Revolt She Said: Women and Film after ’68 (tour)

• What was the aim of the event?

Curated by the feminist collective Club du Femmes, “Revolt She Said” is a UK film tour of widely unknown and forgotten films directed by women about women. The tour strives to introduce more female directors into the canon of what is considered “essential cinema”. Left at the periphery of a predominately male film culture, the vast majority of these films are in part responses to 1968’s movements.

• How does it relate to issues around ‘retrospection and re-evaluation’?

It is often men who produce, direct, write, exhibit and judge films. “Club du Femmes”‘s wide programme shows an increasing need in facing this long history of imbalanced representation, artistic freedom and exhibition.  By looking back into film history and searching for hidden gems, “Revolt She Said” focuses on films which from day one were doomed to be overlooked. Women filmmakers struggle to find funding and distribution. Still today there is a huge imbalance in both the film industry and film criticism of female talents. I was particularly shocked in going through this programme and struggling to find any familiar names (The only names familiar to me were Agnes Varda and Lucretia Martel). There is also an interest in short films, which tend to be excluded completely from film discourse.

• Do they position any films as ‘forgotten’ or ‘lost’ classics? If so, which ones and how?

It doesn’t look like they specifically use the word “forgotten” or “lost” to describe any of these films. Maybe because they are all “forgotten” in a way. There is a sense that the programme in its entirety is focused on lesser-known films. The Cat Has Nine Lives has been restored and screened for the first time in 50 years. Lizzie Borden wrote an on the feminist gaze in Maeve, a film which hardly anyone saw.  She considered it timeless, urgent and still relevant at the time of Metoo. Perhaps even more buried are films directed by black women as A Place of Rage by Pratibha Parmar. A documentary which celebrates African American women and their achievements in the midst of civil rights movements. There is a focus on the past of feminist cinema, but there were also a few screenings dedicated to new female voices, such as greek directors Athina Rachel Tsangari (Attenberg) and Konstantina Kotzamani.

• Write a paragraph reflecting on ways you could develop this into a more sustained piece of research (as a hypothetical idea, not as something you will then actually have to do).

To effectively change the canon, I believe that the focus should aim to the next generation of viewers. Introducing these unknown films to teenagers could be an inspiring and educational lesson. I myself am someone who relied on these “Top 100 lists” to improve my film knowledge in the first place. It would have been extremely beneficial to have learnt at the time that there is a diverse range of voices beyond those lists. To make this retrospective tour more effective in the long run maybe they should be introduced into History and Art programmes around the country. Perhaps through lectures, screening and workshops.