Artists & Activists: Second Wave Feminist Filmmakers

The Women’s Movement of the 1970s empowered women to step behind the camera in larger numbers. Their pioneering work platformed voices, stories and issues previously ignored or misrepresented. We look at some of the ground-breaking directors that made films outside the mainstream industry, often through activist film cooperatives and collectives.

Presented in collaboration with The Women's Film Preservation Fund (WFPF), the only programme in the world dedicated to preserving the cultural legacy of women in the industry through preserving films made by women, 'Artists and Activists' looked back at the women behind some of these defining films.

Growing Up Female presents teachers, counsellors, advertising executives, and examples of popular culture influences that point young women to traditional marriage as the pinnacle of female success, while minimising other options and positioning women as competitors rather than supporters of one another.

It was widely used by consciousness-raising groups to introduce feminism to a skeptical society. It was an inaugural film of the still active distribution co-operative New Day Films, founded by Reichert and Klein, with Liane Brandon and Amalie R. Rothschild.

Janie's Janie

’First, I was my father's Janie, then I was my Charlie's Janie, now I'm Janie's Janie.’ — Jane Giese.

After years of abuse, a working-class woman in Newark, New Jersey, comes to realise that she has to take control of her own life.

The filmmakers combined interviews and vérité material, to give creative visual form to feminist concerns.

Janie’s Janie was produced by The Newsreel collective, an activist collective founded in 1967, with chapters across the US that made films covering the important social movements of the time.

Hair Piece

A quick-paced inventory of relaxers, gels and curlers – all-too familiar to African American women – this animated film, 'Hair Piece' puts a racial spin on the issue of unrealistic and impractical beauty ideals - in this case, one promoted by the white society they live in.

Hair Piece affirms the importance of African American women acknowledging who they are and defining themselves on their own terms.

Desire Pie

Explicitly and unabashedly erotic, this humorous, fantasy-filled cell animation, celebrates the joys of sex from a woman’s point of view.

Desire Pie is an illustration of how women at that time were beginning to own their own sexual pleasure and appetites, in contrast to the prevailing view of films made by men that a woman’s sexual place was solely to satisfy male fantasies.

With the advent of the birth control pill and the Sexual Revolution, women could now embrace sex as something for their own pleasure, not only for reproduction. As lesbians began to live openly, they voiced their desires. And as women began to ask why they were still judged by how they looked, love relationships between men and women also changed.

Illusions

Set in 1942, at a fictitious Hollywood studio, this narrative film centres on a light-skinned black studio executive, Mignon Dupree, who hides her racial identity to pursue her career.

While focused on racial prejudice, the film also depicts the male-dominated workplace where men with power view women as fair prey and woman with ambition and vision face obstacles.

As events unfold, Dupree contends with an industry that doesn’t want to give Blacks visible roles and a society that perpetuates false images.