Joanie 4 Jackie

Joanie 4 Jackie

9 Episodes

Indie iconoclast Miranda July first stepped from the realm of performance art into film with her pioneering JOANIE 4 JACKIE project, in which she curated and distributed feminist video “chain letters” of underground movies made by women across the country. Originally dubbed BIG MISS MOVIEOLA, the project began with a pamphlet that read, “A challenge and a promise: Lady, you send me your movie and I’ll send you the latest Big Miss Moviola Chainletter Tape.” This selection gathers nine of the eclectic shorts that July compiled, along with a 2008 introduction by Shauna McGarry.

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Joanie 4 Jackie
  • Transeltown

    Episode 1

    Directed by Myra Paci • 1992 • United States
    Starring Myra Paci, Carter Burwell, Dina Emerson

    Dante transported to Times Square: a morbid and tender love story begins when a lonely girl drags home the naked body of a comatose, genital-less blonde woman.

  • Dear Mom

    Episode 2

    Directed by Tammy Rae Carland • 1995 • United States

    Directed in 1995 by Tammy Rae Carland, this film depicts a young queer woman—played by the filmmaker—rehearsing coming out to her mother.

  • The Slow Escape

    Episode 3

    Directed by Sativa Peterson • 1998 • United States

    In this film, made by Sativa Peterson in 1997, the narrator—a young radio DJ—contemplates the disappearance of twenty-three-year-old Pamela Ferguson, last seen leaving her job as a waitress at the Entré Restaurant in Winslow, Arizona.

  • No Place Like Home #1 and #2

    Episode 4

    Directed by Karen Yasinsky • 1999 • United States

    Over the course of these two stop-motion films, made by Karen Yasinsky in 1999, a woman—with the help of a pair of ruby-red slippers—delves into her fantasies and confronts good and evil before returning safely to the reality of her life.

  • Hawai

    Episode 5

    Directed by Ximena Cuevas • 1999 • United States

    Ximena Cuevas dissects an upper-class wedding in Mexico City where the guests fantasize about the exotic faraway dreamscape that is their “Hawai.”

  • Gigi (from 9 to 5)

    Episode 6

    Directed by Joanne Nucho • 2001 • United States
    Starring Emily Bartha, Daniel Fetherston, Lauren Kerchner

    A young woman’s quotidian routine—from waking up to going to work to returning home—is enlivened in Joanne Nucho’s 2001 musical.

  • Ophelia’s Opera

    Episode 7

    Directed by Abiola Abrams • 2001 • United States
    Starring Taqiyya Haden, Malcolm Foster Smith, Titilayo Ngwenya

    An artist uses a spell to free herself from an abusive relationship in this experimental revenge tale told through rap, song, Cantonese, Shakespearean verse, sign language, and Jamaica...

  • untitled video

    Episode 8

    Directed by Sujin Lee • 2002 • United States

    Memories and fragments of stories enter into dialogue with each other as filmmaker Sujin Lee processes the death of her grandmother and the end of childhood.

  • La Llorona

    Episode 9

    Directed by Stephanie Saint Sanchez • 2003 • United States

    Stephanie Saint Sanchez offers a comedic, revisionist retelling of the story of the legendary “weeping woman” of Mexican folklore.