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ARCHIVE

8th(2006)



The Woman¡¯s Film

San Francisco Newsreel

  • USA
  • 1971
  • 41min
  • Beta
  • black and white

SYNOPSIS

With new strategies and the growing power of American feminist activism emerging in the 1970s, The Woman¡¯s Film is a significant achievement both in terms of women¡¯s filmmaking and newsreel film. The film puts feminism into active practice, asserting women¡¯s roles as subjects of filmmaking, not as objects. This approach is readily apparent from the voiceover criticizing the general prejudice that women are ¡°bad¡± at machinery as scenes of female crews with cameras and microphones roll on screen. Thus it becomes a true film about women, for women, and by women. Unlike other elite, white-male-centered newsreel films, this newsreel film reveals the complexity and contradictions embodied in women¡¯s issues by showing women of different ethnicities.
 Using first person narration, interviews and montage sequences characteristic of many of verit?style newsreel films, the film unfolds the experiences of white, Mexican, and African-American woman laborers vis-a-vis sexual discrimination at work, irrational relations between the two sexes, racial inequality, reality and fantasy in marriage, and their engagement in activism. Discussions by a small, consciousness-raising group are also spliced in between interviews. These personal experiences are shared dialectically by the women¡¯s group and female audiences, and through this process, they reveal anger, heal wounds and engage in feminist practice. (San Francisco Newsreel¡¯s collective manner of filmmaking and the use of pseudonyms for women in the film are two such manifestations.) These women display an undeniable power for transformation. Yet, though it may sound like a trite slogan, there is still a long way left to go. (Cho Hye-young)
 

PROGRAM NOTE

With new strategies and the growing power of American feminist activism emerging in the 1970s, The Woman¡¯s Film is a significant achievement both in terms of women¡¯s filmmaking and newsreel film. The film puts feminism into active practice, asserting women¡¯s roles as subjects of filmmaking, not as objects. This approach is readily apparent from the voiceover criticizing the general prejudice that women are ¡°bad¡± at machinery as scenes of female crews with cameras and microphones roll on screen. Thus it becomes a true film about women, for women, and by women. Unlike other elite, white-male-centered newsreel films, this newsreel film reveals the complexity and contradictions embodied in women¡¯s issues by showing women of different ethnicities.
 Using first person narration, interviews and montage sequences characteristic of many of verit?style newsreel films, the film unfolds the experiences of white, Mexican, and African-American woman laborers vis-a-vis sexual discrimination at work, irrational relations between the two sexes, racial inequality, reality and fantasy in marriage, and their engagement in activism. Discussions by a small, consciousness-raising group are also spliced in between interviews. These personal experiences are shared dialectically by the women¡¯s group and female audiences, and through this process, they reveal anger, heal wounds and engage in feminist practice. (San Francisco Newsreel¡¯s collective manner of filmmaking and the use of pseudonyms for women in the film are two such manifestations.) These women display an undeniable power for transformation. Yet, though it may sound like a trite slogan, there is still a long way left to go. (Cho Hye-young)
 

Director

  • San Francisco NewsreelSan Francisco Newsreel

    The Newsreel¡¯s Western center was set up in 1968. After changing its name to California Newsreel from San Francisco Newsreel in 1975, the center started producing and distributing films focusing on the political circumstances and human rights issues of Africans and African Americans. Deeply influenced by the American New-Leftist movement of the 1960s, the San Francisco/California Newsreel invested great effort in developing a new model for distributing and showcasing political films. They refrained from seeing film as means to increase aesthetic sensibility, and instead emphasized its role as an arena for political discussion. The Woman¡¯s Film (1971), co-directed by the women members of the Newsreel, is considered a monumental piece for the Feminist Newsreel Movement. Others include Controlling Interest (1978) and The Business of America (1984) which addresses the role of multi-national corporation.

Credit

  • ProducerSan Francisco Newsreel