A Women’s Place.
Liberation Films.
1972.
As a part of the exhibition ‘Women In Revolt!’, amidst the banners calling for free and on demand abortions, minimum wage for house work and the freedom for women to define themselves as lesbians – is a small television on a white podium. On the right of it, a pair of hanging headphones and a small wooden chair. It plays continuously all day meaning upon sitting you are thrown into a random moment of the film and must watch it through to the end before seeing how it starts, watching the entirely of the film, being so enthralled you watch it without even blinking, letting water fall down your cheek and preceding this, you watch it twice though after that, teary eyed and grateful.
Sue Crockford produced the first film about the women’s liberation movement, a documentation of a march on Oxford Street in London in the 70s. One where many gathered, to shout, sing and dance down the road, advocating for a cause many of the women were still struggling to specifically identify. Crockford documents men asking what women want to do which they currently can’t, ignorant to the truth that one who has not been afforded the freedom of another shouldn’t have to justify their wanting it based on how they intend to use it.
The film exhibits the initial conversations surrounding social equality, speaking to fair treatment ‘in the pub’ and ‘in the home’. The piece displays women, experiencing the internal feeling, one of something being wrong but without the language to yet name it. Let us remember terms such as ‘intersectionality’ and ‘sexual harassment’ were not coined until the 70s.
The film is a flower of gratitude, with it’s roots in the daily lives of women, their experiences tainted by men who refuse to acknowledge them as human beings but rather objects they can throw patriarchal paint over, disguising their beauty, differences, intelligence and ability to groove. The stem is art such as this one sitting on a wall in Manchester in good company with Marlene Smith and Poulomi Desai. Each petal, those still intwined with the plant and those fallen and decayed, every moment owed to the women that have fought. Each of their battles different, one a poem, one a protest, a book club, a punch thrown, a glass of water a conversation – a conversation I owe to every women in the liberation films, for it is them that started the discourse I wish to continue. To Sue Crockford I am grateful for this documentation, I am grateful also to every women not on film, those whose existence is their contribution in itself. Every women who was too busy to attend this march or didn’t feel included in their fight or hadn’t heard it was taking place or wasn’t a women yet or didn’t live close enough to come. To each, I thank for existing.
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