Join us for a virtual NYWIFT Member Screening of the 4K Restorations of Mirra Bank’s Yudie and Amalie Rothschild’s It Happens to Us, followed by a live Q&A with the filmmakers!
Yudie is a film about independence, aging, and the immigrant experience. And It Happens to Us remains the classic plea for a woman’s right to choose.
In this special NYWIFT screening, we invite you to consider voting for these two critical films made by women. The National Film Registry of the Library of Congress names 25 films each year that reflect American society and the rich tapestry of American cinema. The decision to name films to the Registry is keenly influenced by public voting.
Voting directions will be in the screening link description and QR code at the end of the program. Voting is simple and only takes a couple minutes. To date there are 875 films on the Registry. Less than 10% are directed or co-directed by women. Let’s correct this imbalance.
Screen the films: Private links will be sent and available to view any time from May 9 through May 15.
Join the Q&A: Tuesday, May 14 at 5 PM ET
Platform: Zoom
Cost: Free to attend
About the Films
Yudie
Dir. Mirra Bank
1974, Documentary, 20 min.
4K restoration by the Academy Film Archive and the WFPF
Yudie was born on the Lower East Side during the early 20th century wave of European immigration to the U.S. She came of age amidst the fervor of the Labor Movement, and entered womanhood as a New Deal progressive who embraced those ideals. A sprightly Jewish woman who takes us into her confidence as she walks to work and runs errands on Orchard Street, she observes the human condition as it is lived on her beloved streets of New York. This iconic film portrait was at the forefront of independent 70s feminist documentaries that had mainstream impact through high profile festivals, international exhibition, New Day Films distribution, and primetime television broadcast (PBS).
It Happens to Us
Dir. Amalie Rothschild
1972, Documentary, 32 min.
4K restoration by IndieCollect
Made in 1971 when a medically safe legal abortion was only available in one state, the film was produced to bring to public attention the sometimes shattering, and always difficult, personal situations underlying a woman’s decision to end a pregnancy. As long as the availability of legal abortion remains limited and threatened outright, it is important that contemporary audiences know the consequences of abortion being illegal and what life was like before Roe vs Wade, and what it is like for many today after the 2022 Dobbs decision. The film presents the most cogent arguments through the personal stories of a wide range of women both rich and poor, young and older, black and white, married and unmarried, as to why women should be allowed to control their own bodies.
About the Panelists
Mirra Bank is a veteran film director who began with editorial work on Academy Award-winning films Woodstock and Harlan County, USA; and on Gimme Shelter. Her first film, Yudie, premiered at The New York Film Festival. She made films for such PBS series as the Emmy Award-winning The 51st State, and for The Originals: Women in Art. Her features include Last Dance (Academy Award shortlist); Enormous Changes (Sundance); The Only Real Game (Netflix); Nobody’s Girls, (non-fiction PBS special); and No Fear No Favor, about protecting Africa’s wildlife. Bank is a member of the Academy – Documentary Branch; a current Advisory Board member and past president of NYWIFT, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Lifetime Member of the Actors Studio.
Amalie R. Rothschild is an award-winning filmmaker and photographer noted for her documentaries about social issues as revealed through the lives of people in the arts, and for her music photographs from the Fillmore East, Woodstock, Isle of Wight, and other seminal rock events from 1968 to 1974. She is a co-founder of New Day Films, and author of Live at the Fillmore East: A Photographic Memoir. Her films include the groundbreaking It Happens to Us made in 1971 with an all-woman crew and the first American film to argue that women should have the right to control their own bodies and end a pregnancy. Other films are Woo Who? May Wilson, Nana Mom and Me, Conversations with Willard van Dyke, and Painting the Town: The Illusionistic Murals of Richard Haas. While based professionally in New York City, since 1983 she lives roughly half the year in Italy.
Marci Reaven (Moderator) is a public historian, museum curator, and grant writer. As vice president of history exhibitions at New-York Historical Society, she curated exhibits on a wide range of topics, including Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion (2014), The Vietnam War (2017), Hudson Rising (2019), and Acts of Faith: Religion and the American West (2023). As managing director of the cultural organization City Lore, she co-founded the Place Matters project on history, place, and public life, and co-authored the guidebook, Hidden New York: A Guide to Places that Matter. She holds a PhD in US history from NYU.
Yudie was restored with support from
The Women’s Film Preservation Fund of New York Women in Film & Television is the only program in the world dedicated to preserving the cultural legacy of women in the industry through preserving films made by women. Founded in 1995 by NYWIFT in conjunction with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), WFPF has preserved around 150 American films, across all genres, in which women have played key creative roles. The WFPF is rewriting the film history books, by saving one moving picture at a time.
Learn more at www.womensfilmpreservationfund.org
Thank you to our co-presenters:
IndieCollect believes indie film is the lifeblood of an open society and that ensuring indie voices are heard is crucial to the survival of our democracy. IndieCollect’s mission is thus to rescue, restore and “reactivate” significant independent films so they re-enter the marketplace of ideas, inspiring new audiences and future generations.
New Day Films is a cooperative of over 140 filmmakers who share the work of distribution, operations, and leadership — creating a powerful and self-sustaining model for collective work distributing educational documentaries. Founded in 1971 by four feminist filmmakers, New Day continues to uphold the values that inspired the founders: equitable partnership, powerful storytelling, and positive social change.
Join the conversation on social media:
#nywift | @nywift
NYWIFT programs, screenings and events are supported, in part, by grants from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
