‘WE WILL INVENT OURSELVES, THE AGE OF THE NEW IMAGE IS AT HAND’: Creating, Learning and Talking with Australian Feminist Filmmaking

We became very evangelistic trying to tell as many women as possible about this thing that we had discovered, and in those circumstances we began making a film to use for propaganda purposes. (Anon. 1974, 86)

I'd been interested in film for years and years, but it never occurred to me that I could actually do anything other than carry something for somebody. (Anon. 1974, 84)

These statements are from ‘Great Experimentation’, a woman's story included in A Book about Australian Women (1974). While the identity of the woman is not disclosed, she tells of her recent life, relationships, pregnancies, increasing feminist awareness and interest in filmmaking. The book includes the text of ‘some individual experiences of being a female person in this society’ such as this one, as well as photographs of ‘painters, sculptors, writers, poets, filmmakers, printmakers, photographers, designers, dancers, musicians, actresses and strippers … women's liberationists, Aboriginal spokeswomen, activists, revolutionaries, teachers, students, drop-outs, mothers, prostitutes, lesbians and friends’ (Jerrems and Fraser 1974, 3). In this one compilation about Australian women, at the height of the Women's Liberation Movement, filmmakers are conspicuously present. As expressed in ‘Great Experimentation’, film was recognised as an important means through which newly considered political messages could be disseminated. As part of achieving this, some women were able to realise their potential for creative work with film. Films provided an avenue through which feminist messages were presented to many audiences throughout the country and internationally.