All of Us Stronger (1976)
(9 minutes) 16mm original A/B color reversal, Optical Track, 14in. Mag Track
Director: Susan Delson
Grant Awarded to: Washington University Film & Media Archive
All of Us Stronger; (Susan Delson, Kartemquin Films, 1976, 9 minutes, color) combines footage of a women’s self-defense class with voice-overs of women’s experiences with sexual assault. The class is shown as a fun way to create sisterhood while also giving the students the tools to fight chauvinism and capitalism. In 1974, Kartemquin Films released the short documentary Now We Live on Clifton, which follows a working-class family dealing with gentrification in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. One short scene depicts a women’s self-defense class taught by the older daughter, Roxanne.
Susan Delson made All of Us Stronger out of the unused footage of that scene. She added voice-overs from women who share their experiences of being assaulted by men and how learning Karate gave them the power to fight back on physical, mental, and political levels.
Still from All of Us Stronger (1976)
The film starts with a photograph of an entrance to a Chicago apartment building. As the camera zooms in on the doorway, a woman recounts being confronted by a man who threatened to kill her if she screamed. Instead, she resisted. She recalls screaming at him, “You can’t kill me with a screwdriver!”
The visuals then turn to the class led by Roxanne. She instructs the students, which include her younger sister Pam, in how to escape an attacker’s grip, how to punch and kick, and in proper breathing and stretching exercises.
The voice-overs combined with these images come from a number of unnamed women. One states that she is taking Karate to “turn the table” on her husband. He uses his greater strength to “physically dominate” her, which she finds “intolerable.” Her story shows, obviously, that women experience violence from those close to them and not just strangers.
The film ends with the women talking about the ways that the solidarity they are gaining in the class doesn’t just allow them to defend themselves on a personal level. They feel empowered to effect change in a society that condones sexism. By taking a class in self-defense they are realizing how the fight is not just against individual attackers but capitalism.
Still from All of Us Stronger (1976)
Susan Delson was a member of Kartemquin Films during its collective era in the early to mid-1970s. The production company was started in 1966 by University of Chicago graduate Gordon Quinn and others inspired by a sociological approach to documentary films. During its collective era, Kartemquin became more politically focused in its filmmaking and how it was run, which included bringing in women to the previously all male space.
During her time at Kartemquin, Delson co-directed the short film Now We Live on Clifton(1974), which was previously preserved by NFPF. She used extra footage from that short as the basis for All of Us Stronger.
Delson left Chicago for New York City, where she became a writer and film programmer at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
She did not entirely stop making movies. She wrote Jill Godmillow’s documentary about the Solidarity movement, Far from Poland (1984). Four years later, Delson wrote and directed the short film Cause and Effect, which was produced by Christine Vachon and Todd Haynes. The film was digitally restored by IndieCollect in 2019 and has been included in the Blu-Ray and screenings on Vachon and Hayne’s company.
Delson has written two important books on overlooked areas of film history. In 2006, the University of Minnesota Press published her book Dudley Murphy: Hollywood Wild on the avant-garde and low-budget Hollywood director. In 2021, she published the book Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen One Dime at a Dime with Indiana University Press. That project also resulted in a boxset of Soundies that she curated for Kino Lorber and screenings on TCM.
