boy digital camera and the Intel Mattel computer microscope.
WINNER: GIRLFRIENDS magazine:
BEST LESBIAN SHORT FILM
Sapphos 2001 Movie Awards
“Midi Onodera’s latest film is a witty and wonderful meditation on how women translate the images that surround them (from Bionic Woman to That Girl!, from Barbra Streisand to Maya Deren). The film is funny and touching at the same time, as it looks at familiar texts in new contexts. For anyone interested in women and visual culture, this is an absolute must-see.”
– Judith Mayne, Ohio University
“Who can turn the world on…? Midi Onodera’s latest film could equally well be titled The Most Fun Ever! She is a processor par excellence, mixing loss, melodrama, isolation and indulgence with the choicest morsels of lesbian-infected popular culture. Barbra, That Girl, The Bionic Woman and, of course, MTM convince ‘the basement girl’ that she’s ‘gonna make it after all.'”
-Amy Villarejo Cornell University
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Posted January 26, 2000