Terra Femme

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courtesy Courtney Stephens

A still image from "Terra Femme."

A still image from "Terra Femme."

Created from archival films shot on vacation by women in the first half of the 20th century, Terra Femme is a documentary-live performance hybrid. At this screening, filmmaker Courtney Stephens will provide live narration for the film, creating an essay on what subjects drew the traveler's eyes, the roles of women in that era, and more. The screening is part of the Mills Folly Microcinema series; tickets at the door.

media release: Mills Folly Microcinema welcomes filmmaker Courtney Stephens (The American Sector) for an in-person, live presentation of her film Terra Femme.

Join us for a unique evening with filmmaker Courtney Stephens as she presents her recent film Terra Femme on Wednesday, April 12 at 7:00pm. Admission $5.00, free for ALL members. A $1 fee will be added for single admission credit card charges, but no fee for multiple admissions ($10 or more). Seating is limited, and doors open at 6:30 p.m.

In this live documentary-performance hybrid, Courtney Stephens investigates the history of women as travel filmmakers from the 1920s through the 1950s. Drawing entirely on archival materials, Stephens scrutinizes the traces left by these women with a movie camera, asking questions about gender and genre: what common subjects drew their eye? What social roles did they challenge, reproduce, or inhabit? What do these films say about the place of women in the economies of cinema and colonialism? Hearkening to the illustrated lectures of travel societies and 20th-century home movie projections, Stephens uses the live performance mode to reflect on the personal stakes of her inquiry as a traveler and filmmaker. The result is a film essay as moving as it is transporting. (Block Museum)

"In highlighting the filmmakers’ cinematic practices and points of view, [Stephens] pursues the underlying question of whether there is such a thing as the 'female gaze'; she develops far-reaching analyses of women’s filmmaking in an era when few women had professional directing careers—and ultimately connects their work to the sociology and the spirit of travel itself." -Richard Brody, The New Yorker