EDITORIAL
'Mass culture' is a curiously uniform product which comes to us daily from the cinema screen, the TV and newspapers. We as women are consumers of this culture, but traditionally have not been its producers. We have already devoted one bulletin to feminist printed media (No.18) where women have created so many new forms and networks for the written word: now we turn our attention to the vital area of visual communication.
The images and stereotypes of women presented by the media are an important part of our idea of ourselves, together with what we are taught at school and see for ourselves at home and in the world around us. Our critique of those media images has been the start of our collective self-definition. The women s movement has analysed the condescending and unreal ways women are presented as responsible, active members of society only when they restrict themselves to the home or to consuming the products of this society; and the ways in which we are exploited as swan-off bodies, to sell other products to men.
The womens movement has criticised these images and demonstrated just how harmful they are. We do not seek to replace them by any single of a stereotyped "feminist". The image already exists, an angry, white, man-hating middle-class shrew who has been burning her bra for the last ten years. We can't recognise ourselves in this cynical distortion any more than we identified with those weak, smiling, passive images. What the new women's films and videos bring us are the real faces of women, as we are, in all our diversity of age, colour, race , class, occupation and character, right across the world. The differences are not smoothed out to provide inoffensive, in controversial primetime viewing for an audience of passive consumers. Our debates, struggles celebrations, weaknesses, humour and strengths are all reflected in these films. Behind the specific situations, just because the realities are not stereotyped or smoothed over, they give us a clearer picture of our achievements and our shared problems and goals.
Many action groups continue to criticise the negative images of women produced by the media, protesting of offensive ads, sexist and pornographic films and insulting TV programmes. Other groups are working to ensure that women within the films and TV worlds gain a voice in decision-making and production, and keeping up the ressure to ensure that women have access to training in the technical skills of production.
We had no idea, when we started work on this bulletin, of the enormous number of films already made by women. An alternative film production has already been created by women across the world. Many women will never have seen these films because they are still not available through the traditional systems of distribution. Here, too, women have found the existing channels inaccessible and unsuited to their needs. Women who make films most often distribute them themselves, through the women's press and the circuit of women's groups and organisations, where they are not 'çonsumed' by passive spectators, but form part of the action and discussion in our campaigns and consciousness-raising. They have widened our understanding of issues, and, by teaching us about each other's situations,helped to connect our struggles.
Distribution cooperatives are spreading and growing, and given the amount of material at our disposal, we have had to limit ourselves to listing distributions here , with some idea of the kind of material they deal with and where to obtain their catalogues. We are also putting together a packet which will list individual films. We would welcome additional material, especially from Africa and Asia, for inclusion in the packet.
Unfortunately, we have had to concentrate on films and leave out other media which we know are very widespread. In areas such as Latin America, where the new film and video technology are only beginning to be available, lots of slideshows are produced and used, and street theatre is an important medium of the women's movement. Simply to limit ourselves to visual images, and to products which can be easily circulated, these have been excluded. For the same reasons, we have included photography, which has made such an important contribution to widening the images of women available to us and graphics, cartoons, many places: it would be beyond our scope here to give exhaustive listing.
Access to the new communications technology for women varies greatly across the world, but the same mass media span the globe and affect all our lives. We hope that this bulletin will help to spread the films and videotapes already made by women to a wider audience, and encourage other groups in their activities. Women are already involved with the new technologies at all levels, creating new forms and contents.