Pride of Place

In this film, with which Kim Longinotto graduated from the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield in England, the director puts a painful episode from her past behind her. As a teenager, Longinotto, who shot the film together with Dorothea Gazidis, was condemned to a girls' boarding school by her parents. The school, located in an old and isolated castle in Buckinghamshire, actually operated as a kind of miniature state where bizarre rules succeeded one another, the food was indigestible and the punishments were absurd and unfair. Wisely, Longinotto ran away at the age of 17, and years later got the unique opportunity for sweet revenge. In subtle but purposeful impressions, from the perspectives of girls still living there, she exposes the educational system of this boarding school as a repressive world full of unacceptable regulations. All subsequent films by Longinotto would deal with people who revolt against oppressive authorities and stifling traditions, whether they involve class, gender or sexual inclination. With respect to expressiveness, her debut certainly measures up to her later work. One year after the release of Pride of Place, the boarding school was closed down. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)