Terra Femme is an essay film comprised of amateur travelogues filmed by women in the 1920s-1950s. The films present a new type of traveller; no longer a male seeker of conquests, she might be a divorcee on a tour of biblical gardens, or a widow on a cruise to the North Pole. Representing the world through women’s eyes, the films raise questions about female representation in the archive, the role of amateurism in early non-fiction filmmaking, and the politics of the Western gaze. At once a film about longing for past worlds through cinematic excavation, this force flows in both directions, as women from the past search for self-making in the act of looking.
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Festival Appearances
Museum of Modern Art Doc Fortnight, New York 2021
International Documentary Festival Amsterdam 2021
DokuFest 2021
Hot Docs 2022
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Courtney Stephens
Courtney Stephens is a filmmaker whose non-fiction and experimental films explore the contours of language, historical geography, and women’s lives. Her work has been exhibited internationally; venues include MoMA, National Gallery of Art, The Barbican Centre, and film festivals including the Berlinale, New York Film Festival, South by Southwest, IDFA, and the Hong Kong, Mumbai, Luxembourg, and San Francisco International Film Festivals. She was a Fulbright Scholar to India and one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. A graduate of the American Film Institute, she co-founded the Los Angeles microcinema Veggie Cloud and has curated film programmes for The Getty, Museum of the Moving Image, Union Docs, and Flaherty NYC.
Fri, 4 Nov | 1:10 pm | Picture Time 2