Blurring the lines between experimental essay film and performance work, Courtney Stevens’ Terra Femme can be seen in two versions. Most screenings have regular narration, but for the Thursday screening and one of the Sunday screenings, Stevens delivered the narration live, in the spirit of how some of the film’s material was first screened. I will deliver.
“Terra Femme” is a collection of amateur travelogues shot primarily by women from the 1920s to the 1950s.The video taken by Kate and Arthur Todefor example, A Couple Who Circled the Earth was screened in cinema clubs in the 1930s and 1940s, and similar to Stevens’ presentation, the film was narrated while unspooled.
The two versions are said to be similar, but the live edition I saw at the press screening probably has something special added. At one point, she discusses trying to recreate certain shots from India, but she’s not framing them correctly.
Stevens asks whether these travelogues might reveal that women, who at the time had little opportunity to direct films professionally, see the world differently. I think of the life of a cameraman like Annette Dixon in Philadelphia, whose films have been archived in her husband’s name. Adelaide Pearson shot Gandhi’s first color film footage. Almeta Hirst shot in the predominantly black neighborhood of Seattle in the 1950s. The first reel of Hurst’s footage was erroneously scanned backwards, making it appear as if the subject, who was about to leave the house, inevitably returned home.
‘Terra Femme’ explores even more issues in the 20th century, such as changing roles within the home, self-awareness in amateur filmmaking, women’s accessibility to historical moments, and – obliquely – climate change. It is working. Stevens’ ideas and presentations are an hour of her dense and relentlessly absorbing.
Terafam
Unrated. Running time: 1 hour 2 minutes. at the theater.