52 Films By Women: Born in Flames (1983)

Kanopy

By Andrea Thompson

Since everyone seems to be in a revolutionary kind of mood, it seemed like a good time to check out “Born in Flames,” which is another of those films that remained unseen despite the enthusiastic reaction from so many in the feminist community. So I finally decided it was time to correct my lack of knowledge, and...wow.

“Born in Flames” is a deeply radical film, and it will remain so for probably the entirety of history. Many films are being rediscovered and lauded for being ahead of their time, but “Born in Flames” doesn’t just acknowledge, or more accurately, tackle head on what we’re only beginning to approach today, but it takes on genuinely radical actions to deal with them. In fact, some would be justified in calling said actions terrorism, and the discomfort around them remains in today’s environment, although some of that is due to to circumstances out of writer-director Lizzie Borden’s (gotta love the name) control. After 2001, there was going to be more discomfort than usual seeing a bomb go off on top of the World Trade Center building, even if it was designed to take out media messaging, not people.

The result isn’t so much indie filmmaking as guerrilla filmmaking, and the only reason this movie was probably allowed to exist in the first place is that it takes place ten years after the United States underwent a peaceful revolution that’s become known as the War of Liberation, and became a socialist democracy. The problem is that the environment seems all too familiar: a society that vaunts the progress it’s made even as it remains in the throes of high unemployment, and institutional as well as everyday sexism, racism, and classism.

The resulting vision of New York City is hard to pin down to a genre, let alone define. Filmed over a period of five years, and depending on which article you read, on a budget of about $40,000 or $70,000, “Born in Flames” seems part documentary since actual protests as well as staged ones were used, as well as futurist, sci-fi, vérité, queer, and of course, deeply feminist.

Nearly all the main characters are women, many are Black, most are lesbians, and its vision of just how one should fight back against a system which aims to dehumanize and demean are deeply complex. Some women have chosen to fight back via two different pirate radio stations as they broadcast various messages of anger against government actions, while one, Adelaide Norris (Jean Satterfield) has chosen more direct action by becoming a leader in the Women’s Army, which confronts everyday instances of sexism such as street harassment by leading groups of women on bicycles to fight back against the men who brutalize women on the street.

Adelaide is also the one pushing for more direct, violent action against a state that is cutting programs for women, holding them responsible for the hostility and outright assaults they experience, and trying to drive them back into the home by prioritizing male needs and creating new programs such as paying women for housework. But the women, which include Kathryn Bigelow as one of a trio of white feminist editors of a socialist newspaper, remain divided in their oppression. What finally does unite them is Adelaide’s arrest and death under suspicious circumstances while in police custody.

Moma.org

What follows is a kind of feminist wish fulfillment, where women who traditionally divided by race, class, and sexuality band together against their oppressors. Sisterhood becomes powerful, as does their anger, which practically leaps from every frame as “Born in Flames” as it gives a rousing call to action for all women to unite. It’s no accident that the film was rediscovered in 2016, just as Trump was elected and women took the streets and to voice their rage once again. It’s a number that’s loomed large in the history of this film, given the station for one of the pirate radio stations is actually 2016.

In the midst of an election that threatens to keep Trump in power, “Born in Flames” might become disturbingly relevant in a way no one could have foreseen. In just a few months, how largely this film will loom in our culture might be revealed even further. 

52 Films By Women: Paris Is Burning (1990)

IMDB

By Andrea Thompson

It's often remarked that great art comes from pain. Nowadays there's sort of an addendum, in that said pain is often co-opted by the those in power. This was already well underway by the time Jennie Livingston's documentary “Paris Is Burning” was released in 1990, which follows New York's drag scene in the 1980s, and the many peole who made it what it was.

Past tense is key here. By this time, voguing had become mainstream, with a prime example being Madonna's Vogue video that year. There's always going to be some sense of melancholy to any snapshot of the New York that existed in the 80s and 90s, fictional or otherwise. At least we have “Paris Is Burning” as a chronicle of this vibrant community, which mostly consists of LGBT people of color, and who have only barely been represented in mainstream cinema. Or for that matter, even acknowledged for their cultural contributions.

The first words spoken are from one of the film's subjects, who says, “I remember my dad used to say, 'You have three strikes against you in this world. Every black man has two, just that they're black, and they're a male. But you're black, and you're a male, and you're gay. You're gonna have a hard fucking time.' And he said, 'If you're gonna do this, you're gonna have to be stronger than you ever imagined.'”

The rest of the film is how various people in this cope with the truth behind these words in this particular time and place, which is a conversation that is also only beginning to be acknowledged (and more often than not, denied) by the mainstream. And the balls, which many have dismissed as spectacle, are an important part of life for many. Taking place in shabby rooms, they mostly consist of people of color cheering on those who walk, showing off the fabulousness of their outfits...or in some cases, their lack of them.

While many of the people on camera don't delve into too much detail about their backgrounds, stories of their vulnerability are rampant. Many of them ran away to New York City in search of a home, while others were thrown out by homophobic and transphobic families. The balls are where they can be with those who share their identity, passions, and interests. They can feel okay about being who they are, and they can also aspire to be who they want to be.

Those who have such hobbies are generally natural performers with the personalities to match. But time and again,, they are shown just how little place their ambitions have in America, especially in the 80s, where practically every form of media depicted white people as emblems of the ideal life, whether it was middle class or the more opulent one that was aspired to more and more as Wall Street became a force unto itself.

It's hardly surprising that such an ambitious exploration of race, class, gender, and sexuality provoked controversy, which continues to this day. Director Jennie Livingston was able to capture so much of this world partly because she is a queer woman herself, but her detractors probably have a point when they state that her whiteness held her back. That said, while many of the people in the film have met ends both triumphant and tragic, Livingston has only made shorts since, and has only recently began developing another film. “Paris Is Burning” may have gone to win many awards, and even perhaps help change how documentaries are nominated for Academy Awards, but Livingston herself never became a prolific filmmaker. (If you really want the ultimate rundown of the film and everyone in it, check out out.com's ultimate viewing guide.)

Yet for all its flaws, the conversations “Paris Is Burning” raises continue to be relevant. “All minorities know it's a white America,” Pepper LaBeija person mused. “Any other nationality not of a white set knows this and accepts this till the day they day die. That is everybody's dream and ambition as a minority - to live and look as well as a white person.” One of the images used during this statement is a cover of Forbes magazine. One of the smiling men on that cover is Donald Trump.