In the 1970s and '80s, feminist film practice was foregrounded with the
emergence of groups like the London Women's Film Group as the 'putting into
action' of feminist film theory and attitude. Meanwhile, a new regionalism
challenged the metropolitanised and patriarchal institutions of British culture.
Groups developed in Cardiff, Leeds, Sheffield, London and across the country.
The desire to work collectively on films about the lives of women, and in
particular working-class women, was facilitated by existing community
organisations and a shared engagement with feminist politics. Such groups
engaged in the politics of representation and social organisation and committed
themselves to an integrated practice of production, exhibition and distribution,
and to a collective or co-operative approach.
In the Workshop Declaration of 1982, the trade union ACTT (now BECTU) agreed to approve properly funded and staffed non-commercial and grant-aided film and
tape work if made by a 'workshop', defined as a non-profit organisation of at
least four members, with equal participation in control of the undertakings.
This created the conditions for the funding of workshops like the Sheffield Film
Co-op and Video Vera, recognising the social and political contribution of their
work as an alternative to mainstream and commercial products.
With their own distribution apparatus and access to national television -
particularly with the arrival of Channel 4 in 1983 - such groups possessed a
guerrilla mobility through all points in a media system that, while ultimately
dominated by state and corporate broadcasting, was nevertheless multiple,
diffuse, and capable of many different organisational forms.
Emma Hedditch
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