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Comprised of rare amateur travelogues shot by women between the 1920s through 50s, Courtney Stephens's Terra Femme is a lecture-performance that weaves together questions of female authorship, cinematic excavation, and the Western gaze, complicating the freedoms these women experienced with traveling through foreign landscapes. Stephens presents a new type of traveler in Terra Femme: no longer a male seeker of conquests, she might be a divorcee on a tour of biblical gardens, or a widow on a cruise to the North Pole. Representing the world through women’s eyes, the films raise questions about female representation in the archive, the role of amateur movie-making in early documentary filmmaking, and the power dynamic between director and subject.

The screening will also feature a Q&A with Stephens and Madeleine Seidel, Assistant Curator, Performa.