Born in Flames - Film Screening and Q&A with Lizzie Borden

At Simon Fraser University, we live and work on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), q̓íc̓əy̓ (Katzie), kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), Qayqayt, Kwantlen, Semiahmoo and Tsawwassen peoples.

Warnings: Filming

BORN IN FLAMES (1983)

Lizzie Borden’s feminist tour de force is a radical work of speculative fiction set in New York ten years after the Social Democratic Party has seized power in a peaceful revolution. Militant women, disenchanted with the revolution and its unfulfilled promises, form guerilla groups and begin terrorist action. Their primary target is the mainstream media, as they attempt to appropriate its language and power. Borden’s chilling vision of patriarchy run amok is less a what-if fantasy than a mad-as-hell reflection of the misogyny witnessed around her. ​“This unruly, unclassifiable film—perhaps the sole entry in the hybrid genre of radical-lesbian-feminist sci-fi vérité—premiered two years into the Reagan regime, but its fury proves as bracing today as it was back when this country began its inexorable shift to the right” (Melissa Anderson, Village Voice).

The screening will be followed by an in-person Q&A with Director Lizzie Borden and a reception.

Co-presented by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement and PUSH

LIZZIE BORDEN

Award-winning feminist filmmaker Lizzie Borden is best known for the 1983 film Born in Flames. Borden's career as a filmmaker began when she majored in art at Wellesley College in Massachusetts before moving to New York. Her early films take on hot topics in the feminist movement with visual representations of struggles for equality in race, class, gender, and sexuality. Her later films focus on women’s sexuality, and her attempts to move into more mainstream film in the 1990’s were challenged by studio politics. She continues to work in film today as a script doctor while developing her own projects and books.

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