This Friday, 11 October, join Cinenova at the Block Museum for a special screening as part of the ‘Revisiting Films By Women/Chicago ‘74’ series. The programme features two films from the Cinenova collection by feminist collectives from England and Jamaica, produced in the 1970s and 80s. These films highlight the urgent social realities faced by women – from reproductive rights to labour issues – that demonstrate the heterogeneity of collective feminist filmmaking practices.

Screening for the first time since its recent digitisation, Sheffield Film Co-op’s first film, ‘A Woman Like You’ (1975), blends interviews with dramatisation to depict the struggles of a married mother of two as she attempts to obtain an abortion through the NHS. Sheffield Film Co-op formed in the early 1970s as a consciousness-raising group making radio programmes, before turning its efforts to highlighting the struggles of the Women’s Liberation Movement on screen.

Sistren Theatre Collective’s Sweet Sugar Rage (1985) is an essential document of the Caribbean women’s movement. Sistren’s radical pedagogy utilised dramatic workshops and guerrilla street theatre as sites to develop collective action, bringing Jamaican oral and folk traditions into the production of plays and films. ‘Sweet Sugar Rage’ highlights the collective’s work and explores the methods they used to draw attention to the difficult conditions faced by female workers on a Jamaican sugar estate.

The film selection was made collaboratively by Cinenova and Block Cinema. Following the screening, Charlotte Procter (a member of the Cinenova Working Group) will be present for a post-screening conversation.

Image: A Woman Like You – Sheffield Film Co-op, 1975.

More information via the Block Museum website: https://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/cinema/2024/the-feminist-film-collectives-of-cinenova.html