Born in Flames

When Adelaide Norris (Jean Satterfield), the black revolutionary who founded the Woman’s Army [sic], is murdered under mysterious circumstances, a very diverse group of women – of all races, classes and sexual orientations – arise who want to tear the system down. The authorities hope to pressure the movement by kidnapping a prominent African-American woman. The opposite happens. The struggle intensifies, however in the feminist movement fantasy and anarchy have the upper hand.

Born in Flames was filmed guerrilla style on the streets of New York before gentrification and is a Molotov cocktail of feminist futurism that is both an important time capsule and a radically progressive statement.

The film is digitally restored by Anthology Film Archives.

Unpaid

Lizzie Borden financed Born in Flames with money she earned as an editor of major American productions. Friends gave her leftover film stock and camera operators and actresses worked on the film unpaid when they had the time. The lab that – little by little – processed the stock, did so for free. Borden is also a painter and art critic as well as having co-founded the feminist magazine Heresis. After Born in Flames she made Working Girls in 1987.

This film’s original distributor Feministisch Filmkollektief Cinemien was ground-breaking when it came to raising the visibility of female filmmakers including those from the Global South.