Anthology Film Archives

THE FILMS OF JOYCE WIELAND

October 28 – November 1

Considered a pioneering feminist filmmaker, Joyce Wieland (1931-98) produced a compact and exquisite body of work that cannot easily be compared with any other artist’s. From short films exploring highly formal and structural concerns to a feature-length period piece, Wieland’s work is wonderfully slippery, politically charged, and abounding with ideas. Present and active in the New York underground film scene of the 1960s, Wieland is most strongly identified with Canada, where she gained wide renown as both a filmmaker and a painter. While Anthology has presented Wieland’s short films and long-form works on occasion, we are extremely excited to present this comprehensive retrospective to celebrate the release of her complete works on DVD by The Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre.

“Wieland used a wide variety of artistic media to express a multifaceted, ahead-of-its-time feminism that included a critique of colonialism, poverty, hegemony, misogyny, sexism, racism and environmental degradation. … Wieland was an artist in an era when women were discouraged from making art and when they did, their work was trivialized or erased. Moreover, she made experimental films – at that time a male-dominated form of cultural production. The very fact that she chose to work in this mode was a political statement, but her films are also often political in their formal treatment and subject matter, whether overtly or more subtly.” –Allyson Mitchell

Special thanks to Lauren Howes & Larissa Fan (Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre).

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