Guest Post by Lauren Clarke and Kathi Kamleitner

Conversation is how Femspectives started. About a year ago we were talking about women’s film festivals and their space in the wider film festival landscape.

At the time, Kathi had started researching the first Women’s Film Festival in the UK hosted by Edinburgh International Film Festival in 1972 for her PhD. We spoke about the festival being entirely dedicated to the cinematic achievements of women and Kathi told me about its intention to re-examine the so-called “canon” of film history.

We discussed how “canon” is a problematic term in and of itself, a patriarchal intention with men at the center dictating cultures of taste and what should be consumed by the masses. Placing an emphasis on the work of men, the canon has sidelined the many achievements of female creators, and re-examining it with only a select few films directed by women runs the risk of perpetuating similar patriarchal structures.

Still, this event in 1972 provided a space for films directed by women to be shown and discussed and potentially change film history forever. We lacked resources to properly preserve the films. Unfortunately, most of the films that were screened are lost again, or at least extremely challenging to get a hold of.

When we looked at the 1972 fest’s program, it was disheartening to realize how unfamiliar we both were with a lot of the directors’ names and film titles — and the fact that we both hold postgraduate film degrees with an interest in women’s cinema made this even harder to swallow.

To us this really highlighted how important it is to keep re-visiting women’s contributions to film history, but also to raise awareness of the films women are producing at this very moment. The more we talked about these films, the slimmer the chance would be that they’d be forgotten. It also showed us that a comprehensive archive about women’s film history was much needed, as were events showcasing these films. Access to these materials is essential to further scholarship and discourse — but one step at a time.

Through these conversations we realized there was a hunger for these kinds of events. We discussed the various criteria for films to be selected at different festivals, how cinema relates to feminisms, and what ethos stood at the forefront at a variety of women’s and feminist film festivals.

Despite some excellent local initiatives to facilitate women’s participation in the cultural industries in Glasgow — just to name a few, the work of Digital Desperados, Glasgow Women’s Library, and She’s En Scene — there was no feminist film festival championing the work of women filmmakers exclusively. Glasgow is a very politically active city with a rich and colorful festival landscape — we saw a gap and decided to fill it.

When we finally decided to get the ball rolling, it was clear early on that we wanted to kick off Femspectives with a selection of films from the 1972 Women’s Film Festival. In an effort to revisit the event we decided to remount two of the films from the original program. Now, 46 years on, we wanted to create an opportunity for discussion and offer a space to consider what has happened in the last 46 years — to the women’s movement, to women’s cinema, to women in the festival landscape in Scotland.

How has the context of these films changed, or has it even changed at all? What are the socio-economic factors at play and how has the current discourse around women in film changed in recent years? These questions are the backbone for Femspectives’ first event, “46 Years in the Future — Women’s Film Festivals, then and now”, which will be held at Glasgow Women’s Library May 5, 2018.

Femspectives was created with the mission to be a platform for women’s cinema that would be accessible to everyone. It aims to create a safe space for discussion that recognizes privilege and barriers. It acknowledges difference in experience and outlooks and wants to create a place to have honest and open discussion, while acknowledging similarities and the need for solidarity.

Our aim is to highlight previously marginalized voices and prioritize content over aesthetic and provide context for how the work has been produced and the impact on its structure. Femspectives wants to be a space for learning, discussion, and debate.

We want to move away from challenging the ideology that women can make films — because of course women can make films! — and shift the conversation to inwardly focusing on their objectives and challenges. Events will always include film screenings, but also heavily focus on post-screening discussions in order to facilitate conversations about the films, feminisms, and beyond.

For up-to-date information about Femspectives, check out its website or head over to Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Their first fest is slated for March 2019.

Lauren Clarke studied film exhibition and curation at the University of Edinburgh and has worked for many festivals, including Toronto International Film Festival, Glasgow Film Festival, Sheffield Doc Fest, and Africa in Motion Film Festival.

Kathi Kamleitner is currently pursuing a PhD on women’s film festivals at the University of Glasgow and has worked with festivals such as Berlin International Film Festival, achtung berlin film festival, and Africa in Motion Film Festival.