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.
Whether playful or revolutionary, cerebral or erotic, fantastical or gritty, the range of filmmaking displayed in the Gene Siskel Film Center’s week-long series (September 23-27, 2024) reflects kaleidoscopic possibilities coming into view during the thrilling decade that led up to the 1974 festival. Featuring Chicago debuts of several recent restorations, this program also foregrounds the vital ongoing work of preserving and uplifting women’s film history, suggesting that the work begun by the intrepid organizers of Films By Women/Chicago ‘74 remains still unfinished today.
At Block Cinema, a complimentary series running September through November explores multiple facets of the 1974 festival, celebrating the efforts of feminist film scholars, archivists, distributors, and curators, furthering an inclusive vision of film history. Concentrating on short films, documentaries, animation, and recently restored landmarks, The Block’s programs provide a vision of women’s cinema as varied and far-reaching as the one advanced by the original festival itself.
Highlights of The Block Cinema program at Northwestern University include a conversation with Films by Women/Chicago ’74 co-organizers B. Ruby Rich and Patricia Erens; a double feature of Hollywood pioneer Dorothy Arzner (who enjoyed her first retrospective during Films by Women/Chicago ’74); a rare 16mm screening of ATTICA!, Cinda Firestone’s incendiary documentary about the notorious prison uprising; a program of activist photographer Bev Grant’s film works from the 1970s; two showcases of short films from important woman-run film distributors; and a visit from London-based scholar and curator Erika Balsom, co-curator of the revelatory 2022 exhibition No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
