“… it is a shame that the Littman film is not as well known, because it was more sympathetic to the participants, many of whom are accorded long segments in which they speak about their work while standing in ‘their room.’ Each woman is articulate and deeply, indeed, given our youth, touchingly serious about her intentions for her piece and also her methodology of production… Taken together these films give a more complete sense of what this signal work in the history of feminist art in the United States was actually like.” – Mira Schor, A Decade of Negative Thinking: Essays on Art, Politics, and Daily Life

Uniondocs is extremely excited to present Oscar-winning director Lynne Littman’s rarely-screened Womanhouse Is Not a Home, a documentary about the early Feminist Art Program at CalArts and its premier art installation “Womanhouse.” Founded in Fall of 1971 by early feminist art pioneers Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro in order to separate the female artistic voice from the male perspective generally taught in art programs, the program and installation in turn  “captured an Edenic moment in the history of feminism and feminist art, and a moment when the two were inextricably intertwined.” For more information on the underwritten subject, read Sasha Archibald’s piece in The Believer.

We are very excited to have Littman joining us for a conversation with feminist artist and writer Mira Schor, who participated firsthand in Womanhouse, after the screening.

Womanhouse Is Not a Home is was produced and directed by Lynne Littman, and aired on the local KCET television channel in 1972. The first to document the installation, the film features interviews, performances, installations, and had the participants, along with project directors Miriam Schapiro and Judy Chicago, and feminist leader Gloria Steinem, speak about the issues surrounding the artwork.

Director LYNNE LITTMAN received an ACADEMY AWARD for her documentary film, NUMBER OUR DAYS, based on the fieldwork of anthropologist, Barbara Myerhoff. Ten years later, her feature documentary, IN HER OWN TIME, chronicled Dr. Myerhoff’s final fieldwork and her death at age 49. IHOT premiered at Sundance. Littman made her feature film directing debut with TESTAMENT, starring Jane Alexander, Oscar-nominated for Best Actress. Produced for American Playhouse, TESTAMENT premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, screened at the Berlin Film Festival and was distributed theatrically by Paramount Pictures prior to its PBS broadcast. For the recent DVD release of TESTAMENT AT 20, Littman directed two new bonus documentaries.

Ms. Littman spent one year at ABC as Executive Producer of Movies for Television.

Mira Schor is a painter and writer living in New York City. She was a participant in the CalArts Feminist Art Program in 1971-72 and Womanhouse. Schor has been the recipient of awards in painting from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Marie Walsh Sharpe, and Pollock-Krasner Foundations, as well as the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism, a Creative Capital / Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and an AICA-USA award for her blog A Year of Positive Thinking. She is the author of two books of collected essays, Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture and A Decade of Negative Thinking: Essays on Art, Politics, and Daily Life. She is also co-editor of the journal M/E/A/N/I/N/G, and editor of The Extreme of the Middle: Writings of Jack Tworkov. Schor is represented by Lyles & King Gallery in New York. She is Associate Teaching Professor at Parsons Fine Arts.