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Cinenova

1979–Present
Location

England

Description

Cinenova is a volunteer-run organisation preserving and distributing the work of feminist film and video makers. Cinenova was founded in 1991 following the merger of two feminist film and video distributors, Circles and Cinema of Women, each formed in 1979. Cinenova currently distributes over 300 titles that include artists’ moving image, experimental film, narrative feature films, documentary and educational videos made from the 1910’s to the early 2000’s. The thematics in these titles include oppositional histories, post and de-colonial struggles, representation of gender, race, sexuality, and other questions of difference and importantly the relations and alliances between these different struggles. Cinenova offers access to an extensive archive and advice relating to moving image work directed by makers who identify as womxn, transgender, gender non-conforming and gender non–binary. Cinenova is informed by its history as a key resource in the UK independent film distribution sector and internationally.

Cinenova. “Cinenova.” Accessed February 13, 2024. https://cinenova.org/about/.
Works in catalogue
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    Women In Revolt

    film/video, 1971

    Featuring the real-life cast-list of Lou Reed's classic and caustic queer anthem, Walk on the Wild Side, Women in Revolt has been seen as Warhol's revenge for his shooting by Valerie Solanas three years earlier. Solanas had pointedly attacked Warhol's libertarian involvement with transsexuals, arguing that as all men wanted to be women, they laid waste to the world to compensate for their lack. The film, which Time Out reviewed as "Three transvestites play at being women playing at being Women" has Long Island socialite-turned-actress, Candy Darling's revolt ending up on the casting couch, Holly Woodlawn's model becoming a druggy Bohemian/drop-out, and schoolteacher Jackie Curtis destined to be the obligatory housewife. Curtis, however, on whose life the film is based, steals the show when she pays to lose her virginity to a former Mr. America in an attempt to "find out what we're fighting against". Little surprise then that the 80s women's movement reeked its revenge on TSs. Warhol's favourite film.

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    Paradise Is Not For Sale

    film/video, 1984

    With rare early footage of Christine Jorgensen, the film follows her meeting thirty years later with the surgeons that performed what became known as the world's first "sex change" operation.

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    In Loving Memory

    film/video, 1992

    Female-to-male transsexuality and female fetishism are explored in an entrancing performance.

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    Starring transsexual dyke, gender outlaw and playwright Kate Bornstein with Justin Bond, Pat Califia etc. Using Kate's play "Hidden: A Gender" as backdrop, the documentary celebrates gender diversity while exploring society's resistance to abandoning bipolar gender identities and realising what Justin Bond concludes, that: "Everyone has a pussy, but some people discover it and some don't."

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    Shinjuku Boys

    film/video, 1995

    Multi-award winning BBC documentary about the 'onnabe', women who decide to live as men. Hosts at the New Marilyn night club in Tokyo where the onnabe cater for heterosexual women, the Shinjuku boys negotiate in different ways relationships with their clients who usually leave them for marriage and to have children. Gaish is an elegant playboy with lots of girlfriends but a constant fear of loneliness. Tatsu who has felt a boy since early childhood, is on male hormones he gets on the black market and lives with his girlfriend Tomoe. Kazuki intends to marry Kumi who started life as a man and now works at the Pink Soda Cabaret Club as a dancer.

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    Del goes home to California to come out to his family as transgender.