How does one write a feminist history of a filmmaker who has made a single feature? Especially in light of the difficulties women have faced within film industrial models that privilege feature length, narrative cinema? Actor, director, and writer Barbara Loden made the landmark independent film WANDA (1970) yet struggled to make additional features before her early death from cancer in 1980.

In her lecture, Elena Gorfinkel (King’s College London) delves into Loden’s creative career beyond Wanda, in the context of recent scholarship on the incomplete and unfinished work in women’s film history, notions of “minor” cinemas, and speculative approaches to the historical person. Understanding Loden as an artist who sought to develop her own idiom for the figuration and embodiment of vulnerability, she examines a diverse corpus of archival material. Among them are Loden’s 16mm educational films, photographs, unproduced screenplays, and theatre projects.

Two short films by Barbara Loden and a documentary about the making of WANDA will be shown after the lecture.

December 12th 2023, 6:00 pm, Kino Arsenal am Potsdamer Platz

06:00 - Kino 1

Lecture by Elena Gorfinkel

07:30 – Lounge

Reception

08:00 – Kino 1

Screening of Films by and with Barbara Loden (THE BOY WHO LIKED DEER; THE FRONTIER EXPERIENCE; I AM WANDA)