The controversies over women’s bodies are not over yet. Neo-liberal systems transform women’s bodies from the objects to be victimized into both products to be consumed and subjects to consume. Today, it becomes difficult to discern between the female subjectivity of feminism and that of consumerism. If women want independence, they need to accumulate wealth, to succeed they have to be well-maintained and pretty; if they have the talents and resources, they are just as good as men and can have great success in life. This is the formula for women’s success in our time, and it is pitched as the only possible strategy for women to survive in the globalized era to conceal the reality of neo-liberalism in which an unregulated women workforce is the backbone of most industries.

Female Bodies; Biopolitics and Body Politics will provide a space to think about where women’s bodies lie, what problems concerning these bodies remain, and what kind of new problems women confront. Therefore, this section deals with a variety of issues that concern the materiality of women’s bodies, the juncture where the private penetrates the political and social spheres: the discourse on reproductive rights, the legal, physical, and emotional dimensions of sexual assault, debates about cosmetic surgery, the practices of transsexuals who try to determine their bodily selves without being restricted by the rules of classification set by the mainstream, the social exclusion of hermaphrodites whose bodies are both male and female, the marketing of exercise, beauty, and diets, to achieve the idealized female form, and arguments for or against the limits of the female body's athletic performance. Female Bodies; Biopolitics and Body Politics screens films which transfer and transform women’s bodies into other categories and positions in new, unconventional and surprising ways. These films do not conform themselves to the values and assumptions of the neo-liberal and patriarchal system, but instead focus on criticizing those conventions.

The films Forever the Moment, Girls in Guyville, No Bikini and Zanzibar Soccer Queens, a story about a women’s soccer team in Zanzibar, Africa, assert that the pride of women can be inspired not by diets or beauty for beauty’s sake but through sports and the body's agility and strength. Politics of Bodies also includes Over the Hill which show how far the plastic surgery of women can go, Jinok Goes to School, XXY and My Sister which expose the reality of discrimination and exclusion directed against the bodies of PWAs, hermaphrodites, and the disabled. You can also see freshly provocative Korean and Taiwanese films such as Your Wings and Diary of a Pair of Hairy Legs, which deal with the relationship between body hair, sexuality, and the power differential between women and men, and Say Hello to Your Anus which links hemorrhoids to neo-liberalism. Issues raised by the special program, Female Bodies: Biopolitics and Body Politics, will be taken up in lively discussion in the panels, ‘Women’s Bodies in the Age of Bio-tech: Agents for Reproducing the World and the Object of the Bio-Politics in Globalization,’ which will take place at the international conference hosted by the festival on April 15th. (KIM Sunah)