Born in Flames / Stranger Inside
This program is presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series A Place of Rage: Women and Anger on Screen. Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
In-person: Q&A between films with writer-director Lizzie Borden ("Born in Flames").
Born in Flames (1983)
This radical, post-punk vision of feminist revolt is set in a dystopian New York a decade after a failed social-democratic revolution. When Adelaide Norris, founder of the Women’s Army, is mysteriously killed, women across race, class and sexual orientation unite to challenge a government bent on repression. Shot guerrilla-style on the streets of 1980s pre-gentrified New York, on a $40,000 budget, over five years, the film is a fierce DIY manifesto and unforgettable entry in the canon of science fiction genre films. It remains a landmark of feminist cinema — visionary and startlingly urgent.
DCP, color, 80 min. Director/Screenwriter: Lizzie Borden. With: Jean Satterfield.
Stranger Inside (2001)
Cheryl Dunye’s Stranger Inside is a raw, gripping women’s prison drama starring Yolonda Ross as Treasure, a young butch who commits a crime to reunite with her lifer mother, Brownie (Davenia McFadden). By engaging and reshaping women-in-prison film conventions, Dunye centers incarcerated Black lesbians and their family ties rather than crime or punishment. This constitutes “a radical act — to center Black queer women behind bars, on their own terms,” says Dunye. Through its intimate focus and Dunye’s auteurist vision, the film reframes a marginalized community, blending maternal melodrama and genre subversion into a landmark of American independent cinema.
DCP, color, 97 min. Director/Screenwriter: Cheryl Dunye. With: Yolonda Ross, Davenia McFadden.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
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