Event Details
Date & Time:
Fri November 15, 2024
7 PM
Location:
The Block Museum of Art
40 Arts Circle Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Audience:
Open to the public
Details:
Not By Magic: Animated Films by Women from Serious Business Company
(Multiple artists, 1970–1981, film and digital, approx 70 min)
“Though film is a medium of illusion, it is not by magic that the films you see appear before an audience. The process by which they are seen is called distribution.” – Freude, "Notes on Distribution," Camera Obscura Summer 1979
Founded by Bay Area filmmaker Freude in 1972, Serious Business Company was a woman-run independent film distributor specializing in art films, documentaries, feminist and educational shorts, and, perhaps most unusually for the time, experimental animation. In an era when the landscape for independent animated film in America was disparate, Serious Business astutely pioneered a national network of artists, exhibitors, universities, and libraries invested in deeply personal and unconventional work. Serious Business Company founder Freude was also a feminist committed to advancing women’s creative freedom in the 1970s, a spirit that marks all of the films in this showcase animated films by women from their robust catalog. From captivating abstract studies of movement and line to unabashedly lurid erotic fantasies, the films in this program—many presented in newly-preserved and archival prints – speak to the audacity, autonomy, and sense of possibility shared between the movement for women’s liberation and animated film.
Curated with assistance from Alexander Stewart and Lilli Carré of the Eyeworks Animation Series.
Films screened include:
BIRD (Sharon Hennessey, 1971, 16mm, 1 min, color, sound, print courtesy of the Pratt Institute Library)
BIRD LADY VS. THE GALLOPING GONADS (Josie [Ramstad] Winship, 1976, 1 min, B&W, 16mm, new preservation courtesy of the Pacific Film Archive and the NFPF)
I CHANGE, I AM THE SAME (Alice Anne Parker [Severson], 1969,1 min, B&W, Sound, 16mm, new preservation courtesy of the Pacific Film Archive and the NFPF)
TUB FILM (Mary Beams, 1972, 2 min, B&W, 16mm, print courtesy of the Pacific Film Archive)
MOON BREATH BEAT (Lisze Bechtold, 1980, 5 mins, color, 35mm, preserved by the Academy Film Archive)
DESIRE PIE (Lisa Crafts, 1976, 5 min, color, 16mm, preservation by Women's Film Preservation Fund, print courtesy of Lisa Crafts)
OPENING/CLOSING (Kathleen Laughlin, 1972, 5 min, B&W, 16mm, new preservation courtesy of the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection at the Walker Art Center and the NFPF)
FURIES (Sara Petty, 1977, 3 min, color, 35mm print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive)
THE LIVES OF FIRECRACKERS (Sandy Moore, 1979, 12 min, color, 16mm-to-digital, new preservation courtesy of Anthology Film Archives)
QUASI AT THE QUACKADERO (Sally Cruikshank, 1976, 10 min, color, 35mm, print courtesy of the Sally Cruikshank and Jon Davison Collection at the Academy Film Archive)
THE DOODLERS (Kathy Rose, 1975, 5 min, color, 16mm, preserved by the Academy Film Archive)
CROCUS (Suzan Pitt, 1971, 7 min, color, 16mm, preserved by the Academy Film Archive)
INTERVIEW (Caroline Leaf and Veronika Soul, 1979, 13 min, color, 35mm, print courtesy of the Harvard Film Archive)
Image credit: CROCUS (Suzan Pitt, 1971) 16mm film print preserved by the Academy Film Archive
Presented with support from the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, and the Sexualities Project at Northwestern.
About FILMS BY WOMEN/CHICAGO '74:
In September 1974, at the height of the feminist movement, the Film Center hosted Films By Women/Chicago ’74, a series of screenings, workshops, and discussions, drawing 10,000 patrons to over 70 short and feature films by women filmmakers. Organized by an all-woman collective with support from the Chicago Tribune, the festival offered a global survey of cinema from across its 60-year history. From mainstream Hollywood to activist documentary, arthouse to animation, it was the most diverse and expansive American survey of women’s cinema to date. It was also a watershed moment in Chicago cinema culture: according to committee member B. Ruby Rich, “women, for years after, would come up to me in the street to credit [us]—for jumpstarting their careers, ending their marriages, shaping their friendship.”
This fall, the Gene Siskel Film Center and Northwestern University’s Block Cinema will celebrate the fifty-year anniversary of Films by Women/Chicago ’74. Screening series at both venues. will revisit some of the festival’s most original and daring films and filmmakers, while reflecting on the event’s enduring legacies.
Series:
Contact The Block Museum of Art for more information: (847) 491-4000 or email us at block-museum@northwestern.edu