A New Feature Film Directed by Produced by Crescent Diamond

OVERVIEW ry in the first person because, in 1975, when we started meeting, I was one of 21 women who THE HERETICS is a feature-length experimental founded it. We did worldwide outreach through documentary film about the Women’s Art Move- the developing channels of the Women’s Move- ment of the 70’s in the USA, specifically, at the ment, commissioning new art and writing by center of the art world at that time, women from Chile to Australia. City. We began production in August of 2006 and expect to finish shooting by the end of June One of the three youngest women in the earliest 2007. The finish date is projected for June incarnation of the , I remem- 2008. ber the tremendous admiration I had for these accomplished women who gathered every week The Women’s Movement is one of the largest in each others’ lofts and apartments. While the political movement in US history. Why then, founding collective oversaw the journal’s mis- are there still so few strong independent films sion and sustained it financially, a series of rela- about the many specific ways it worked? Why tively autonomous collectives of women created are there so few movies of what the world felt every aspect of each individual themed issue. As like to feminists when the Movement was going a result, hundreds of women were part of the strong? In order to represent both that history HERESIES project. We all learned how to do lay- and that charged emotional experience, we out, paste-ups and mechanicals, assembling the are making a film that will focus on one group magazines on the floors and walls of members’ in one segment of the larger living spaces. We were writers, artists, editors, movement. That group graphic designers, fundraisers and distributors is The Heresies Collec- with each group produc- tive which published ing a unique issue HERESIES: A of HERESIES from Feminist Pub- soup to nuts. lication on Art and Politics from 1977- 1992. I can tell that sto- A New Feature Film Directed by Joan Braderman Produced by Crescent Diamond

The original “collective mission statement,” pub- A.I.R., Soho Twenty, Artists’ Space and Franklin lished at the start of every issue from #1 in Janu- Furnace. Funding and distribution groups such as ary 1977 through #26 in 1992, read, “ We will not Women Make Movies and the Video Data Bank made advertise a new set of genius-products just because film and video by women available worldwide and they are made by women...We hope that HERESIES countless women’s film and video festivals bring will stimulate dialogue...and generate new creative this work to communities internationally. energies among women. It will be a place where diversity can be articulated. We are committed And now, as we work on the film, The to the broadening of the definition and function of Project is sponsoring a two-year series of events art.” Our new film, THE HERETICS, carries those and the is opening a new femi- goals into the future. nist art wing. By the same token, when my Mother was working at the Women’s Museum in Washington HERESIES set out to change the chronic invisibility several years ago, she was waiting at the bus stop of in the established art world and one day when a man started ranting at her. “Why to get many more women involved in creating the do you need a separate museum when the Mellon scene and resources for an artistic universe of our and the Hirshhorn down the street are filled with own. We were exploring ways to focus attention work by women?” “Name one,” my Mother offered and interest in the brilliant and original work that coyly. “Joan Miro,” he said, with certainty. So -- women artists had been doing forever - but in the there is still a distance to travel. midst of the Second Wave of the Women’s Move- ment, were starting to produce in far greater quan- Sally Webster, one Heresies member said recently, tity and variety. In forms as various as art-making “It is as if that period has been erased from memo- itself, much of their work spoke to the experience ry, perhaps by backlash against us. Remember Soho of being female in a male-dominated world. The at that time, with meetings everywhere that there Women’s Art Movement, after all, opened the are now fancy stores? I guess we were all delu- doors of museums, sional but it was not a fantasy.” Another member galleries, cinemas of the Heresies Collective, Elizabeth Weatherford, and all manner of said to our camera, “I didn’t join Heresies or the other venues to Women’s Movement because of some abstract idea most of the contem- about ‘gender.’ I came of age in the Civil Rights porary women artists Movement and fighting a war we bitterly opposed. whose names you I was a woman and I was interested in the self, in have heard. how to live and to be.” We had regular edito- rial meetings that came to feel like There are some lasting a community. We had post-is- legacies of this time, such sue public meetings at the as the National Museum women-run A.I.R. gallery, of Women in the Arts and the Women’s Coffee Shop, the selection of individ- the Labyrus Bookstore and ual American women to other places which have represent the U.S.A. in now vanished, making such prestigious inter- our world of that period national exhibitions seem dream-like. as the Venice Bien- nale. ‘Alternative’ But as suddenly as spaces established in it began, HERESIES this period became and its period lasting institutions: ended. The era galleries such as had changed,

Background Image: “The Death of the Patriarchy/Heresies”, , 1976. A New Feature Film Directed by Joan Braderman Produced by Crescent Diamond and the distinctly different art world that HERESIES them down all over the world from Venice, Italy and had helped to conjure into being no longer had the Carboneras, to New Mexico and primarily, New same urgent need for it. Individual members were York. ready for other missions. The last issue was pub-  Emma Amos - Painter, Weaver, Professor lished 14 years ago.  Lucy Lippard – Writer, Organizer  Elizabeth Hess – Writer, Editor THE HERETICS - THE WOMEN TODAY  – Visual Artist  - Painter Thirty years after it all began, we will revisit the  Michelle Stuart – Visual Artist women. We will interview them in their studios and  - Painter a wide range of other sites as they work, write,  – Visual Artist create and install new works. Some of them have  - Painter not seen one another in 25 years; almost all of  Sabra Moore – Visual Artist them have rich and productive lives as artists, writ-  Mary Beth Edelson – Visual Artist, ers, professors, curators, etc. HERESIES existed in Community Organizer a pre-Internet universe, so we needed to find my  – Visual Artist old companeras in this time of the worldwide web.  Elizabeth Weatherford – Curator, Anthropologist, The first passionate e-mail, a call for a re-think- Museum of the American Indians ing of our work together and claiming it for the  – Visual Artist film historical record got astonishingly enthusiastic  Mary Miss – Sculptor, Environmental and responses. “Count me in. Reads like a great and Public Artist once again necessary project,” wrote painter Pat  Arlene Ladden - Literary Historian Steir. Mary Miss, sculptor and environmental art-  Marty Pottenger – Performance Artist ist, wrote, “Joan, when I read your letter, I could  Su Friedrich - Filmmaker just hear your voice at our meetings so many years  Janet Froelich, Creative Director, New York ago.” “Bravo, let’s go,” wrote painter Michelle Times Magazines Stuart. “What a letter. Have already printed and  Susana Torre - Architect filed it for posterity,” wrote, Joyce Kozloff, painter,  Patsy Beckert – Editor, Teacher installation artist and activist, “I am doing a huge, Carrie Rickey – Film Critic, scary, dramatic installation in a ware- Philadelphia Inquirer house on a canal in Venice in Nina Yankowitz– Visual Artist September. Why don’t Sally Webster, Art His- you come and shoot torian it?” We were off Joan Braderman and running. – Film and Vid- And now we eomaker are track- ing A New Feature Film Directed by Joan Braderman Produced by Crescent Diamond

STYLE AND FORMAT- “RADICAL COLLAGE” You will hear a woman interviewed on camera talk In THE HERETICS, we will follow larger themes about a man telling her she is too pretty to be through several main strands. The best way to ac- taken seriously as an artist and we will create a complish our goal of creating a collective voice is to visual metaphor for this idea. The cuts will not go multiply our cinematic tropes, to use several differ- directly from the interviews to the other material ent “modes of address,” to work in fiction and non- as if the succeeding shots are illustrating points in fiction, to use a wide variety of kinds of footage. the verbal discussions. The edit connections will This multiplication of formal strategies will mirror often be formal ones – where the eye is led from the way that the movement attempted to multiply shot to shot by a metaphor like a color, a kind of the voices that are represented in public forms. camera movement, a street or other place that is We will intercut the interviews with other kinds of mentioned or a gesture or movement in the frame. footage including: the artworks we are shooting, researched archival film footage, video and stills of The sequences we are creating will offer the audi- the period, texts and images from the magazine, ence the emblematic spaces in which we lived, posters, and other artifacts, as well as art in the worked and played at that time. When I contacted process of being created, weaving a tapestry of her to set up an interview, Carrie Rickey said, “So, “found materials.” We will use a variety of special how did HERESIES change YOUR life?” “Why do you effects and experimental techniques for using texts assume it did?” I asked. “Oh, it changed every- and animation to bring the magazines themselves to one’s life. That’s what I thought would be the first the screen. question in your interview – or maybe the last.”

Top Image: Michelle Stuart in her studio Bottom Images: Joyce Kozloff with her installation Targets, And the Band Played On, by May Stevens, 2006 A New Feature Film Directed by Joan Braderman Produced by Crescent Diamond

In the staged sequences, to be shot on locations in woman might have to say. The artworks you will New York, young women will play feminists of the see in this film begin the process of recreating art period. There will be no dialogue, just an evocation making, moving away from the modernist paradigm, of the feeling of the places we inhabited, recre- demanding that you can say anything or everything ated for our camera in carefully lit, lustrous black in your art, and say it in a style appropriate to its and white super-8 film. The overall piece – all the subject. contemporary material - will be shot in 24p digital video, a format that captures light more the way When talking about with younger women, film does, producing an unusually pictorially rich, Second Wave Feminists often have the feeling that cinematic look. they are speaking across a chasm of misconception. Two common perceptions seem to dominate the po- WHY NOW? litical and social understanding of younger genera- tions: On the one hand, it seems to appear to them HERESIES acted as a lightning rod for the raging that people who still call themselves feminists are debates in the New York art world about the role beating dead issues because “equality” was already of art in politics and vice versa. Our readers were achieved sometime in the 1970’s. On the other the people who, both politically and emotionally, hand, even though there is still blatant gender in- were exploring these same questions. The fact that equality of many kinds, they believe that feminism Heresies was a group made up of people focused has nothing to do with fixing it. on forms of expression makes it an ideal subject for this film. Part of the story, then, will be told To some, feminism seems as if it is an archaic, per- by the art itself. The Heretics have worked in an haps exotic but inaccessible moment, now passed. enormous variety of forms and styles, insisting on a Others fear that feminism is not about possibility certain independence -- a commitment to creating but denial of the pleasures of being feminine. In their own terms. that fictive world of caricatured feminism, lipstick is always taboo; all men are “bad;” sex is bland. Recently, art critic, Holland The Heresies Film Project will show such myths to Cotter, writing about the sold-out Feminist Future be false. With the mass media at work on all of us events at the wrote: No from infancy, young women have been lulled into a movement in the twentieth century has had more sense that the issues faced by the Women’s Move- impact on art-making than the Women’s Move- ment cannot touch them – until, in fact, they do. ment.” Strong stuff. This is the claim of art histo- rian, Connie Butler and earlier, critic Craig Owens. Young women imagine that “choice” means not just Yet, as filmmaker, Su Friedrich points out in our in- choice on the market but freedom to choose how to terview with her, “men’s stories are still considered live - that combining full-time work and having chil- universal, though of course, they are not. Women’s dren is effortless; that women have gained equality stories are just a little add-on to the real picture, in the public sphere and that only merit determines as you can tell by the presence of the special one’s progress. Once they discover that “Women’s Channel” on TV,” which certainly takes there care of everything a A New Feature Film Directed by Joan Braderman Produced by Crescent Diamond are some assumptions here that do not pan out, their/our version of history is to survive. And we they may not know how to think about what has are doing it, as Lucy Lippard wrote in her famous happened to them; they may have little experience early book on feminist art, “from the inside out,” in organizing people to act. They may find it hard telling our own story in our own way, not settling even to imagine anything different from what they for the mainstream media’s twisted version. have already experienced and have no practice in the art of utopian dreaming. They may not under- AUDIENCE stand that that each one of us, acting together, could be part of the answer for all. For some of its audience I imagine this film, then, will offer a kind of retrospective mirror. These are Today, with the deep and sustained backlash against the Second Wave Feminists who participated in or the women’s and other movements for liberation, followed the progress of projects such as HERESIES. stories like that of HERESIES are being revised out It will remind us that despite the harsh political of existence. Despite the best efforts of the Gue- landscape of the moment, we made an enormous rilla Girls, CODEPINK, SISTERS, NOW and count- difference and that our story is being told. It will less other organizations and individual women all show some of the extraordinarily moving, articu- over the world, statistics like the following can be late, lush, funny and complex works of art, made found in nearly every field of endeavor: “60% of art by HERESIES women over these years and in prog- students are women, only 15% show up in galleries ress now. The works themselves, often describe in and about 4% of the work shown these days, in any many and varied forms - some subtle, some direct; given show at the Museum of Modern Art is made some figurative, some abstract – what it’s been like by women” (Schor, Mira, M/E/A/N/I/N/G Online). living female in our times. Such statistics are shocking to those on both sides of the generational divide. In keeping with the utopian aspirations of the broader movement, we hoped to change “the Finally, some of the amazing women who launched very nature of art.” Leadership styles were being HERESIES are now in their 70’s and 80’s. They are questioned. Many groups worked by consensus, so pioneers; they are our living history (‘herstory’). telling this story is not just about portraying a few We must get them on tape with some urgency if great and grand, larger-than-life leaders. Instead,

www.heresiesfilmproject.org A New Feature Film Directed by Joan Braderman Produced by Crescent Diamond small groups across the world, at least, in this period, in the West, were defining their own relationships to the larger movement. Instead of one leader, there were many different kinds of players and different kinds of power - coursing through a vast network of experimental women’s musics, women’s books, poetry, magazines, stores, communities, presses, galleries, newspapers, homes and workplaces. There was even a Women’s Bank. There seemed to be as many kinds of feminists as there were women in the movement, where hundreds of women were resisting definition in traditional political terms, indeed, trying to reinvent politics as personal praxis. Ordinary narratives, whether staged or unstaged, usually require one or two in- dividual protagonists to engage spectator’s identification. This is how the mainstream media told the story of the Women’s Movement and only one of the reasons they got is so wrong. Here we will try for a collec- tive voice, elements of which will resonate with different parts of a multi-generational audience.

To younger generations, I hope the film will give a feeling for the HERESIES collective’s sense of optimism, purpose, deep commitment and passion, as well as the fun that we had -- stretching to achieve remark- able political goals. Now, once again, we need the images – in all their complexity -- to remember -- and to dramatize the steps we took and the ones that must still be taken.

ABOUT US JOAN BRADERMAN, DIRECTOR

Joan Braderman, award-winning video artist and writer, has been involved with film and video as a screen- writer, artist and producer for over twenty-five years. Born in Washington DC, she holds degrees from Harvard and . Her works are held in the permanent collections of museums such as the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in . Joan studied 16mm filmmaking in college, learning to shoot and edit black and white reel-to-reel video in NYC in the early 70’s at various Media Access Centers. In 1975, Joan joined the group that founded HER- ESIES: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics. Her work in non-fiction includes FOR A BICENTENNIAL WITH- OUT COLONIES, THE PEOPLES’ CONVENTION, SOUTH BRONX, WAITING FOR THE INVASION, U.S. CITIZENS IN NICARAGUA,TELL THEM FOR US: MADRE IN NICARAGUA, PARA NO OLVIDAR. Braderman is best known for her se- ries of pieces, which she writes and performs, about women, desire and popular culture, including NATALIE DIDN’T DROWN, OR JB READS THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER, JOAN DOES DYNASTY, THIRTY SECOND SPOT RECONSIDERED, NO MORE NICE GIRLS, JOAN SEES STARS, and VIDEO BITES: TRIPTYCH FOR THE TURN OF THE CENTURY.

Joan was given a retrospective at the De Cordova Museum in 1994. This exhibition inaugurated the New Media Center at the De Cordova and included a series of large format cibachrome video stills, Moving Stills, shown mounted on the walls of the gallery. In 1996 she received the Koopman Chair in the Visual Arts at the Hartford Art School where she created her first installa- tion piece, The Public Goes Private. That year, A Trib- ute to Joan Braderman was featured in the Northamp- ton Film Festival in November 1996 (Printed transcript available). Her grants include awards from The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York and Massachusetts State Councils for the Arts, The , The New York Foundation for the Arts, The Jerome Foundation, The MacArthur Foundation, et al. Writing by and about Braderman has appeared in such jour- A New Feature Film Directed by Joan Braderman Produced by Crescent Diamond nals and books as The Village Voice, The Independent, Time Out, Afterimage, of London, Con- temporanea and Illuminations, An Essential Guide to Video Art. She has taught at The , The Museum School, The London Institute, and at the Universidade Catolica Portuguesa when she was awarded The Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Electronic Arts in 2002. Currently Braderman is Professor of Video, Film and Media Studies at in Massachusetts. For more information about Joan’s work, please visit her website at http://www.nomorenicegirlsproductions.org

CRESCENT DIAMOND, PRODUCER

Crescent graduated from Hampshire College with a BA in Film/Video and Political Economics. Her thesis was a documentary about women weavers in Guatemala. She continued her education at the Bay Area Video Coalition and Film Arts Foundation in San Francisco.

Crescent has been producing in the field of film and television since 1998.ast P projects include independent feature films, corporate marketing videos, documentaries and a monthly television series.

Crescent wrote, directed, and produced: SILENCE AIN’T SEXY (28 min, 2003) a thought-provoking video for teens about sexual decision-making and communication. She interviewed youth in the Bay Area about sub- jects such as: pregnancy, abortion, HIV/AIDS, STDs, virginity, sexual images in the media, sexuality and gen- der. SAS combines a music video, dramatic scenes with personal interviews with youth from diverse backgrounds. SAS has national distribution and is showing it in schools around the country.

STREET LEVEL TV (58 min per show-22 episodes, 2003-2006) is a monthly social-justice news magazine show that was aired nation- ally on Free Speech TV for one year. SLTV was produced by an all- female, volunteer collective called: Radical Transmission Produc- tions (RTP). The collective formed in 2003, after the war in Iraq began. RTP used a consensus-based decision making process and all of the producers took turns bottom-lining, editing and distributing each episode. The collective conducted outreach to independent producers who create short films about social and environmental justice, activism, international politics, media reform and repro- ductive rights. SLTV aired on cable stations and nationally on the satellite network, Free Speech TV. Through her experience produc- ing for SLTV, Crescent learned to appreciate the effort it takes to work in a collectively and enjoyed working with strong, talented women, committed to social change.

Diamond’s goal is to create innovative television programming and feature films that are informative and inspiring. Crescent was raised by a feminist and will always consider herself one. For more information about Crescent please visit http://crescentdiamond. tripod.com/

Contact Us: No More Nice Girls Productions, 36 Fruit Street, Northampton MA 01060, 413-584-6012 www.heresiesfilmproject.org A New Feature Film Directed by Joan Braderman Produced by Crescent Diamond How To Help No More Nice Girls Productions is seeking funding at this time for THE HERETICS. The organization has already received essential in-kind donations of video equipment and will receive consistent technical sup- port from the superb technicians at Hampshire College, where Joan has taught for many years. Donations of housing, crew and production assistance are also being provided by friends of THE HERETICS.

We are applying for artist and production grants and are also asking individuals to help support the project. For many of us, films like THE HERETICS are far too rare and we are ready to hear the stories and see the faces of some of the feminist artists, activists, writers and scholars who were part of changing the ways that being female is thinkable and possible today.

If you would like to support this work, there are several ways that you can help. You can spread the word about the project and the website. You can donate any amount by check or credit card and it will be tax-de- ductible. If you have office or video equipment, housing, or airline miles, you can contribute items like this as in-kind donations, which will also be tax deductible. We can also use help organizing gatherings or parties to show our upcoming trailer and outreach about the film. Any other ideas that you have are also welcome!

We can receive tax-deductible donations by check or credit card. How To Donate by Check: How To Donate by Credit Card: 1. Fill out the form below Call Crescent Diamond, Producer at: 413-584-6012 2. Enclose a check made out to and she will process your donation over the phone. Women Make Movies—THE HERETICS 3. Send check and form to: Joan Braderman To make a donation online, please go to our website 36 Fruit St. at www.heresiesfilmproject.org Northampton, MA 01060

THE HERETICS is fiscally Sponsored by Women Make Movies Women Make Movies, Inc. is the only national multi-cultural women’s media organization whose focus is the promotion, production, exhibition and distribution of films by and about women. Established in 1972, Women Make Movies is a 501(c)(3) non-profit media arts organization registered with the New York Charities Bureau of New York State. As the fiscal sponsor, WMM accepts donations or grants on behalf of the filmmaker and takes the responsibility of administering the funds received in support of the development and completion of the film.

Dear Women Make Movies,

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