Lizzie Borden’s New York Feminisms Trilogy

March 17–19, 2023

Filmmaker Lizzie Borden presents her New York Feminisms Trilogy: Regrouping, Born in Flames, and Working Girls.

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Born in Flames
Working Girls
Regrouping

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Past Films

Working Girls
Lizzie Borden
United States, 1986
BAMPFA Student Committee Pick
Friday, March 17 7 PM
Lizzie Borden in Person
Sidestepping clichéd approaches to sex work perpetuated by mainstream films—which fetishize, romanticize, and/or pathologize prostitution—Lizzie Borden matter-of-factly documents the details of a day in the life of a sex worker at a Manhattan brothel.
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Born in Flames
Lizzie Borden
United States, 1983
Restored 35mm Print
Saturday, March 18 7:30 PM
Lizzie Borden and Mel Y. Chen in Conversation
“This explosive work offers a speculative, feminist polemic set in a potential future that mirrors both the present in which it was made and ours. . . . [Lizzie] Borden’s fevered 1983 film is absolutely one we should be watching right now” (Yasmina Price, Vulture).
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Regrouping
Lizzie Borden
United States, 1976
New Restoration
Sunday, March 19 4 PM
Lizzie Borden in Person
“Combative, entropic, mesmerizing, Lizzie Borden’s first film, the shape-shifting documentary Regrouping, is a chronicle of a women’s collective” (Melissa Anderson, 4Columns).
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Lizzie Borden’s New York Feminisms Trilogy

March 17–19, 2023

Lizzie Borden’s participation at the conference Monique Wittig: Twenty Years Later / Monique Wittig: Vingt ans après, hosted by the Department of French at UC Berkeley, and Anthology Film Archives’s recent restoration of Borden’s long-unavailable 1976 experimental documentary Regrouping, provide the perfect opportunity to revisit what critic So Mayer has aptly dubbed Borden’s “New York Feminisms Trilogy.” Along with Regrouping, this exceptional body of work includes Borden’s iconic 1983 science fiction handbook for revolution, Born in Flames, and the fiction film Working Girls—a frank depiction of sex workers. The three films together amount to a rich compendium of cinematic approaches and feminist thought, as Borden pays close attention to disparate and often-conflicting agendas and ideologies that emerge from the divergent needs of communities and individuals across the spectrum of race, class, and gender. Amidst such differences, Borden highlights the necessity for an imaginative, evolving, and intersectional approach to political struggles.

Inspired by the writing of Monique Wittig, Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, and films by Jean-Luc Godard, among others, Borden communicates still-urgent political concerns via a variety of inventive aesthetic approaches. While each film in the trilogy has a unique form and structure, all combine the relevance of documentary filmmaking with an innovative and layered approach to fiction. Working Girls, as J. Hoberman remarked, “is notable for its measured structure, analytical camera placement and straightforward cool,” while Regrouping and Born in Flames employ an exuberant collage aesthetic rendered coherent by Borden’s excellent editing.

—Kate MacKay, Associate Film Curator

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Borden’s visit is supported by the Department of French, UC Berkeley, and the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Endowment. Thanks to John Klacsmann, Anthology Film Archives; and Brian Belovarac, Ben Crossley-Marra, Janus Films.