Circulating Feminist Moving Image II: Cinenova x Circles

To mark the 40th anniversary of the foundation of Circles – Women’s Film and Video Distribution, Cinenova presents a selection of films in response to the exhibition Lis Rhodes: Dissident Lines. Join the Cinenova Working Group for a discussion around the collection, its history and contemporary questions for a feminist artists’ moving image organisation.

Founded in 1979 by a small group including Felicity Sparrow, Tina Keane, Lis Rhodes and Annabel Nicolson, Circles’ programme included women only screenings and group discussions that took place at Four Corners Film Workshops in Bethnal Green.

Cinenova is a volunteer-run charity 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 1920s to the late 1990s. The thematics in these titles include oppositional histories, post-colonial struggles, representation of gender, race, sexuality, and other questions of difference and importantly the relations and alliances between these different struggles. The Cinenova Working Group, founded in 2010, oversees the ongoing work of preservation and distribution, as well as a public programme of events.

Lucy Reynolds has lectured and published extensively. Her research focuses on questions of the moving image, feminism, political space and collective practice. She is course leader for the MRES in Creative Practice at the School of Arts at the University of Westminster, where she is deputy director of the Centre for Research in Education, Art and Media (CREAM). As an artist, her ongoing sound work A Feminist Chorus has been heard at the Glasgow International Festival, the Wysing Arts Centre, the Showroom and The Grand Action cinema, Paris. She is editor of the forthcoming anthology Women Artists, Feminism and the Moving Image, and co-editor of the Moving Image Review and Art Journal (MIRAJ).