I know we’ve all heard the stories about the supposed ax murder Lizzie Borden, convicted for killing her own parents. Brutal and sad, we all have determined she must have had her reasons for the murders. While this Lizzie Borden is not the same Lizzie Borden ax murderer, her name is in fact inspired by the very same woman.

Born as Linda, and learning about Lizzie Borden’s case when she was about 11 years old, Linda decided to change from Linda Elizabeth Borden to Lizzie Borden. And thus her amazing story began. As a bisexual film maker, Borden created her fame through several different television career explorations, as well as film creation. She brought feminism into her films, and drew in a largely gay and independent film loving crowd with varied success. She experimented with sexuality in many of her films, her most famous being Born in Flames. She learned her filming techniques from what she taught herself.

She schooled at Wellesley College majoring in art, and moved to New York City where she began her film career as a critic. The famed films of Jean-Luc Godard put together in a festival inspired her to begin her own film making. In 1976 she made a black and white film called Regrouping, which has little internet personality and lacks much information as well as distribution. It was her films created in the 1980s which gained her attention from the public eye.

Produced in 1983, Born in Flames became the break Lizzie Borden needed to recieve interest. It’s a feminist sci-fi film in which job issues, gender discrimination, and governmental violence dominate. A group of women decide to mobilize and attack back further than had been dreamed of before, by either men or women.

Born in Flames continued on to win two awards, the “Reader Jury of the ‘Zitty’” in the Berlin International Film Festival, presented to Borden in 1983, and the “Grand Prix” (Grand Prize) in the Créteil International Women’s Film Festival, also presented to Borden in 1983. It also continued to win a first place prize in the women’s film festical located in Sceaux, France. When Borden was confronted about the violence in the film, and whether there was a better solution, she replied, “I asked many, many women if they would ever use violence, and the answer was always no. How convenient for the government. I’m posing the question: What if we did?”

Born in Flames was the only film I could find of Lizzie Borden’s and as a result I only got to see one angle of her film making skills. However, within this angle, I saw a mastery which I thoroughly enjoyed. As a feminist film, Borden created all men in to the skeeziest, creepiest men I have ever seen portrayed in film. Two hispanic men harassed a hispanic woman at the beginning of the film, first by just talking and ending in trying to subdue her. A woman’s group created and fit for the purpose, rode up on their bicycles blowing silver whistles, in effect, drawing attention to the hispanic men who were forced to run away. A second scene with this very group of women help out a woman on the subway. The Youtube video below shows the scene, and the male voice overs at the end tell how the government is going to deal with the woman’s group.

Working Girls, first showed in 1986, is another of Lizzie Borden’s pseudo-documentaries, showing the less glamourized version of a prostitute’s job. She presents it through her main character Molly, a lesbian photographer working as a prostitute to make enough money to get by. It isn’t romantically put, and often shows how droll the job can be, as well as dangerous. Working Girls attempts to show the unpleasant reality of the world we live in.

Love Crimes, released in 1992, was not given good reviews. The film detailed the story of David Hanover, a man who strategically takes advantage of women, both sexually and financially. He poses as a photographer, takes pictures of his victims, has sex with them, and then steal from them. All of the women refuse to file charges and come into court. However, Dana Greenway has her own ideas about how to catch him, and her own job in a law firm; but just like all the others, Dana soon finds herself in the same place as the other women. Borden had gone into Hollywood to produce Love Crimes, and even she was unhappy with the resulting product. She left Hollywood to regain control of her work.

Borden continued following her work into Playboy Videos, where she directed two episodes of “Inside Out” in 1992, as well as a segment called “Let’s Talk About Sex” which showed the life of a latina phone sex worker in the film Erotique.

Tags: Born in Flames, independent film, Lizzie Borden, Lizzy Kirkham, Love Crimes, Working Girls

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 12:14 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.