Clotheslines
Affectionate and witty, ‘Clotheslines’ is on the one hand a documentary on the laundry and a social portrait of an America literally strewn with clotheslines. But it's also an exploration of the wide range of responses that can exist within apparently shared experience – in this case doing the washing. As dozens of different women talk about it, we hear attitudes and concepts ranging from loathing to pride, from the romantic to the cynical. And all the while the film is posing questions about the meaning of images as it cuts from serried ranks of socks which seem to dance in the breeze to the linear abstraction of an empty clothesline.
I was drawn to the image of clotheslines because I felt they were... at once a symbol of the unseen work of women and literally, "women's work" on public display. I wanted to describe not only the pain and isolation of that work, but some of its strengths, humour and wisdom as well.
– Roberta Cantow
‘Clotheslines’ is the first public washing of dirty laundry that I've found compelling since Watergate... Laundry as airborne kite, dirty clothes as burden, and washing as social intercourse all feature in Cantow's genealogy of the Wash.
– Carrie Ricky, The Village Voice
In ‘Clotheslines’, Roberta Cantow fashions a superb blend of still shots, documentary footage, vintage film and telling voice-over on the topic of laundry – its social, aesthetic and cultural aspects. The conclusion: laundry strengthens the commonality of women in a way that Ms Magazine never will.
– Constance Crump, Ann Arbor News
Description source: Circles Catalogue (circa 1983). Compiled by Helen MacKintosh and Margaret Gillan. Edited by Felicity Sparrow.
