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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
