BORN IN FLAMES

   Film (1983). Lizzie Borden/Jerome Foundation/CAPS/Young Filmmakers. Written, prod, ed and dir Lizzie Borden, starring Honey, Adele Bertei, Jeanne Satterfield, Flo Kennedy, Kathryn Bigelow. 80 mins. Colour.

   This underground movie, made over five years on 16mm film and video, was deservedly given quite wide distribution. 10 years after a peaceful social-democratic revolution in the USA, the Party is in power, the position of women in society is still not much improved, and unemployment (especially of women) is widespread. Radical FEMINIST groups (whose differing political positions are shown with a sort of cartoon clarity) are at first at odds; as disenchantment with the Party builds up they are drawn together and a new revolution begins. Stereotyped conceptions of feminists as humourless refugees from the middle classes are shaken (on several grounds) by this pleasing and lively film, whose near-future DYSTOPIA was imaginatively shot (out of low-budget necessity, a little as with ALPHAVILLE) in contemporary New York.

   PN