Reverberating Feminisms: Chronologies of Feminist Art Movements at CalArts: Films & Videos

History of the feminist art movement in the late 20th century, including interviews with many of the participants.

In the 1890s, Jane Addams' Hull House was a thriving center of women's activism. This performance artwork by Suzanne Lacy imagines the nuances of specific historical moments through a gathering of contemporary activists.

Compilation of short performance videos by various women artists. Themes include body image, sexuality, and sex roles.

Through discourse, debate and experimental theater sketches, women students confront Judy Chicago's radical views of sexuality and feminism in this cinema-verite about the Feminist Art Program at Fresno State College.

Artist Susan Mogul offers two works dedicated to the history of the Woman's Building, a historic video shot during an event in the space and a short contemporary documentary featuring reflections from Woman's Building participants.

Delving into the sources of her obsessive and over-dependent feelings and behavior, the artist explores her youth in a home dominated by her parents' alcoholism.

Art created by the women who lived and worked in Womanhouse, the Feminist Art Program of the California Institute of the Arts, 1971-72. Features Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro.

Respected artists such as Doris McCarthy, Judy Chicago, Joyce Wieland, and Jane Ash Poitras--in combination with curators, art historians, and The Guerilla Girls, the 'terrorists' of the art world--discuss the dearth of women's artwork in major galleries and examine the poignant social history of women in the fine arts--a story of suppression, marginalization, and omission.

Suzan Pitt (Former Faculty of 20 years)
Asparagus (1979, 20 min.), Joy Street (1995, 24 min.), El Doctor (2005, 24 min.), Visitation (2012, 12 min.), Pinball (2013, 7 min.), Persistence of Vision, Blue And Laura Kraning (2006, 33 min.).

Betzy Bromberg (F/V MFA '80, Faculty)
An experimental documentary that goes to a hospital operating room, research laboratories and a family picnic to outline the issues raised by genetic experimentation.

Nina Menkes (Former longtime faculty)
The Great Sadness of Zohara (1983), Magdalena Viraga (1986), Queen of Diamonds (1991) and The Bloody Child (1996) --- that Menkes produced, wrote, directed, and shot, all of which star her sister and early muse Tinka Menkes, and concluding with a pair of surreal black and white psychodramas --- Phantom Love (2007) and Dissolution (2012) --- 'Cinematic Sorceress: The Films of Nina Menkes.'

(Current Faculty)
Examines subplots or subtexts in supposed heterosexual classic Hollywood films. Brooke and Cottis interview other lesbians, including Cathy Opie, about their opinions on these classic modes and contemporary depictions of lesbian sexuality on film.

Cauleen Smith (Former faculty)
"A new restoration of Cauleen Smith's 1998 film brings the movie--about gender, race and class in Oakland, Ca--to a world finally ready for it." - Haper's Bazaar

Chick Strand (Former longtime faculty)
Intimate documentary about young women who make papier mache fruit and vegetables in a small factory in Mexico.

Martine Syms (Former faculty and CSSSA grad)
Incense sweaters & ice is a new feature film inspired by the idea that anything one does while being watched is a performance. The film follows three protagonists--Mrs. Queen Esther Bernetta White, Girl, and WB ('whiteboy')--as they navigate the dramas of surveillance, moving between looking, being looked at, and remaining unseen. How does the ever present potential image affect the way we act and the way we see ourselves? By examining how cinema now happens in real time, Syms works between the documented and the lived to find the lie.

Anna Biller (F/V MFA '93)
Elaine, a beautiful young witch, is determined to find a man to love her. In her gothic Victorian apartment she makes spells and potions, and then picks up men and seduces them. However her spells work too well, and she ends up with a string of hapless victims. When she finally meets the man of her dreams, her desperation to be loved will drive her to the brink of insanity and murder.

(Art, F/V MFA '08)
A film that combines montages of hair salons in Ghana with various images of Western pop culture, invoking a clash of cultures and communities. The film mixes grainy black & white footage with colorful shots of billboards and murals advertising various hair styles. It incorporates audio snippets of beauty instruction and tips from the 1950s. The filmmaker uses the resulting comparisons to explore the legacy, changes, and ongoing effect that European Colonialism has dealt to African culture.

Eliza Hittman (F/V MFA '10)
Faced with an unintended pregnancy and a lack of local support, Autumn and her cousin Skylar embark across state lines to New York City on a fraught journey of friendship, bravery, and compassion.

Maria Judice (FDP MFA '07)
Feminist experimental film.

The Red Book - Janie Geiser (Current Faculty)
The Red Book is an elliptical, pictographic film that uses flat, painted figures and collage elements to explore the realms of memory, language, and identity from the point of view of a woman amnesiac. The Red Book suggests the ways in which language defines us, and reaches back into dismemberment myths about the creation of different tongues through the breaking apart of bodies (in this case, the woman's body). As the film progresses, the submerged images of her stored memory appear and collide with the present world in circular rhythms, suggesting a sense of irretrievable loss.

Jan Zimmerman (F/V MFA '72)
Interviews with women artists, educators and curators throughout California as well as displays of visual works describe the richness and diversity of art produced by women today.

(F/V BFA)
In creating this record of her pregnancy, the changes and special insight it brings, Millner borrows freely from anthropology, art history, soap operas, physical fitness scams, sex education manuals, and psychoanalysis.

Panel discussion by five visiting artists on the topic of women artists.

Rhyena Halpern (F/V MFA '87)
"Meeting with Demeter" shows images of modern women overlayed with mystical images. "Mothervision" explores the identity of motherhood through a series of images and videos. "Menses" is a collage of footage and animation from health education films of the 60's. "Nails, nails, nails" documents women's obsession with outrageous manicures in the 80's.