6 December 2024, Clore Auditorium, Tate Britain

This inaugural screening presents rarely screened campaigning films from the London Women’s Film Group, in dialogue with films from the pioneering feminist distribution collective, Circles: women in distribution.

Whose Choice? (1976) By the London Women’s Film Group shows how experimental techniques, and an early use of docu-drama, address the fraught question of reproductive rights, whilst Fakenham Film (1972) shows rare documentation of the third and fourth months of a successful six month work-in by women workers at Sextons Shoe Factory, Fakenham, Norfolk.  These are shown in dialogue with Tracks (Susan Stein, 1989) and Light Reading (Lis Rhodes 1976) from founder members of Circles, Susan Stein and Lis Rhodes,  showing how experimental filmmaking techniques enabled filmmakers to address questions of female labour, reproductive rights and self-representation. Susan Stein and Barbara Evans of London Womens’ Film Group will be present to discuss their films and the contexts of production surrounding them.

Through a Radical Lens is a moving image programme takes up the themes of Tate Britain’s current exhibition ‘Women in Revolt: Art, Activism and the Women Movement in the UK 1970-1990’ by a series of screening showing the film and videos practices of UK based feminist artists then and now. The Clore auditorium, and other London venues such as the BFI Southbank and Chelsea Space, become spaces for debate around moving image works already well regarded or rarely seen, screening archival restorations beside works recently made. The screenings and conversations of Through A Radical Lens revisit urgencies of the 1970s and 1980s which are still current today.

Programmed by Lucy Reynolds, with curatorial contributions from Club des Femmes, Karen di Franco for Chelsea Space, and Rachel Garfield and Will Fowler at BFI Southbank.  

For more information, visit tate.org.uk.