Irene Lusztig
2021
Yours in Sisterhood
Irene Lusztig
What might be revealed in the process of inviting strangers to act out and respond to 1970s feminism forty years later? Between 2015 and 2017, hundreds of strangers in communities all over the US were invited to read aloud and respond to letters from the 70s sent to the editor of Ms. Magazine–the first mainstream feminist magazine in the US. The intimate, provocative, and sometimes heartbreaking conversations that emerge from these spontaneous performances make us think critically about the past, present, and future of feminism.
Yours in Sisterhood
The Motherhood Archives
Irene Lusztig
Archival montage, science fiction, and an homage to '70s feminist filmmaking are woven together to form The Motherhood Archives, a lyrical essay film excavating hidden histories of childbirth in the twentieth century.
The Motherhood Archives
Maternity Test
Irene Lusztig
Eleven women are invited to audition to read a text composited from anonymous mothering.com forum posts. In turns, they narrate an intimate experience of traumatic c-section birth. The collective reading raises shifting questions about idealized birth, maternal language, reality, performance, public feminism, and private confession.
Maternity Test
Forty Years
Irene Lusztig
For the past two years, I have been filming people (mostly women and mostly strangers) reading letters sent to the editor of Ms. Magazine-the first mainstream feminist magazine in the US-in the 1970s, in the cities where the letters were originally written. In this short film, four women read letters about sexual violence that were sent to Ms. Magazine between 1974-1976.
Forty Years