''Cave Girls'' is a 1984 New York No Wave underground film by Kiki Smith (co-directed with Ellen Cooper) created on

Super 8 Super 8 or Super Eight may refer to: Film * Super 8 film, a motion picture film format released in 1965 * Super 8 film camera, a motion picture camera used to film Super 8mm motion picture format * ''Super 8'' (2011 film), a science-fiction fi ...

between 1981 and 1984.Kiki Smith interviewed
by Joseph Nechvatal on ''Cave Girls'', Collaboration, and Some of Her Earliest Works, published January 14, 2020 at

Hyperallergic ''Hyperallergic'' is an online arts magazine, based in Brooklyn, New York. Founded by the art critic Hrag Vartanian and his husband Veken Gueyikian in October 2009, the site describes itself as a "forum for serious, playful, and radical thinking ...

that makes use of Stan Brakhage-like montage cutting.

Cave girls collective

''Cave Girls'', as an

independent film An independent film, independent movie, indie film, or indie movie is a feature film or short film that is produced outside the major film studio system, in addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies (or, i ...

, emerged out of a loose New York City female collective that included Kiki Smith, Ellen Cooper, Cara Brownell, Bush Tetras, Ilona Granet, Marnie Greenholz, Julie Harrison, Becky Howland, Virge Piersol, Judy Ross, Bebe Smith, Teri Slotkin, Y Pants and Sophie VDT. All women appear in the film and in photographic stills.

Screenings

Cara Brownell and Julie Harrison produced a video broadcast of ''Cave Girls'' for Colab's artists’ TV series on Manhattan Cable called ''Potato Wolf''. ''Cave Girls'' was also shown at the

Edinburgh Film Festival The Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) is a film festival that runs for two weeks in June each year. Established in 1947, it is the world's oldest continually running film festival. EIFF presents both UK and international films (all ti ...

Synopsis

Partially inspired by the Raquel Welch performance in the 1966 film '' One Million Years B.C.'', in the ''Cave Girls'' film, young women speak about the idea of cave girls as a defense mechanism against street harassment by men and fantasize about a

matriarchal society Matriarchy is a social system in which women hold the primary power positions in roles of authority. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege and control of property. While those definitions apply in general E ...

free of all men. Kiki Smith refers to ''Cave Girls'' as an unfinished ersatz documentary, like the 1964 '' A Hard Day’s Night'' movie, that starred the

Beatles The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the developme ...

. Conceived as a spoof on the apocalyptic, there are sections of ''Cave Girls'' where the women artists talk about how the film is going and how the film concerns the survival of young women and the survival of the very film they are making.

Music

Part of ''Cave Girls'' includes Bush Tetras music playing over long passages of out of focus, foggy, visually noisy, action.

Locations

Part of the film was shot in a downtown loft, in the countryside in New Jersey, and at the bombed out looking backyard of

ABC No Rio ABC No Rio is a collectively-run non-profit arts organization on New York City's Lower East Side. It was founded in 1980 in a squat at 156 Rivington Street, following the eviction of the 1979-80 Real Estate Show. The centre featured an art gal ...

Alan W. Moore Alan W. Moore (born 1951, in Chicago) is an art historian and activist whose work addresses cultural economies and groups and the politics of collectivity. After a stint as an art critic, Moore made video art and installation art from the mid-1970s ...

and Marc Miller, eds. ''

Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery'' New York: ABC No Rio with Collaborative Projects, 1985.

References

External links

''Cave Girls''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cave Girls Experimental film American film producers American film directors New Wave Punk American women film producers Women experimental filmmakers 1980s avant-garde and experimental films 1984 films American avant-garde and experimental films American black-and-white films 1980s American films