Robin Blaetz, associate professor and chair of the Film Studies Program at Mount Holyoke College, gives a lecture entitled "Amnesis Time: The Films of Marjorie Keller" on Friday, March 4, at 4:30 p.m. in Sunderland, Room 110. Keller—an important feminist filmmaker, teacher, and scholar—worked in the avant-garde tradition. Her filmmaking career extended from 1971 to 1991 and encompassed more than 20 works, including Misconception (1977), Daughters of Chaos (1980), and Herein (1991). Keller's scholarship included publications on filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage, Jean Cocteau, and Joseph Cornell. Among other venues, Keller taught at Middlebury College during the winter term of 1994, shortly before her untimely death.
Blaetz (at left) is the author of Visions of the Maid: Joan of Arc in American Film and Culture, which explores how the 15th-century warrior has been used for a variety of social and political ends. Blaetz's current project is an anthology of essays about the feminist avant-garde filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s. About Keller, Blaetz has written, "Keller's films explore the nature of the medium through sound/image interplay, shifts in focus, and rapid editing of thematically and visually associated imagery. The films range in tone and appearance from Stan Brakhage-like flurries of indistinct images to echoes of George Landow's humorous reconstructions to Yvonne Rainer-like documentary footage. What is different and consistent in Keller's films is a concern with autobiography and social situations. Misconception is a formally complex combination of imagery and sound associated with the pregnancy and childbirth experienced by Keller's sister. While the film is a personal tribute to her sister and a pointed commentary on Brakhage's lyrical childbirth films of the early 1960s, it is also about misguided and confusing cultural conceptions about birth."
A screening of selected films of Marjorie Keller takes place on Thursday, March 3 at 4:30 P.M. in Sunderland 110. This event is sponsored by the Film and Media Culture Program, the Program in Women's and Gender Studies, and the Hirschfield Fund, and is free an open to the public.