GB 1913, P Gaumont Graphic, Print b/w, 35mm, 5 min, silent, BFI National Archive

This newsreel footage captures a milestone event in the campaign for women's suffrage: the trampling to death of activist Emily Davison under the hooves of the King's horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby. […] A hundred years on, her motives are still debated and the film can tell us nothing about her state of mind; although she must have been aware of the scale of press coverage that would be present on the day […] (Holly Hyams, Make More Noise! Suffragettes in Silent Film).

GB 1913, P Pathé Frères Cinema, Print b/w, 35mm, 2 min, silent, BFI National Archive

Emily Davison stepped out in front of the King's horse at the Derby of 1913 and died of her injuries four days later. Her funeral in London at St George's, Bloomsbury, attracts a huge crowd of mourners including suffragettes and suffragists in full regalia. (Bryony Dixon, Make More Noise! Suffragettes in Silent Film)

GB 1984, D Lis Rhodes, Joanna Davis, SC Lis Rhodes, M Lindsay Cooper, P Four Corners Films, Cast Lily Greenham, Print b/w, 16mm, 3 min, Cinenova Distribution

Lis Rhodes' poem dwells on the moments before a political thought is translated into a distinctive physical organisation such as the women who surrounded the Greenham missile base.
One of thirteen 1 minute films which grew out of a series of short poems written by Lis Rhodes, reflecting on the traditional patterns of oppression in women's lives (pornography, violence, nuclear weapons) and the many forms that resistance takes. Made with the artist Jo Davis and commissioned by Channel 4 for television broadcast. (Catalogue Luxonline)

D 1970, R, B, S, D Christiane Gehner, K Christian Bau, T Klaus Wyborny, Kopie Farbe, DCP von 16mm, 10 min, dt. OV mit engl. UT, KurzFilmVerleih Hamburg

Die spätere Fotochefin des Spiegels spielt in ihrem Kurzfilm Programmhinweise eine adrette Fernsehansagerin, die beim Moderieren plötzlich über Orgasmusschwierigkeiten und ihr persönliches Unglück als Frau in einer männerdominierten Gesellschaft spricht: „Ich weiß nicht, ob ich mich nicht doch lieber den Ansprüchen der Männer fügen soll, denn schlimmer als die Unterdrückung ist die Isolation.“ (Christoph Twickel, Die Zeit, Nr.41/2017)

USA 1973 | Director: Jan Oxenberg | Colour | DCP | 12 min | english OV | IndieCollect

The first film by Jan Oxenberg (THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT) is considered one of the earliest lesbian-feminist films. While talking about the home movies her parents made, Oxenberg ironically recalls her childhood, which was designed entirely around her upbringing as a girl; she juxtaposes these visual memories with contemporary footage of political demonstrations and a women's football game. (Program announcement MoMA, New York, 2020)

The most sustained use of interplay between image and voice is Jan Oxenburg’s HOME MOVIE, in which the film-maker’s voice interrogates her parents’ old home movie footage of her. [...] For the most part, HOME MOVIE seems to be contrasting a contemporary, authentic lesbian self against the inauthentic image of the past. The home movies are introduced by white leader visible on screen and accompanied by the sound of a camera running, underlining that such footage, often considered raw and innocent, is nonetheless ideologically constructed. (Richard Dyer, 1990)

US 1944, D, SC Maya Deren, C Hella Heyman, Alexander Hammid, Cast Maya Deren, John Cage, Alexander Hammid, Hella Heyman, Parker Tyler, Print b/w, 16mm, 15 min, silent, Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V.

One aspect in which the film is completely successful, it seems to me, is that the techniques, though complicated, are executed with such quiet subtlety that one is unaware of the strangeness of the film while one looks at it. It is only afterwards, as after a dream, that one realizes how strange were the events and is surprised by the seeming normalcy of them while they are occurring. (Maya Deren)

US 1969, D, E Madeline Anderson, P Madeline Anderson, American Foundation of Non-Violence, Cast Coretta Scott King, Ralph Abernathy, Leon Davis, Andrew Young, Print colour, 16mm, 28 min, English OV with electronic German SUB, Icarus Film

In 1969, Madeline Anderson was commissioned by the Hospital Workers Union Local 1199 to record a strike at the Medical College Hospital of the University of South Carolina in Charleston. The striking employees, who aimed to receive union recognition and a fair wage, numbered over 400, all but 12 of them women and all of them black. The resulting documentary film, I Am Somebody (1969), has the distinction of being the first half-hour documentary film directed by an African-American, unionized, female director. (Stacey Doyle, Black Film Center/Archive: Madeline Anderson & I Am Somebody, 2013)

CUB 1965, D, SC Santiago Álvarez, C Pepín Rodríguez, Alberto Hernández, E Norma Torrado, Idalberto Gálvez, M Lena Horne, S Adalberto Jiménez, P ICAIC, Print b/w, 35mm, 6 min, Spanish OV, Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V.

With Now! cinema seemed to have found a brand new idiom overnight. The music, the only sound in Alvárez’s film, was by Lena Horne, illustrated by images of the fight against racial discrimination in the US, photos of Lyndon B. Johnson, newsreel features on police violence, comic strip pictures and footage of Black Panther demonstrations. (Alexander Kluge, Catalogue DOK Leipzig, 2012)