The next program in our co-presentation with the Women’s Film Preservation Fund (WFPF) and New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT), From the Vault: Women’s Advocacy on Film, shifts the focus of the series from activism and reform (RESIST, REFORM, REPEAT) to gender and identity (REEXMINE, RECLAIM, REDEFINE). This double feature of Julia Reichert and Jim Klein’s Growing Up Female — one of the first films to emerge from the Women’s Liberation Movement — and Geri Ashur, Peter Barton, Stephanie Palewski, and Marilyn Mulford’s Janie’s Janie — a uniquely personal Newsreel film — pairs two culturally significant documentaries that are widely attributed as being among the first to represent the female perspective.

We are very excited to have Stephanie Palewski, Peter Barton, and Kelly Anderson in conversation after the screening, joined by Julia Reichert via Skype!

A lyrical examination of the socialization of American women. In concise portraits, the film introduces the audience to girls and women ages five to 34 and looks at the ways their lives and self-concepts are shaped by the institutions of marriage, school, advertising and popular culture. Considered by many to be one for the first secondwave feminist documentaries made.

Janie’s Janie is part of the films of the Third World Newsreel, whose works represent vibrant documents of the 1960’s women’s movement, the role of women in the overall protest movement, and the thinking of young women at that time in history. The very existence of these films resulted from struggles around gender issues within Newsreel. Janie’s Janie is a “personal documentary” that follows a woman who comes to realize that she has to control her own life, after years of experiencing physical and mental abuse, illustrated through both interviews and verite footage.

Ohio-based Julia Reichert is a three-time Academy Award nominee for her documentary work. Julia’s first film GROWING UP FEMALE was the first feature documentary of the modern Women’s Movement. It was recently selected for the National Film Registry. Her films UNION MAIDS and SEEING RED: Stories of American Communists (with Jim Klein), were screened worldwide, nominated for Academy Awards for Best Feature Documentary, as was THE LAST TRUCK, as a Short. Her film A LION IN THE HOUSE (made with Steven Bognar) premiered at Sundance, screened nationally on PBS, won the Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking. Her film, THE LAST TRUCK (with Bognar) premiered on HBO, and the Telluride Film Festival. Julia is co-founder of New Day Films, the independent film distribution co-op. She is author of Doing It Yourself, the first book on self-distribution in independent film. Julia has been drawn to focus on class, gender and race in her work. She is a mom and a grandma.

Stephanie Palewski, a former Newsreel collective member, is Peabody, Dupont and Emmy Award winning Producer/ Editor at CBS News, where she has worked for 26 years. She has also worked for PBS, ABC, NBC, HBO, and Cinemax, as well as independent film and video production companies, and has taught at Columbia University, NYU, and Brooklyn College.

Peter Barton is a veteran filmmaker with three Emmy nominations and three CINE Golden Eagle awards to his credit. Two of his films are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. He received the Edward R. Murrow Award for Names Can Really Hurt Us, a CBS-TV special still used in the classroom to combat prejudice. He joined Newsreel in the late 60’s and worked on movies about squatters(Break and Enter) and the women’s movement (Janie’s Janie).

Barton is fluent in Spanish and French. He has taught film production and screenwriting at New York University, Bennington College, Columbia University, and Brooklyn College. He first taught at NYU with Marty Scorsese. Oliver Stone was a student. He is a graduate of Dartmouth, holds an M.F.A. in playwriting and directing from Yale School of Drama, and served in the Peace Corps in Chile.

Kelly Anderson (Director) directed UNSTUCK: an OCD movie, which just premiered at the ReelAbilities Festival in New York City. Her other films include My Brooklyn, a documentary about the hidden causes of gentrification that premiered at the Brooklyn Film Festival, where it won an Audience Award, had a three-week sold out run at ReRun Theater in Dumbo (programmed by IFP) and aired on America ReFramed. Kelly’s other films include Never Enough, about Americans’ relationships with their material possessions, which won an award for Creative Excellence at the Big Sky Documentary Festival. She also produced and directed Every Mother’s Son (with Tami Gold), about three mothers whose children were killed by law enforcement, which won the Audience Award at the Tribeca Film Festival, aired on POV and was nominated for an Emmy. Anderson and Gold also made Out At Work, which was at Sundance and on HBO. Kelly is a professor at Hunter College in New York City, and she is a recipient of the UFVA’s George C. Stoney Award for Outstanding Documentary Work.