Born in Flames

Born in Flames is a comic fantasy of female rebellion set in the near future. The film looks at the rights of women under a socialist society in the USA - and finds nothing has changed. When the black radical founder of the Women's Army is mysteriously killed, a seemingly impossible coalition of women - across all lines of race, class, and sexual preference - emerges to blow the System apart.
Born in Flames establishes a kaleidoscope, a multi-voiced texture of seemingly contradictory women's perspectives, including the Women's Army's political militants, activists from underground radio stations, black women (many of whom are reluctant to embrace feminism), lesbians (many of whom are women of color), middle-class white journalists, leftists, punks, housewives, and trades unionists. The film was a collaborative process in which the actors, among them Kathryn Bigelow, many of whom were grass roots feminists, played themselves. "Borden attempts to cinematically map the slogan 'the personal is political' in all of its contradictory meanings.(...) The strength of Born in Flames - its radical aesthetic quality - relies on compelling editing techniques. Borden's gritty, pseudo-documentary style presents a disjunctive collage of women's individual and collective work." (Christina Lane, Feminist Hollywood)

Organisation: City of Women
In co-operation with: Kinodvor