''The Heretics'' is a feature-length, documentary film written and directed by
Joan Braderman
Joan Braderman is an American video artist, director, performer, and writer. Braderman's video works are considered to have created her signature style known as "stand up theory." Via this "performative embodiment," she deconstructs and analyzes ...
and distributed by
Women Make Movies
Women Make Movies is a non-profit feminist media arts organization based in New York City. Founded by Ariel Dougherty and Sheila Paige with Dolores Bargowski, WMM was first a feminist production collective that emerged from city-wide Women's Li ...
. It focuses on a group of New York-based feminist artists called the
Heresies Collective, and their influential art journal, ''
Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics'', which was published from 1977 to 1992.
Synopsis
''The Heretics'' is a semi-autobiographical documentary, following Braderman's first-person account of her arrival in New York City in 1971 and her introduction to the arts culture of
Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...
. This narrative becomes a framing device for the bulk of the film, which consists of intimate interviews with former
Heresies Collective members, documenting their involvement with ''
Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics'' and exploring feminism in the art world during the height of the
second wave women’s movement, as well as in modern times.
The titles of both the magazine and film were inspired by the credo, "new truths begin as heresies."
Production
Braderman began work on the documentary in 2006, travelling across the U.S., as well as to Spain and Italy, to interview twenty-eight former members of the
Heresies Collective.
''The Heretics'' incorporates interview footage shot in 24p mini-dv video with still images, 3D animation, archival footage, and staged scenes where young actresses play the roles of collective members. The aesthetic of the film has been described as "radical collage," evoking both the original magazine as well as Braderman's early video art.
June Millington
June Millington (born April 14, 1948) is a Filipina-American guitarist, songwriter, producer, educator, and actress. She was the co-founder and lead guitarist of the all-female rock band Fanny, which was active from 1970 to 1974. Millington has ...
, a so-called “Godmother of Women's Music,” provided an original soundtrack, in collaboration with her nephew, Lee Madeloni. When Millington, who said the ''Heresies'' magazine "was in every hip loft and living space I stayed at," heard the film was in post-production, she tracked down Braderman in her studio, watched the rough-cut for 10 minutes, and said, "all of your music needs were just resolved."
The former collective members featured in the film include
Emma Amos,
Ida Applebroog
Ida Applebroog (born November 11, 1929) is an American multi-media artist who is best-known for her paintings and sculptures that explore the themes of gender, sexual identity, violence and politics. Applebroog has been the recipient of multiple ...
,
Mary Beth Edelson
Mary Beth Edelson (born Mary Elizabeth Johnson) (6 February 1933 - 20 April 2021) was an American artist and pioneer of the feminist art movement, deemed one of the notable "first-generation feminist artists." Edelson was a printmaker, book art ...
,
Su Friedrich
Su Friedrich (born December 12, 1954) is an American avant-garde film director, producer, writer, and cinematographer.
Early life
Su Friedrich was born in 1954 in New Haven, Connecticut. Her mother was German and came to the US with Friedric ...
,
Janet Froelich
Janet Froelich (born 1946, New York, NY) is an American graphic designer and creative director.
Biography
Janet Froelich received her undergraduate degree from Cooper Union and an MFA from Yale University. She was a designer of '' Heresies ...
,
Harmony Hammond
Harmony Hammond (born February 8, 1944 in Hometown, Illinois) is an American artist, activist, curator, and writer. She was a prominent figure in the founding of the feminist art movement in 1970's New York.
Early life and education
Harmony ...
,
Joyce Kozloff
Joyce Kozloff (born 1942) is an American artist whose politically engaged work has been based on cartography since the early 1990s.
Kozloff was one of the original members of the Pattern and Decoration movement and was an early artist in the 1970 ...
,
Lucy Lippard
Lucy Rowland Lippard (born April 14, 1937) is an American writer, art critic, activist, and curator. Lippard was among the first writers to argue for the " dematerialization" at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. S ...
,
Amy Sillman
Amy Sillman (born 1955) is a New York-based artist, known for process-based paintings that move between abstraction and figuration, and engage nontraditional media including animation, zines and installation.Farago, Jason''The New York Times'', ...
,
Susana Torre
Susana Torre (born 1944) is an Argentine-born American architect, critic and educator, based in New York City (1968–2008) and in Carboneras, Almeria, Spain (since 2009). Torre has developed a career that combined “theoretical concerns with the ...
, Cecelia Vecunia, and
Nina Yankowitz
Nina Yankowitz is an American visual artist known for her work in new media technology, site specific public works, and installation art. She is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award recipient.
Biograp ...
.
''The Heretics'' premiered in a solo screening at the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in New York in 2009, where it ran for a week.
Reception
''The Heretics'' was well-received by press such as ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', which said the film "gives a joyful sense of what it was like to be a feminist in the 1970s."
Ariel Dougherty said in ''
On The Issues Magazine
''On the Issues'' is an online-only progressive feminist news and opinion magazine founded in 1983 as a print magazine: ''On the Issues: The Progressive Woman's Quarterly''.
History
''On the Issues'' was started by social psychologist Merle Hoff ...
'', "Thanks to Braderman and her savvy crew, in ''The Heretics'', we have a compelling powerhouse example of feminism’s creative force."
Some reviewers criticized the film's nostalgia, while others such as Aaron Cutler from ''
Slant Magazine
''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York ...
'', accused ''The Heretics'' of vagueness, saying the film produces "general statements about how hard it is for women to succeed in a man’s world."
See also
*
Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics
*
Heresies Collective
*
Joan Braderman
Joan Braderman is an American video artist, director, performer, and writer. Braderman's video works are considered to have created her signature style known as "stand up theory." Via this "performative embodiment," she deconstructs and analyzes ...
References
External links
Official website*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heretics
Feminist collectives
Films about gender
Documentary films about feminism
2009 films
Women in New York City
2000s English-language films