Working girls / a Lizzie Borden Alternate Current production ; story, Lizzie Borden ; screenplay, Lizzie Borden with Sandra Kay ; produced by Lizzie Borden and Andi Gladstone ; directed by Lizzie Borden.
Edition:
Director-approved Blu-ray special edition.
Publisher:
The Criterion Collection,
Copyright Date:
2021
Description:
1 videodisc (93 min.) : sound, color ; 4 3/4 in. + 1 booklet (36 pages : color illustrations ; 17 cm.)
Louise Smith, Ellen McElduff, Amanda Goodwin, Marusia Zach, Janne Peters, Helen Nicholas. Title and credits from screen. Originally released as a motion picture in 1986. Wide screen (1.66:1). Features: New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director Lizzie Borden; Audio commentary from 2007 featuring Borden, director of photography Judy Irola, and actor Amanda Goodwin; New conversation between Borden and filmmaker Bette Gordon; New conversation with Goodwin, actor Louise Smith, producer Andi Gladstone, and assistant director Vicky Funari; New conversation with sex workers Antonia Crane, Daphne, Selena the Stripper, and Jo Weldon; An essay by author So Mayer and excerpts from a 1987 interview with Borden by film scholar Scott MacDonald.
Summary:
"Sex work is portrayed with radical nonjudgment in Lizzie Borden's immersive, richly detailed look at the rhythms and rituals of society's most stigmatized profession. Inspired by the experiences of the sex workers Borden met while making her underground feminist landmark Born in Flames, Working Girls reveals the textures of a day in the life of Molly (Louise Smith), a photographer working part-time in a Manhattan brothel, as she juggles a steady stream of clients, balances relationships with her coworkers with the demands of an ambitious madam, and above all fights to maintain her sense of self in a business in which the line between the personal and professional is all too easily blurred. In viewing prostitution through the lens of labor, Borden boldly desensationalizes the subject, offering an empathetic, humanizing, often humorous depiction of women for whom this work is just another day in the office"--Container.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.