Born in Flames

As featuered on the Jenny Woolworth Women in Punk blog: http://www.jennywoolworth.ch/deardiary/2009/01/born-in-flames/

"Born in Flames opens ten years after a social democratic revolution when America is starting to swing to the right again. Women, lesbians and minorities who were instrumental in the transformation of society are losing their jobs: a familiar last-hired /first-fired scenario which feeds their doubts about the practical impact of this "revolution." On the day a pacifying wages for housework policy is announced, a coalition of women led by Flo Kennedy takes over a national news cast to dramatize the suspicious prison death of Adelaide Norris, leader of the Women's Army.
In this her first narrative feature film, editor and ex-art critic/painter Lizzie Borden creates a kaleidoscope portrait of women splintered into dozens of different political factions. With its ragged on-the-run look, the film itself has a street style as tough as the members of the Women's Army. Scenes shift abruptly, cutting from trashy urbanscapes to the flicking video of incessant TV newscasts on the "deteriorating situation."A dose of sci-fi? Yes, but we instantly recognize the status-quo voice of the media, as well as a rich landscape of voices of our own. On Phoenix Radio, Honey talks, offering politics based on her intuitions and background. On Radio Regazza, Adele Bertei raps for the people who will chase any excitement.
And the pages of the Socialist Youth Review speak in measured bourgeois intellectual phrases, defending the regime and avoiding the deficiencies of social-democratic policies on women and other "out" groups. As music by The Bloods, Ibis and Red Crayola pounds, events overtake these groups: the Women's Army - the only faction without a media voice-lays plans for an open revolt..."

(Jan Oxenberg & Lucy Winer from The Independent, November 1983)

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Lizzie Borden
• The Bloods
• Essential Logic
• Ibis
• Red Crayola

[krazykieka]

@GreatGrumbledook what's funny about that is that French women were the last of the developed nations to win the right to vote in the current era.... so much for all the progressive actions of the late 18th C. when de Gouge was murdered...

[TheBlondeRavenUtube]

@Fangmeier They're on youtube. Just search her name + acting

[dryerbuzz]

just found the film on netflix

[Fangmeier]

I want to see the scenes with a young Kathryn Bigelow...maybe this film can be rented somewhere...

[GreatGrumbledook]

Utter crap! Sometimes I could choke some people to death! Dragging me into the English movie university club to see some fancy American movie about the fight for Women right! Dear goodness! Since when needs France, who produced Eleanor of Aquitaine, Jeanne d Arc, Catherine de Medici, Christine de Pizan or Olympe de Gouges, lectures about political rights of women from the USA (Ulcered Sphincter of Ass-erica, as an Englishman recently called it) ?

[brightpinkstatic]

this movie was great!

[jessaka63]

Thanks for posting. A fantastic powerful film - I went to see it three times in about as many weeks way back then.

[vieveatron]

thank you so much for the little clip of born in flames and the lengthy description. this great film deserves all the attention it can get.