extent that money can be garnered from liberals
to make “art” as long as it is not fundamentally
dangerous. But can any political art which
attempts to attack the assumptions of The Sys-
tem from within patriarchal capitalism actually
threaten it? This has been and will be an area of
debate for many political estheticians and ar-
tists and can hardly be answered here.

But we can and must confront the question.
From what is the “independent” filmmaker or
artist independent? She is not independent from
the need to make a living. She is not independ-
ent from the need for capital —money which
gives the power to make her films and distribute
her films within a tight commercial media mo-
nopoly. When a feminist wonders why capital-
ists won’t hand over the money to make anti-
sexist films, she, like her “independent” male
counterpart, must face the terms of her depend-
ence. She has begun to beg, borrow or steal
(translated as win grants, go into debt, etc.) the
capital to write herself into visual history, mak-
ing films about the experience of women; viz:
the films of Julia Reichert, Yvonne Rainer,
Barbara Kopple, Chantal Ackerman, and many
others. But who actually sees these films? They
are shown in women’s festivals, in avant-garde
and political forums in a few major cities. She
is, in short, caught in that same economic trap.
Cooperatives for pooling resources and sharing
distribution efforts, such as New Day Films,
are beginning to form; they are collectives like
Heresies. But the absolute dependence on the
inconsistent, discrimate charity of liberals is the
underside of that ultimately romantic hope for
“independence.” The terms for independence,
then, among artists and feminists, are the very

terms of dependence. Yet another contradiction.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I would like to convince all feminists that it is
time to realign with the Left. Current economic
realities, heightening contradictions, and the
topography of world imperialism reaching its
limits, are forcing many groups in America to
confront their need for unity. The traditionally
sectarian American Left itself is beginning to
move toward coalition and alliance, toward
unity across color lines, across race lines, across

class lines and across gender lines. Within such
a potential configuration women could speak to
other women. We are beginning to recognize
that all oppressed peoples within capitalism
must come together if we are even to begin to
be able to defend ourselves against the attacks
and backlash of this system, much less to build
anew one.

Several feminist strategies for such a realign-
ment of women with the broader struggle for
freedom are presented in this issue of Heresies
(see “Toward Socialist-Feminism” and “Wages
for Housework”). This does not mean that wom-
en will not have to continue to force the priority
of their own demands in relation to the needs of
others. Women will need autonomy to develop
theory and strategy accountable to our own
needs within a broad movement, to avoid the
failures of socialist experiments in the past.
Thus, we must make our fight in the context of a
movement we help to define and build, a move-
ment that can take on the class contradiction as
well as the racial and sexual contradictions im-
plicit in the structures of the larger society. For,
on these structures, the fate of all women, like
it or not, is inextricably dependent. To wed
feminism to the myths and false hopes of liberal
idealism is to contribute to the systematic
liquidation of its potential power.

1. Mitchell, Juliet, “Women and Equality,” in Partisan
Review (Summer, 1975).

2. Rowbotham, Sheila, Women, Resistance and Revolu-
tion, Vintage Books (New York, 1974).

3. Ibid., p. 51.

4. Schneir, Miriam, ed., Feminism: The Essential Historical
Writings, Vintage Books (New York, 1972), p. xviii.

5. Ibid., p. xv.

6. Guettel, Charnie, Marxism and Feminism, Women’s
Educational Press (Ontario, Canada, 1974), p. 2.

7.1 and others have written elsewhere about the history of
women directors. See my article in Artforum (Sept. 1972)
and Sharon Smith’s Women Who Make Movies, Hopkin-
son and Blake (New York, 1975).

8. In Film Culture Reader, ed., P. Adams Sitney, Praeger
(New York, 1970).

Joan Braderman is completing her doctorate in film and
political theory at N.Y.U., writes theory and criticism and
makes 16mm films. She teaches film at The School of
Visual Arts in New York City, is a political activist and likes
to sing.

93