Sisters! : making films, doing politics

How can we think of film as political action? Bridging the gulf between aesthetics and politics, artist and filmmaker Petra Bauer reflects on her own experience in making political films and launches a theoretical argument that via Hannah Arendt s ideas about the constitution of the political arena uncovers the underlying aesthetic mechanisms of contemporary collective and feminist filmmaking strategies. An exploration in artistic research, 'Sisters! Making Films, Doing Politics' draws on an extensive historical archive of radical filmmaking and film theory, with particular focus on the British film collectives of the 1970s and films made by Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers. At the centre of the investigation stands 'Sisters!', Petra Bauer s collaborative film project with the London-based feminist organisation Southall Black Sisters.