The UCLA Film and Television Archive will highlight the significance of women in film in the 1970s and 1980s, presenting a vast selection of female-directed films in the Billy Wilder Theater now through Feb. 27.
At a moment when gender parity in the entertainment industry is still a pressing concern, the archive is currently emphasizing a particularly productive and visionary time period when women were claiming their place behind the camera while working to change the rules of filmmaking itself.
The 1970s and 1980s saw a relative explosion in the number of women directing across an array of production practices. A period marked by radical experimentation and groundbreaking forays into narrative features, these decades of production are often demarcated between an explicitly feminist output in the 1970s and less overtly political films of the 1980s.
Acknowledging the intersecting histories, practices and meanings that a phrase such as “women’s cinema” can evoke, the archive presents a selection of films directed by women from both decades that express in original cinematic terms the intellectual and artistic energies of their time.
Information on the featured films can be here. The Billy Wilder Theater is located in the Hammer Museum courtyard, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, 90024.
Free tickets for UCLA students with current student ID are available at least 15 minutes prior to showtime at the Billy Wilder Theater box office. Details on general admission tickets can be found online or at the theater’s box office.
