The Norwich Women's Film Weekend (or NWFW) was a two-day annual event that ran for 10 years, from 1979 to 1989, at Cinema City in Norwich. It was organised to 'promote and encourage women film-makers and present the audience with films dealing with women's issues', as the first programme (1979) put it. It was the first event created, curated, managed and implemented by a group called Cinewomen. The NWFW lasted longer than any other women's film festival in the UK and forms part of the history of women's cinema and feminism more generally, and also the history of culture and the arts in Norwich.
Origins
The event was initiated in the late 1970s by Ginette Vincendeau, who had just started her PhD in film studies at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and was a member of the Council of Management of what was then known as the Norfolk and Norwich Film Theatre (NNFT). Part-sponsored by the Eastern Arts Association and the British Film Institute (BFI), NNFT became Cinema City in April 1978. Vincendeau was joined by UEA librarian Biddy Fisher, postgraduate film students Caroline Merz and Teresa Grimes (also a film-maker) and Elizabeth Bee, a lecturer in further education. Other women joined Cinewomen at certain times during the 10 years of its existence.
This was the time of an explosion in feminist work, which had a significant impact on cinema in terms of both film-making and film theory. The creation of the NWFW was encouraged by feminist theoretician and film-maker Laura Mulvey and followed a successful event called 'Women in Film' organised by Ginette Vincendeau in 1978. This led directly to the first Women's Film Weekend in 1979.
Organisation and ethos
The NWFW was held at Cinema City in Norwich, England, over one three-day weekend each year (except in 1984). Cinewomen's aim was to make the festival as accessible to as many women as possible, both local (including UEA students) and from across the UK. Key to this aim were free accommodation, child-care and on-site food at cost price.
Primarily a festival that incorporated discussion sessions and live interviews, the NWFW placed the emphasis on screening as many themed film sessions as possible and less on conference-style debate. Screenings were introduced by a variety of speakers, often the film-maker/director, and a range of talks, exhibitions and discussions ran during the event.
Aims and scope
From the beginning, the NWFW showed a range of significant films from European art cinema to British war documentaries, workshop and political film, avant-garde cinema and mainstream productions. However, one major theme was the examination of images of women. Recognising that cinema screens had been dominated by women as romantic figures or sex objects, the event aimed to show how women film-makers portrayed women's lives and elaborated on the feminist theme of 'the personal is political', with an accent on work, motherhood, sexuality and reclaiming the place of women in history.
The NWFW also aimed to re-appraise women's roles in film production by showing the work of classic directors such as Alice Guy, Dorothy Arzner, Germaine Dulac and Ida Lupino, and the output of then-neglected women who had worked in the British industry including Muriel Box, Wendy Toye, Kay Mander and Jill Craigie. All four of the latter came to the NWFW to discuss their films with the audience.
The festival also made a point of showing the works of contemporary women directors who re-cast history from a female perspective: Helma Sanders-Brahms, Pat Murphy, Claudia von Alemann and Margarethe von Trotta. Many of their films are now recognised as pioneering. Films by Chantal Akerman, Valie Export, Sally Potter, Margaret Tait, Tina Keane, Lis Rhodes, Yvonne Rainer, Catherine Breillat and Jan Oxenberg were all shown at the NWFW throughout the years. Also included was a distinctly militant brand of cinema which placed feminist struggles explicitly within terms of class as well as gender (referencing women's struggles including Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp and the Dagenham sewing machinists’ strike).