A program of films with Kelly Gallagher, who has been using animation and live-action to create urgent, radical and personal essay films for the past eight years. The program includes her essay films, which bring to life, through archival recordings and text, the words and voices of abolitionist John Brown and Marxist revolutionary and poet Marilyn Buck (FROM ALLY TO ACCOMPLICE, 2015); black nationalist Queen Mother Moore (Pearl Pistols, 2014); and the labor organizer, radical socialist and anarchist Lucy Parsons (More Dangerous Than a Thousand Rioters, 2016). Gallagher also draws upon her autobiography (Do You Want to Go for a Drive, 2016) and familial recordings (Ceallaigh at Kilmainham, 2013) in her personal essay films.

The program will also include works by animator Martha Colburn and an excerpt from Lizzie Borden’s 1983 film Born in Flames.

“Using a variety of forms and styles, Gallagher marshals her material into raw statements of anger and intent. This bold and colorful montage aesthetic incorporates paper cut-out collages from magazines or thrift store bookshop finds, 16mm found or confiscated footage, oil painting animation and hand-drawn rotoscoping. Images explode onto the screen in a carnival of color and iridescence: glitter, thick and sumptuous paint, or purple-tinted translucent oil on clear 16mm leader draw attention to the tactility of the hand-made process involved. Through teaching animation, touring her films at radical film festivals and making her work free and accessible online, Gallagher’s work both provokes and invokes others to share their stories. In doing so, these films celebrate the strength that can be gained from, in the film-maker’s own words, “using one’s hand to shape her own stories.” -Sophia Satchell-Baeza, La Furia Umana

Set to a raucous Riot Grrrl soundtrack, Gallagher’s animation shares the *herstory* of some of motion picture’s greatest (and often overlooked) contributors.

By painting frames of 16mm clear leader, the filmmaker explores the feelings and sentiments evoked when returning home to Pennsylvania, after being far away for far too long.

A 16mm collaged and handcrafted exploration of land, roots, and the strength of the women in the filmmaker’s family.

An animated glitter bomb and resurrection of a speech by the radical and revolutionary civil rights leader Queen Mother Moore.

“To-day at last we know: John Brown was right.” -W.E.B. Du Bois. An
experimental essay in three movements that explores the importance of being more than an “ally” in struggle, by sharing histories of committed accomplices John Brown, Marilyn Buck, and others. The film also delves into the history of the landscape and former prairie that was the earth on which Brown’s militants trained. In the face of exploitation of people and destruction of land, radical struggle cultivates new life.

An essay film that illustrates the importance of consent and explores sexual
agency, love, pleasure, mutual desire, violence, vengeance, the moon and the
sky. The title, a call and response with the final line of the film (“It’s you I really want to drive”), more importantly serves to commence the entire viewing experience with the asking of a question- which is how all sexual encounters should begin, with the asking for consent.

An experimental animated documentary exploring the powerful and inspiring life
of revolutionary Lucy Parsons. She was an organizer first and foremost, and led an inspiring life engaged in the struggle against capitalism. As a woman of color who was married to a famous white male anarchist, she is often unfairly and frustratingly overlooked in many labor histories. Born in the early 1850s, Parsons moved to Chicago as an adult, where her politics quickly radicalized. Parsons would go on to become one of the most powerful voices in the labor movement, helping to found the legendary Industrial Workers of the World. She dedicated her entire life to fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised.

Kelly Gallagher is an experimental animator, filmmaker and Assistant Professor of Media Arts at Antioch College in Ohio. Her theoretical work investigates the radical and feminist possibilities of experimental animation. Her animations, experimental films and documentaries have screened internationally at venues including: Ann Arbor Film Festival, London ICA Artists’ Biennial, LA Film Forum, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, and Anthology Film Archives. She is a recipient of the Ivan Kaljević Award from Alternative Film/Video Festival Belgrade, the Helen Hill Award from Indie Grits, the Audience Award from Brazil’s Fronteira Film Festival, and the Jury’s Choice Award from Black Maria Film Festival.