Is there a tradition of women's independent moving image making practice?

Since its invention, women have utilised moving image as a tool for expression. However, their numbers as directors in the mainstream film industry remain low. This research looks at how women, as marginalised practitioners, have made films outside the mainstream film industry using the recording resources that were available to them. Deprived of the assets which have been available to their male colleagues, women have used domestic recording equipment to develop a set of alternative video-making practices. Because of its non-professional form and content, the type of work investigated in this research has not been recognised as having a legacy or cultural significance for women filmmakers. This research looks at a set of practices through the lens of my own practice. It investigates these as interrupting techniques which the materiality of video affords. It shows how women moving image makers have visually critiqued both the structures that have excluded them and the narratives which have overlooked their specific contribution to avant-garde and experimental moving image making. The originality in this research lies in recontextualising practice histories through engaging with women’s historical use of domestic recording technology and in grouping practices around the interruption which their form and content present to existing metanarratives of women’s marginalisation. Through examining work in the distributed archive, (the connection between works across different digital platforms) responding through making work, archiving and this writing, I argue that there is a specific tradition of women’s independent moving image making practice.