Brazilien Lesbianism Feminism

83 min / All film have english subtitles
Saturday Oct 3 at 15.30, Kulturhuset Hartwig

Rita Moreira and Norma Bahía Pontes moved to New York in the early ‘70s, exiled by the Brazilian dictatorship. Rita, a self-taught journalist, and Norma, critic and filmmaker, took up the Sony Portapak—a lightweight portable video camera— to harness its expressive power. This program recovers the work of these key figures in Latin American video history, who captured the hum of an era: the pulse of a dissident generation that carved out space embracing its contradictions, learning to name themselves (feminist lesbians or lesbian feminists?), and imagining community survival strategies. This program was curated by Celeste Orozco and Paola Buontempo.

She Has A Beard
Rita Moreira & Norma Bahía Pontes  / Brazil, USA / 1975 /  27 min
In Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig’s Brouillon pour un dictionnaire des amantes, bearded women are defined as lovers who tend to their chin hair with great care. Dancer Forest Hope strolls Manhattan with her beard provoking reactions that blur gender lines and tear beauty stereotypes apart.

Lesbian Mothers
Rita Moreira & Norma Bahía Pontes  / Brazil, USA / 1972 / 27 min
A documentary-experimental piece that both testifies to legal struggles and explores eroticism among lesbian mothers fighting custody battles. It fractures the nuclear family ideal, embracing autonomy and affirming other ways of existing.

Lesbianism Feminism
Rita Moreira & Norma Bahía Pontes  / Brazil, USA / 1974 / 29 min
Where do lesbians fit within feminism? Interviews with Ti-Grace Atkinson and Margaret Sloan-Hunter, alongside march footage, lay bare the tensions, common horizons, separatisms, and divergences of a movement in constant self-invention.