Description:

ATTICA (1974) and I AM SOMEBODY (1970)
(Multiple artists, 1970–1974, 16mm, approx 110 min)

Showing together in a nod to their original pairing in the Films by Women/Chicago ‘74 lineup, I AM SOMEBODY (1970) and ATTICA (1974) create a formidable showcase of political documentary helmed by women filmmakers on the frontlines of the American labor rights and abolitionist movements. 

Madeline Anderson’s classic documentary, I AM SOMEBODY, portrays the fight for unionization, better pay, and fairer treatment led by 400 Black female hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina in 1969, and the hostile response of the police. Through newsreel-like footage, essayistic montage, and narration that centers Black female subjectivity, Anderson delivers a portrait of courage and political awareness unlike anything else of its time. A trailblazer in many respects, Anderson is known as the first African-American documentarian (INTEGRATION REPORT 1) who soon also became the first Black woman to join the film editor’s union in New York (an achievement gained while working on Shirley Clarke’s THE COOL WORLD, also showing in the FBW/’74 series).

Another milestone in non-fiction filmmaking, Cinda Firestone’s ATTICA details the historic prison rebellion that broke out in the Attica Correctional Facility in Upstate New York in 1971. After months of protesting inhumane treatment, prisoners took 35 hostages and seized control of the prison’s D-yard, organizing it as a liberated zone for their community to restructure. Firestone’s film documents the uprising with revelatory footage from within D-yard and investigates the violent suppression that ensued in the following days, revealing the injustices of the carceral system. Both Anderson and Firestone’s films are essential historical documents and vital cinematic works of collective action and emancipatory struggle.

Presented with an introduction by Joshua L. Crutchfield, a scholar of 20th-century black freedom movements and abolition studies. 

Program includes:

I AM SOMEBODY (1970, 30 min, USA, 16mm) Madeline Anderson

“I looked at these women like they were my sisters because I’d had the same experience of gender, race, and politics that they were having. When national and international attention was focused on these women, it was my story. There was no way that I was not going to make that film.” --Madeline Anderson

ATTICA (1974, 80 min, USA, 16mm) Cinda Firestone

“I would like this film to make people wonder about the whole institution of prisons and, taking that a step further, wonder about a society that can create things like Attica.” --Cinda Firestone

Total run time: approx. 110 min

ATTICA has been preserved by the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library with funding from the Women’s Film Preservation Fund of New York Women in Film and Television.

I AM SOMEBODY has been preserved by the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

ATTICA is presented courtesy of Cinda Firestone and I AM SOMEBODY courtesy of Icarus Films.

About the speaker:

Joshua L. Crutchfield is a scholar of 20th-century black freedom movements, African American women’s history, black intellectual history, and abolition studies. He is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Black Studies at Northwestern University. His forthcoming project, Imprisoned Black Women Intellectuals, explores how Black Power-era black women political prisoners shaped contemporary forms of carceral state abolition.
 
About FILMS BY WOMEN/CHICAGO '74:

In September 1974, at the height of the feminist movement, the Film Center hosted Films By Women/Chicago ’74, a series of screenings, workshops, and discussions, drawing 10,000 patrons to over 70 short and feature films by women filmmakers. Organized by an all-woman collective with support from the Chicago Tribune, the festival offered a global survey of cinema from across its 60-year history. From mainstream Hollywood to activist documentary, arthouse to animation, it was the most diverse and expansive American survey of women’s cinema to date. It was also a watershed moment in Chicago cinema culture: according to committee member B. Ruby Rich, “women, for years after, would come up to me in the street to credit [us]—for jumpstarting their careers, ending their marriages, shaping their friendship.” 

This fall, the Gene Siskel Film Center and Northwestern University’s Block Cinema will celebrate the fifty-year anniversary of Films by Women/Chicago ’74. Screening series at both venues. will revisit some of the festival’s most original and daring films and filmmakers, while reflecting on the event’s enduring legacies.