47 years ago

STARTING WOMEN MAKE MOVIES

It was September. The year, 1969. Sheila Paige was transferring sound from her Miss America protest shoot. I was getting my sea legs as the newly hired field film teacher at Young Filmakers Foundation. Sheila taught in their downtown storefront on Rivington Street. Over lunch we thought a woman's film group a good idea. That Sunday, we attended the city-wide Women's Liberation meetings that had been going on every Sunday night in the basement of the West 4th Street Methodist Church. Maybe a hundred women were in attendance. We stood up and announced our interest to start a women's filmmaking group. Dolores Bargowski joined us at the end of the meeting. This, forty-seven years ago this month, was the birth of this now germinal feminist organization. First, Women Make Movies was a production arm of the Women's Liberation Movement. By 1972 we had produced 4 films.