Moderation by Karola Gramann
The Women’s Event at the EIFF in 1972 was the first European women’s film festival. Topics of this conversation are how this festival came about and how films were selected, which discussions took place, and what resonance it found with the audience and the press. Kathi Kamleitner is currently researching feminist film festivals; Lynda Myles (EIFF festival director from 1973-1980) and film theorist Laura Mulvey organised the Women’s Event in 1972, together with film critic Claire Johnston. With a view toward Remake, the discussion will also focus on the meaning and relevance of a women’s film festival today.
GB 1972, D, P Esther Ronay, Mary Kelly, Mary Capps, Margaret Dickinson, Brigid Seagrave, Humphrey Trevelyan, Susan Shapiro, Cast Doreen Adams, Alice Boxall, Beatrice Davies, Mary Elizabeth Davey, Print b/w, 16mm, 20 min, English OV with electronic German SUB, Cinenova Distribution
Women of the Rhondda turns much needed attention to the role played by women in the gruelling Welsh Miners' Strikes of the 20s and 30s. […] A story of solidarity and women's courage which has stayed hidden in more conventional histories. What comes across is the strength of women within the struggles of the labour movement (Catalogue Cinenova).
Acronyms | |
---|---|
amer. | American English |
b/w | Black and white |
OV | Original version |
SUB | Subtitles |
+SUB | electronic live subtitling (below the image) |
INT | Intertitles |
Countries | |
---|---|
AT | Austria |
FRG | Federal Republic of Germany (historic) |
BLR | Belarus |
DE | Germany |
CAN | Canada |
GDR | German Democratic Republic (historic) |
EGY | Egypt |
FR | France |
GB | Great Britain |
URY | Uruguay |
BRA | Brasil |
SWE | Sweden |
UKR | Ukraine |
PL | Poland |
IDN | Indonesia |
PRT | Portugal |
HRV | Croatia |
ECU | Ecuador |
HUN | Hungary |
AUS | Australia |
IT | Italy |
MEX | Mexico |
IND | India |
GB 1984, D Lis Rhodes, Joanna Davis, P Four Corners Films, Print colour, 16mm, 2 min, English OV, Cinenova Distribution
One of only 5 remaining photos of the aftermath of the first atomic bomb dropped on a civilian population juxtaposed with a playground scene portrays the fact and meaning of Hiroshima which are being lost.
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)
Acronyms | |
---|---|
amer. | American English |
b/w | Black and white |
OV | Original version |
SUB | Subtitles |
+SUB | electronic live subtitling (below the image) |
INT | Intertitles |
Countries | |
---|---|
AT | Austria |
FRG | Federal Republic of Germany (historic) |
BLR | Belarus |
DE | Germany |
CAN | Canada |
GDR | German Democratic Republic (historic) |
EGY | Egypt |
FR | France |
GB | Great Britain |
URY | Uruguay |
BRA | Brasil |
SWE | Sweden |
UKR | Ukraine |
PL | Poland |
IDN | Indonesia |
PRT | Portugal |
HRV | Croatia |
ECU | Ecuador |
HUN | Hungary |
AUS | Australia |
IT | Italy |
MEX | Mexico |
IND | India |
Laura Mulvey was one of the founders of the Women’s Event of the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 1972. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and Professor of Film at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of the ‘landmark’ essay and feminist manifesto ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975). Furthermore, she is author of – inter alia – Visual and Other Pleasures (Macmillan 1989/2009) and Death Twenty- four Times a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (Reaktion Books 2006), that again touched a contemporary nerve with, that is, the shift from traditional to digital modes of spectatorship, as well as three co-edited collections of essays. She made six ‘essay films’ in collaboration with Peter Wollen including Riddles of the Sphinx (British Film Institute 1977; dvd 2013) and Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (Arts Council 1980). She has received four honorary doctorates and is an honorary member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
Kathi Kamleitner is a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow. Her research focusses on the history of women’s film festivals and feminist film culture. She has worked with a variety of film festivals including the Berlinale in Germany and Africa in Motion in Scotland, and programs film events at feminist institutions like the Glasgow Women’s Library. She is also involved with the Radical Film Network Scotland, a loose collective of alternative cultural organisations in Scotland. In 2018 Kathi co-founded Femspectives, a feminist film festival in Glasgow. She currently works on finishing her doctoral thesis as well as the first edition of Femspectives in March 2019.
Lynda Myles was one of the founders of the Women’s Event of the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 1972. She has been Director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival from 1973 to 1980 before she spent two years as Director and Curator of Film at the Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley. After her return she joined Columbia Pictures as a Senior Vice-President and spent two years as Commissioning Editor for Drama at the BBC. Since the 90s she continuously work as a producer independent films such as award- winning The Commitments (1991) directed by Alan Parker as well as The Snapper and The Van, both directed by Stephen Frears. Besides her continuous work as a producer Myles was co-executive director of the East-West Producers Seminar, a training program for young producers in Eastern Europe from 1990 to 1994. From 2004 to 2017, she was Head of Fiction Directing at Britain’s National Film and Television School. She continues to work as an independent producer and is currently in development with several projects.