Workshop and Screening Programme with Lucy Reynolds: F is for Film, F is for Feminism

Cut the line and chronology falls in a crumpled heap. I prefer a crumpled heap, history at my feet, not stretched above my head.

– Lis Rhodes, ​‘Whose History?’, 1978

The artist, curator and writer Lucy Reynolds shares her research into feminist filmmaking in an evening screening and daytime workshop – plucking books from Glasgow Women’s Library film section, and films from the LUX and Cinenova collections, to illuminate the diverse ways in which film has been shaped by feminist debate, and the concerns of women’s lived experience.

F is for Film, F is for Feminism begins by dipping into the rich archive of film and video works exploring a woman’s perspective. Through experimental techniques of collage, sound, animation and staging, this selection of works celebrates the diversity of approaches taken by women film and video artists to the subject of female experience: from humour and sexuality to creativity and political confrontation.

Friday evening: Screening Programme

Jenny Okun, Rounds, 1977. 16mm transferred to video, 4 min

Barbara Hammer, Dyketactics, 1974. 16mm transferred to video, 4 min

Su Friedrich, Gently Down the Stream, 1981. 16mm transferred to video, silent, 4 min

Ayoka Chenzira, Hair piece: A Film for Nappy-Headed People, 1984. 16mm transferred to video, 10 min

Susan Stein, Tracks, 1989. 16mm transferred to video, 24 min

Rosalind Nashashibi, The Painter, 2013. 16mm transferred to video, 4 min

Vivienne Dick, Red Moon Rising, 2015. HD video, 15 min

Saturday afternoon: Workshop

Lucy Reynolds leads this workshop that traces a history of film and video making by women artists, exploring some of its pioneers and current practitioners. Participants will discuss the connection between more personal and individual works and those more readily engaged in feminist activism, the obstacles faced by women wanting to make films and videos, and the opportunities they created for making and showing their work. Have conditions improved since Maya Deren made her films in the 1940s, and Lis Rhodes demanded history as a crumpled heap in the 1970s?

The following works will be screened as part of the workshop:

Ursula Mayer, Lunch in Furs, 2008. 16mm transferred to video, 8 mins

Tina Keane, Clapping Songs, 1981. 6 mins

Lyn Hershman Leeson, Electronic Diaries – Part 1: Confessions of a Chameleon, 1985. SD video, 9 mins

Pratibha Parma, Sari Red, 1988, 12mins

Please come to the workshop ready to discuss your own interest in feminism and film-making. Text hand outs will be provided as part of the day.

Participants are invited to attend both the Friday night screening and then come along to the Saturday afternoon workshop (or just attend one part of the weekend event if you can’t make it to both parts).

Organised in partnership with Glasgow Women’s Library

Lucy Reynolds has lectured and published extensively, most particularly focused on questions of the moving image, feminism, political space and collective practice. Her articles have appeared in a range of journals such as Afterall, Screen, Screendance, Art Agenda and Millennium Film Journal, and she has curated exhibitions and film programmes for a range of institutions nationally and internationally.

As an artist, her films and installations have been presented in galleries and cinemas internationally, and her ongoing sound work A Feminist Chorus has been heard at the Glasgow International Festival, Wysing Arts Centre, The Showroom and The Grand Action Cinema, Paris. She is currently editing an anthology on Women Artists, Feminism and the Moving Image, for publication in 2018.

She is Senior Lecturer and deputy director of the Centre for Research in Art and Media (CREAM) in the School of Arts at the University of Westminster, and co-editor of the Moving Image Review and Art Journal.