Queer Feminist Sci-Fi Classic Born in Flames (1983) — 40th Anniversary Screening

A blast of righteous rage from feminist filmmaker Lizzie Borden, Born in Flames is set in the not-too-distant future, ten years after a Socialist-Democratic “War of Liberation.” This half-measure revolution has failed the marginalized: people of color, queer people, and women. A band of revolutionaries dubbed the Women’s Army—led by black lesbian women such as pirate radio DJ Honey (Honey)—refuses to take it any longer and become armed militants taking on government. Filmed in a vérité documentary style, Born in Flames remains, 40 years after its initial release, a dispatch from the future, a revolutionary commentary on the limits of liberalism as well as a bracing portrait of Reagan-era radicalism. Borden’s film is at once a dystopian science-fiction thriller and a socialist-feminist manifesto. Inspired by the Maoist agitprop of filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard, Born in Flames nevertheless pulses with a bold DIY energy all its own.