A Political Feeling, I Hope So

Curated by Emily Pethick

Friday 30 January 2004 to Sunday 1 February 2004

As part of this event for three days Cubitt gallery become a feminist autonomous place (that is, we will commit to that idea).

FRIDAY 30 JANUARY 2004

6.30PM — 9.30PM

Introduction to A political feeling, I hope so , a newly commissioned project by Emma Hedditch: an optimistic reflection of feminist politics, turned over by interpersonal relations, and the always absolutely, only social selves. The launch of Part One of a two-part publication will be accompanied by living music by ‘Lesbo Pig’ (Irene Revell, Ros Murray and Anna Dahllöv), set next to a separatist curtain — a homemade fantasy of fake differentiation — made from duvet covers in collaboration with artist Henriette Heise.

SATURDAY 31 JANUARY 2004

2.30PM — 3.30PM

Open meeting and info exchange

4pm: CARRY GREENHAM HOME

Biban Kidron and Amanda Richardson, UK, 1983, 66mins, 16mm

The film begins on the 12 December 1982, the day that 30,000 women travelled to RAF Greenham Common, Newbury, to join the women’s peace camp established in 1981 to protest against intended housing of ninety-six cruise missiles at the base.

SUNDAY 1 FEBRUARY 2004

2.30PM — 3.30PM

Open meeting and info exchange

4pm: A SUFFRAGETTE INSPITE OF HIMSELF

Bannister Merwin, Edison, UK, 1912/13 ca, 10mins, 16mm

‘How a respectable British householder, bitterly opposed to women’s suffrage, becomes apparently a violent advocate of the cause …’ ( The Bioscope , January 1913). The film refers to suffragette actions such as throwing stones at windows and chaining themselves to public buildings. The sub-textual heroine of the film is the maid, a convinced suffragette, amused by the problems of her employer.

WHAT TO PUT ON JACK SMITH’S MEMORIAL CHRISTMAS TREE?

Stefan Hayn, Germany, 1994, 7mins, 16mm

‘What is it about? About collecting cocks. And why Jack Smith? Because he was opposing the cultural industry’ (Stefan Hayn). When Hayn was working on the film he was also working on a long, furious paper against the ghetto of gay and lesbian film festivals.

WHO HANGS THE LAUNDRY? WASHING; WAR AND ELECTRICITY IN BEIRUT

Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdottir and Tina Naccache, Iceland/Lebanon, 2001, 20mins, video

Plagued by the lack of water and electricity as a result of war, the Lebanese activist, Tina Naccache describes the gymnastics of doing the laundry and managing electricity cuts.

FÜR FRAUEN 1. KAPITEL (For Women 1 st Chapter )

Cristina Perincioli; camera: Gisela Tuchtenhagen; production: Berlin filmschool DFFB Germany, 1971, 36mins,16mm (English subtitles)

FÜR FRAUEN 1. KAPITEL shows a model situation of the coming solidarity of a group of women working in a supermarket. They find out a male co-worker is paid more money to supervise their work and they decide to strike. The women who played these roles acted out their own experiences, and collaborated on the script. ‘We don’t need liberal filmmakers who take the issue of emancipation. We claim for the means of production in our own hands’.

A reading from the film magazine LICHTBILDBÜHNE (Germany, 1912)

The article discusses the ‘modern women’s movement in England’ described as ‘the ugly movement’, the ‘fanaticism’ of the suffragettes in England who ‘attack the deeply hated male sex and especially the government who opposes them’. They planned to cinematographically register, with the help of ‘female camera-operators’, all the incidents of police violence during the suffragettes’ demonstrations.

‘When I started working with the suffragette films, I became much more interested in film as a medium for social struggle. The films represent a perspective back to history, quite present with their early cinematic directness, and far away with their notion of what women should be allowed to do and what not. The spectacle and the almost grotesque vision of masses of women running through the streets was a scandal at the time.

As a public space, cinema could really work as a communication space for communities and debates (which would mean experiencing art together, not with the dispersed, mostly isolated glance at exhibitions and gallery spaces). But at the same time, my questions are about which community keeps its definition and politics open and moving or those that begin to close and use (identity) politics as an end-point enlarged. The film programme questions the ideas and contexts of feminist activism, of social and identity-politics-labelling and the distance of historical film material’. — Madeleine Bernstorff