While it's easy to call certain older works of literature and film that were set in the future and seemed to predict what is happening now, prescient, it's more likely that either their creatures made a luck guess, or that history is more cyclical than we realize. We keep making the same mistakes, but perhaps more importantly, we keep ignoring those voices that can see what the future might hold.
Born in Flames, Lizzie Borden's punk vision of a future New York, where women and other marginalized people began to fight back against their oppression in increasingly violent ways, is a work of art that seems prescient, and yet it's a film that is both of tis time and, in that great-for-art-but-bad-for-society way, timeless. It's a testament to DIY filmmaking that puts the tools in the hands of those whose voices are usually ignored. Croterion has now issued a wonderful Blu-ray, following on their release of Borden's film Working Girls, adding to her particular sociocultural history of New York in the 1980s. But that spirit of rebellion and anger that we see stirring again now, is at the forefront of Born in Flames.
The 'future' city is one which is celebrating the 10th anniversary of a supposed social democratic revolution (when it seems, in our 2025, the city might actually be abut to elect a social democratic mayor). There are claims that work fair programs have created equality; but of course, that equality has left a lot of people behind. The film focuses on women: black women, lesbians, working class women, and all combinations therein, as they take the media and the law into their own hands, to shout from the proverbial rooftops, the failure of the revolution for too many, and how they plan to ignite another one.
There are three groups of women who are all working towards liberation: Isabel and her group with Radio Regazza, fighting through music and communicating their message of anarchy across the radio waves. Also using these waves is Honey and Radio Phoenix, aimed more at the struggles of Black American women, who face more societal roadblocks than white women. Then there is the Women's Army, who among other actions, ride on bicycles around the city and stop (often violently) men who are attacking women. These are not opposing factions so much as groups with different ideas and methods of how to bring true liberating to women.
Borden and her team put together this story via newscasts, archival footage, narrative scenes, an investigative story, mixing genre nods with its indie, no-wave format. This might seem at first glance to be chaotic, but this mix of cinéma verité, guerilla documentary, and indie drama speaks to a method in the madness: how people who are working towards rebellion and freedom must explore and try many methods to see which ones will be effective. Also, in understanding that there is no single method, but many that make for effective storytelling, and effective revolution.
The actors are, for the most part, non-professional, which adds to the cinema verité tone, and also to a geniuneness to their hope, their anger, their drive, and their actions. Much of what the films want to portray is that no ideology, no movement, is singular or with its adherents always in full agreement. We can understand why the women take part in demonstrations and strikes, why some prefer to stay behind the radio mic, why some would use a whistle, and why some a gun.
The mixed media form, as noted, is part of the message as well, and it keeps the audience on our proverbial toes. You might find yourself aligned early with one particular form or voice, and see all others through them; you might find yourself as one of the detectives investigating the women (though hopefully not to dismantle the groups, as the detectives intend to, and it's familiar in how organizations like the FBI treated people like Martin Luther King Jr., or groups like the Black Panthers). It all forms something like a dossier, a record of a possible time when the marginalized smashed through the white noise of alleged normalcy.
Borden utilized recent and archival newscast footage of various riots, acts of police brutality, and the New York that she lived in to showcase how the world of the film, while perhaps set 10 years in the future, reflected the city that she lived in. There was a sense among that were doing well that as long as they were fine, it didn't matter that the marginalized could never get ahead, that so much of the city was left to rot, and that women were still having to fight for even the most basic rights (it wasn't too many years before this that women were finally allow to have their own credit cards). And it's scary how much the world, our western society, has not changed as much as it should have.
It's amazing how Born in Flames both reflects its time and is still a rallying cry to the modern world, 40 years on. Borden, her cast and crew craft an indie, grimy, angry, loving, courageous shout to our collective consciousness and ask that we fight for ourselves, our fellow humans, and the future. It's the kind of oppositional cinema that is sorely lacking today, and shows how the medium and the message cannot be separated, and how the voices of the marginalized are even more necessary today, with the necessity and reality of interdependence and mutual struggle.
Special Features
The restoration, as always with Criterion, is great, retaining the indie DIY look and monoaural sound (it always helps when the filmmaker is around to approve the work). There's a great short interview with Lizzie Borden about how she came ot New York, how she started in visual art before moving to film, her introduction to the radical feminism of the era and how it shaped her story, and especially how she found her non-professional cast.
The inclusion of Borden's first feature film, Regrouping, makes for an interest comparison and contrast to Born in Flames. This was made when Borden was still learning about the various feminist groups in New York, and she was given very intimate access to one particular set of women. The film show footage of those women in their daily lives, in conversation, in seemingly menial tasks and complex ones. Over these images, Borden has the women all speaking about their experiences with each other, why they wanted to start working together, the internal troubles and disagreements that lead to nearly the dissolution of the group, and how they found a way to work through and with those differences. It's a great showcase not only of the evolution of second wave feminism, but also as Borden already was strong in her style and structure, finding a way to engage the audience with political themes and a somewhat experimental and cinéma verité style.
The booklet includes two terrific essays, providing deeper context to Borden's work. So Mayer provides a history and analysis of Regrouping, with insight on the people in the film, the politics of the relationships and the attitude towards their work in feminism, and the reception of the film. Yasmine Price's essay on Born in Flames talks of Borden's aims to democratize the film's production, making sure it was a collective effort and finding the energy of the film in its collective creation, punk aesthetics, and rebellion against monoculture.
Probably the best treat of the special features is the commentary, which includes Borden, several cast members, and two of the camerapeople. It's rare to get so many of the cast back together some 40 years later to engage with a film in a commentary, and it's a delight to listen to them remember the film, their experiences at the time, and how they see the film, and themselves, so many decades later.
Born in Flames is currently available to order on the Crtierion website, and available to watch on the Criterion Channel.