NYWIFT Blog

The Women’s Film Preservation Fund Crosses the Atlantic with 1970s Classics of Feminist Filmmaking

By Ann Deborah Levy

A year ago, an email arrived in our Women’s Film Preservation Fund mailbox from Tamara Anderson, Cinema Curator at the Barbican Centre in London, who had discovered our 2015 Carte-blanche series at MoMA, Women Writing the Language of Cinema. Would we curate a smaller series, focusing just on Second Wave Feminist films, for their multi-arts celebration Art of Change? What has resulted, Artists and Activists: Second Wave Feminist Filmmakers, will screen as a series over Saturday and Sunday, June 2-3 at the Barbican.

The WFPF has preserved a wealth of films made in the 1970’s that illustrate the impact of the Women’s Liberation movement on women filmmakers at that time. As I delved into this project, it became all too clear that these women had introduced to the screen so many new subjects and in such innovative ways that what we were trying to squeeze into six screenings was a renaissance in filmmaking by women.

Yes, a rebirth! Women had been directing and producing films since the early days of cinema, but as the film studio conglomerates formed, their small studios were starved out of existence. In the 70’s, they were back—still outside of the studio system.

I had been a college student in the early 1970’s and the Women’s Movement provided an entirely new picture of my future, but I had never seen any of these films. Why was that? In those days the only places to see films were in movie theaters and on the few TV networks. Documentaries appeared in movie theaters as shorts, usually on famous men, important events, or exotic places. Like other campuses, mine had a film society, but the male-dominated group that ran it wasn’t interested in showing films by women.

I encountered these feminist films for the first time when I joined the WFPF. At first, they hardly seemed revolutionary. A woman talking about her “oppression” didn’t sound liberated until you remembered that the expression of that idea at that time was a political act and a necessary step in deciding to assert yourself. Women speaking for themselves in films without voice of God narration are run of the mill now, but were novel then. Films about women’s bodies, sex, and relationships don’t shock us today, but were pushing into new territory in the 1970’s. I now understood that an important part of preservation is presenting the context in which the films were made so that first-time viewers can appreciate their full impact.

Many women turned to filmmaking out of activism and learned by doing with almost no training. Not knowing the “correct” ways to make films, they reinvented filmmaking to fit their own needs. Some filmmakers did have training. Others came from the visual or performing arts and viewed their work as an extension of their art, not as an informational tool.

All of these women had similar constraints in common: they had no money, little access to screening venues for their work, and little hope of making them financially viable. Making films outside of the mainstream gave them freedom to create without censorship and lack of funds forced them to find inventive low-budget ways to make films.

The Barbican series includes several feminist film classics that have screened in our ongoing series From the Vault: Women’s Advocacy on Film, co-presented with UnionDocs, all of which we have explored in previous blog postsJulia Reichert’s Growing Up Female, Liane Brandon’s Anything You Want to Be and Betty Tells Her Story, Judy Smith and Louise Alaimo’s The Woman’s Film, Stephanie Palewski and other Newsreel Collective members’ Janie’s Janie and other women-directed documentaries: Maxi Cohen’s Joe and Maxi, and Lourdes Portillo’s Las Madres de la Place de Mayo. For that reason, I will highlight films screening at the Barbican only.

Illusions Julie Dash

Still from Illusions, dir. Julie Dash

Julie Dash’s Illusions, a narrative film set in Hollywood during World War II, usually considered a film about racial issues, shows an ambitious light-complected African-American woman who passes for white in order to succeed. In this world, men have power and women of all races are support staff.  Even the rare woman executive is fair game for sexual harassment.

Make Out, made by members of the Newsreel collective including Geri Ashur, Andrea Eagan, Marcia Salo Rizzi and Deborah Shaffer, co-directed by Ashur and Peter Schlaifer, shows two actors portraying lovers in a car as in voiceover we hear the woman’s real thoughts. Her words are drawn from transcripts of a consciousness-raising group.

Make Out Newsreel Collective

Still from Newsreel collectives’ Make Out

Films by experimental filmmakers and animators were often expressions of women’s thoughts, and experience. Barbara Hammer’s, Sisters!, a celebration of lesbians, is part documentary, part experimental film and includes voiceover of dreams and poetry as well as footage of a women’s march, an early lesbian conference/festival, and dancing.

Sisters! Barbara Hammer

Still from Sisters!, dir. Barbara Hammer

I-94, Bette Gordon’s experimental film made jointly with James Benning, was probably not conceived as a “woman’s film.” It presents a nude couple, the woman’s body and voice, dissolving into those of the man. They each talk about how they feel about the way they are perceived by the outside world, marking sharp differences in male and female experience.

Lisa Crafts’ animated Desire Pie ecstatically and humorously depicts lovemaking as a woman would like it, not as the male, Hollywood fantasy.

Picture1

Still from Desire Pie, dir. Lisa Crafts

 

 

Artists & Activists: Second Wave Feminist Filmmakers was curated by: Ann Deborah Levy and Kirsten Larvick, WFPF Co-Chairs, with programming assistance from Susan Lazarus and Amy Aquilino. The series also includes important films by Madeline Anderson, Joyce Chopra, Su Friedrich, Amalie R. Rothschild, not preserved by the WFPF.

Participating in the event are UK feminists Sheila Rowbotham and Szusie Orbach, as well as Charlotte Procter, Ros Cranston, Nazmia Jamal, and Selina Robertson, who are involved in film programming and distribution in the UK.

For tickets and information please visit: 

https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2018/series/artists-activists-second-wave-feminist-filmmakers

For more on the WFPF: https://www.nywift.org/article.aspx?id=FPF

Email the WFPF at: wfpf@nywift.org

Follow us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/TheWFPF:

ARVE Error: need id and provider

Ann Deborah Levy is Co-Chair of the Women’s Film Preservation Fund Steering Committee and makes experimental films. For more information on her films and videos, please visit www.resonantimages.com.

PUBLISHED BY

womens film preservation fund

womens film preservation fund The Women's Film Preservation Fund (WFPF) is the only program in the world dedicated to preserving the cultural legacy of women in the industry through preserving American-made films by women. Founded in 1995 by New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT) in conjunction with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), WFPF has preserved nearly 150 American films in which women have played key creative roles.

View all posts by womens film preservation fund

1 Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

*

*

Related Posts

Meet the New NYWIFT Member: Eileen Wolter

Welcome to NYWIFT, Eileen Wolter! After working as a motion picture lit assistant at CAA, working on the Universal lot, and writing lots of coverage in LA, Eileen brings her creativity to us in New York! She holds a BA in Art History & Film from Vassar College, studied acting as The Atlantic Theater Company and The Actors Studio/The New School, and studied writing at UCLA, NYU, Sundance Collab, Stowe Story Labs, and NJ Play Lab. Eileen tells us about her fascinating family history, covering Fashion Week for Comedy Central in 1993, and attending SNL dress rehearsals.

READ MORE

Meet the New NYWIFT Member: Jaya Mahajan

Welcome to NYWIFT, Jaya Mahajan! Originally from Mumbai, India, Jaya is a filmmaker with Executive Producer credits for documentaries and factual shows that have been on networks such as CNN, BBC, Discovery and the National Geographic Channel. She spent the initial part of her career as a business reporter and producer with CNBC and Bloomberg. More recently, she has been running an award-winning production company, creating films and documentaries and teaching journalism students in Malaysia and Singapore. Jaya recently moved to New York and is looking forward to focusing on projects that highlight and amplify traditionally underrepresented, diverse, and marginalized voices. 

READ MORE

Meet the New NYWIFT Member: Victoria Duncan

Welcome to NYWIFT, Victoria Duncan! At age 12, Victoria began making films, struck by her power to engage an audience using her imagination. This led her down an exciting path to SNL, The Blacklist, The Sinner, Vice, and branded content for huge companies like Wells Fargo and Amazon, just to name a few. Her LGBT+ ballet film I Am Enough was adapted for the stage and performed at New York City’s iconic Lincoln Center. She is currently working on the screenplay for a feature film. Victoria walks us through her incredible journey, from her childhood favorite movies to presenting a piece to the United Nations.

READ MORE

Meet the New NYWIFT Member: Jillian Fisher

Welcome to NYWIFT, Jillian Fisher! Jillian began her career as an intern with the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. Three film festivals, various day jobs and a very particular set of skills later, Jillian created a public relations company. When a few movies came knocking on the door of one of her clients (the City of Kingston, New York), Jillian answered. After assisting the productions with locations and negotiations, she turned her attention to scouting locations full time. Over a decade later, Jillian still loves the creative aspects of scouting, but is now also pursuing producing her own projects.

READ MORE
JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER
css.php