Working Together, Groups in Action: Feminist Collectives, Coops and Organisations Working in Film and Video in Britain, 1970 - 86 and the Present

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I propose to conduct a study of feminist collectives, coops and organisations working in experimental film and video, based in Britain and active between 1970 and 1986. I intend to discuss their methodology of collaborative organising and making in relation to the social, political and technological context of the time, debates about film aesthetics, and public sphere theories. I look to explore these organisations' methods, content of work and modes of circulation, whilst placing these in relation to current feminist, artist filmmakers working with communities and groups.The motivation for this study has been prompted by a noticeable rise in moving image artists working in collaboration with communities and groups. These include Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Petra Bauer, Lucy Parker, Seecum Cheung, Rehana Zaman and Alex Martinis Roe. Whilst these practices could arguably be equated to the increasing demand placed on artists to perform a social role amongst a steady decrease in public funding to social services, which can be illustrated by a recent rise in education programmes at arts institutions calibrated to engage marginalised youth and local groups, I also place these artists work and their approach to collaboration, non-hierarchical working, and reciprocal exchange, in a lineage of feminist self-organising in independent film and video production.