Dir. Johanna Demetrakas, USA, 2018, 85 min.
With Director Johanna Demetrakas and Editor Kate Amend in person.
“Feminism seems to be the scariest word in the English language. But not for those of us who experienced the game-changing awakening that was the Women’s Movement of the 1970s. Growing up in the fifties and sixties meant not only second class citizenship legally, but second class human being-ship: not invited to the party of medicine, art, law, education, science, religion, except maybe as the secretary.” Inspired by a book of photography profiling rising feminists called Emergence, the film, FEMINISTS: What were they thinking? digs deep into the personal experiences of women pivotal to the movement and follows this ever-challenging dialogue right into the 21st century.
Filmmaker, director, and editor Johanna Demetrakas has directed and co-directed a wide variety of documentaries, such as Crazy Wisdom, and The Busrider’s Union with Haskell Wexler but she is best known for her iconic feminist art films such as Womanhouse and Right Out Of History. Her dramatic fiction credits include many television series including L.A. Law, Doogie Howser, M.D, the feature Out Of Line starring Jennifer Beals, and the short film Homesick.
Kate Amend’s long list of credits include editing the Academy Award winning Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, Women of Iron, Beah: A Black Woman Speaks with Lisa Gay Hamilton,Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains with Jonathan Demme, Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and the Farm Midwives, and The Case Against 8, for which she was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Picture Editing for Nonfiction Programming. Amend is a governor of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
