Maybe the only radical queer feminist alternate history film ever made, Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames is political filmmaking at its most urgent – a hyper-realistic docu-drama (made over the course of five years for $40,000) depicting the post-revolutionary moment after a feminist/socialist coup in America. With violence in the streets and misogynist backlash spreading, Women’s Armies risk major sacrifices in the fight for continued justice. A howling screed against sexism, fascism, homophobia, and hatred of any kind, this film raises prescient issues in an uncanny fictional context and remains a powerful polemic on par with The Battle of Algiers and Jeanne Dielman.
Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with restoration funding from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation.
“Beautifully made, courageously edited, and swift-moving, this challenging, provocative film is a work that is both humanist and revolutionary.” – Marjorie Baumgarten, The Austin Chronicle
“This unruly, unclassifiable film – perhaps the sole entry in the hybrid genre of radical-lesbian-feminist sci-fi vérité – premiered two years into the Reagan regime, but its fury proves as bracing today as it was back when this country began its inexorable shift to the right.” – Melissa Anderson, The Village Voice
