Film Screenings / Programs / Series
WORKING GIRL(S)
February 25 – March 2
This film series gathers together four films whose (very nearly) identical titles are, strangely enough, more than a quirk of fate. Though they span the early 1930s to the late 1980s, and emerged from distinctly different production contexts, all four are unusually perceptive, socially trenchant films. True to their title, they are united by a shared concern with the intersections of sex, money, labor, and class, weighty topics that each of the films manages to explore in vivid, always entertaining, and broadly accessible ways.
The series showcases the work of several pioneering female filmmakers: Dorothy Arzner, who was virtually the only female director active in Hollywood during the 1930s-40s, and one of the very few to make a viable career in the industry until much later; Stephanie Rothman, who held a similarly unique place in the realm of 1960s-70s low-budget exploitation films; and Lizzie Borden, whose first two films – the groundbreaking independent films REGROUPING and BORN IN FLAMES – Anthology has restored in recent years, and whose WORKING GIRLS (1986) remains one of the most perceptive and revealing films about sex work ever made.
The impetus for the series, Lizzie Borden’s WORKING GIRLS, will be introduced, on Saturday, February 25, by Borden herself, who will also be here at Anthology that weekend to present two films she’s guest-selected: Sheila McLaughlin’s SHE MUST BE SEEING THINGS (1987) and Pat Murphy & John Davies’s MAEVE (1981).
Special thanks to Lizzie Borden; Stephanie Rothman; Brian Belovarac (Janus Films); Amy Crismer (Disney); Brian Fox (Criterion Pictures); Jason Jackowski (Universal Pictures); Matt Jones (UNCSA Moving Image Archives); Justin LaLiberty (Vinegar Syndrome); and Jacob Perlin.
