In the late 1970s, New York was in chaos. There was a pile of garbage and mice were everywhere. This means it was the perfect time to make art in cheap lofts and create disruptive social movements like no wave cinema and punk rock. This was the backdrop for Lizzie Boden’s setting up her micro-budget dystopian feminist film Born in Flames.
For those who were “born in the flames of birth” in retrospective screening, or who don’t remember how far ahead of the time he saw it in the 80s and moved on, Criterion Collection releases the Blu-ray restored film in commentary tracks from directors and cast members, interviews with Borden, and her previous experimental film, “Rae Grooting.”
Over the next 40 years, “Born in Flames” has become a cinema-born title, whether it’s a creepy, visionary female filmmaker in terms of our broken current landscape, or whether the topic is a pioneering film or not.
“Born in Flames” takes place in a near future period when society evolved theoretically ten years after a peaceful social democratic revolution, but issues such as the unfair treatment of female workers and rape persist. It is spurred by two radical radio stations run by black women, spurred by two radical radio stations that spread the word what’s actually happening despite the so-called revolution. The theme song for the infectious pro-triot GRRRL by Red Krayola and the street-level views of the city at the time make it an important feminist filmmaking that proved to be inviolable foresight.
After directing “Working Girls” in 1986 on the life of a sex worker in New York, Borden suffered some misfortunes in mainstream filmmaking, but with little thanks to Harvey Weinstein. Although she is still working on scripted and possible film projects, Boden eventually discovers that the world of commercial films didn’t work with the disruptive brand of filmmaking that came through the art world and the genre-look goddard.
“Born in Flames” is in the backdrop of a feminist uprising in New York City.
Prior to the release of the standard, Borden spoke to diversity about being in prison, the importance of including the voice of a black woman in “Born in the Fire,” and how it relates to the attack on freedom that is happening now.
Born in Flames is very interesting. Because it’s not just an artistic indie film like the others in the wave movement, it has a strong political message and its own energy. How did you come up with that combination?
I come out of the art world. I didn’t go to film school, and there were groups in the art world, like the art and language that studied Marxist texts. I was fascinated by the idea of women’s questions. But what was the question for the woman? Does that mean that women become second class citizens? So I wanted to start with that premise. But it came from the art world as well, and although it was very supportive, it was very white and middle class. I really felt like I wanted to involve women of color in this film, so I knew nothing, so I had to look for them. I searched for them at the bar or gym. I wanted the women I had drawn in, especially black women, to create their own characters within this premise framework.
I was influenced by two things. One was watching a retrospective of Godard films. Many of the waveless filmmakers were influenced by some of his films, “The Anna Karina Films.” I was interested in what he combined essays and stories. He broke the fourth wall and thought it was really funny, so you could tell the story and make some kind of political statement in the same film. The other was the Battle of Algiers.
The premise was really not science fiction, it was like political fiction, and now it looks dystopian, but what it looked like, burning buildings and doodles.
How did viewers discover the film over time?
One of the key moments was when it was restored in 2016 by Anthology Film Archives. And at that point, Occupy Wall Street was a big move, and I think young men have become the audience. So it even snowed for years. Many people wrote about it, and many people taught it in their gender studies classes. People on social media say, “Where can I watch this movie?” So, finally, there is a way for people to see it.
Who returned to the commentary track?
Adele Bertei, one. She played Isabel from Radio Regatta, one of the pirate radio stations. Honey, who plays the leader of other leaders, passed away in 2010, which was very sad for me, but I was able to find a woman to play Adelaide Norris (Jean Satterfield). She wasn’t doing well and although I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to do it, she passed by in flying colours. I managed to get Chris Hegedus from Hegos Penebaker. She originally worked as a film director in films, but after that she met Dapennebaker and he fell in love with her, so I lost her. I spoke to Pat Murphy, one of the three editors. The three editors were Kathryn Bigelow and Becky Johnston, and the other films, including Irish director Pat Murphy, who directed “The Prince of Tide,” “The Seven Years of Tibet,” and “Maeve.” Now she is a Buddhist priest, and she is very clear and remembers the origins of the film in a way I had forgotten.
At the time, it was quite unusual to express so many black women in films.
It bothered me so much that the world of art was so white, there was an artist group who talked about equal expressions, and I think they were also very sexist. It’s been changed recently.
“Born in Flames” uses many formats for a visually exciting look, from videotapes from TV station segments to stock shots of women working in chicken plants, to footage from actual demonstrations. How did you incorporate all of that?
I used everything, I wanted the texture. There were stock footage of the demonstrations, the Detroit riots and Take Back the Night. There is footage of Italy where Radio Alice is destroyed. Some of the demos were real and I had the actress walk inside them. For the women who work, I actually shot them over a period of time, and one of my favorite cuts in the movie is going to a condom stuffed with chicken and placed on my penis. It is also a woman’s job. It was intentional that Adelaide Norris did his job under construction. Because such work is the first thing that men go when they are reintroduced into the workforce. If they complain, they don’t get enough work, the woman is fired and it’s back home.
What is the parallel between “born in flames” and what is happening today, and political activity? You said if you thought these issues had been resolved by now.
Some of the signs of these demonstrations could be the signs we are seeing today, and it’s like waiting a moment. Where are we? As proven in the last election, there is now even more hatred of women and fear of women. I thought that women would earn equal wages. abortion. It’s very upsetting. Therefore, the list was the revision of all rights that had been eroded or never achieved, that is, equal rights, everyone thought that would happen.
After “Born in Flames,” you created “Working Girls.” What happened after the festival?
After it was two weeks as director, I met Miramax and they wanted to pick it up. They made an offer that I could not refuse. They were still in a small office on the west. Harvey has an assistant, Eve, who was flirt with her, but he eventually married her. And he was throwing a chair against the wall, and my dad did it too, so it didn’t look unusual to me. We had a decent relationship so he didn’t let me cut it, in fact he asked me to put in more scenes.
But then you made a “Crime of Love” for Miramax, but it didn’t work. How did working with Harvey Weinstein in that film affect your career?
Everything has changed. I had an Alan Moil script from the beginning and it didn’t become that script. Every day I get a note that changed it. I was very confused and I was very innocent as I came from full control over the two films I edited myself.
There were no choice for the cast. That was Harvey’s choice. I didn’t know that Sean Young was a survivor either. I hated what happened in the film and the way it was cut. No flashbacks were added. They were not mine. They were from another filmmaker. But Harvey kept threatening me that if he took off my name, he would destroy my career.
And I went with it. Despite the director’s cuts being assumed, it’s not mine. That’s Harvey’s way of trying to add more sex and act as if it were mine. What he did, backed up by what he did to other women, was what I told people it was difficult to work with, and that made it really impossible to get anything else. And of course, the film was awful.
So, was prison supervision certainly far worse for women in the 90s?
What happens when there is a failure is that women, especially those who are not given a second chance to create another person, and men in the same position cannot get second and third chances. I think that happened to many women in the 70s and 80s. They make a movie or two, and if the bigger movie doesn’t work, that’s it. So the film prison just continued and continued.
When women came out and talked about how their careers were destroyed by Harvey, it was a revelation by telling people it was impossible for us to work with.
Recently, a clip of Zella’s “Born in Flames,” played by Florynce Kennedy, sparked controversy when it was briefly posted by Black Lives Matter, saying, “All oppressed people have the right to violence.” What did you think about that?
Flo Kennedy was playing the character. She’s going to be very suffering from this. Some clips taken from film are sometimes used in a very contextless state. She says, “The oppressed have the right to violence, it’s like the right to pee. You need the right place, the right time.” She often said things just to raise people. That was her way of pushing the world into dialogue. She would be terrified by the sick, twisted juxtaposition.
This interview was compiled and condensed.
