Terra Femme

Terra Femme
USA, 2021, 63’
in English w/ Arm. subtitles
Director and Scriptwriter:  Courtney Stephens
Producer: Courtney Stephens
Editors: Courtney Stephens, Dounia Sichov
Sound: Paul Hill
Music: Sarah Davahi
It’s difficult to imagine now, but a hundred years ago great areas of the world were still terra incognita for most people. Long-distance travel was the exclusive preserve of well-to-do adventurers, most of them male. The arrival of lightweight film cameras unlocked the globe for anyone who could afford a cinema ticket.

This stunningly beautiful found-footage film comprises edited scenes shot by inquisitive women who traveled the world in the first half of the last century—women such as Mrs. Dixon, a widow from Philadelphia, crossing into the arctic circle on a pleasure cruise. She shot the crystal-clear footage of lightly dressed people slithering across an icy plain against an imposing backdrop of snow-covered mountains.

Courtney Stephens

Courtney Stephens is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her non-fiction and experimental films address the contours of language, historical memory, and women’s lives. Her work has been exhibited at the Berlinale, the Museum of Modern Art, New York Film Festival, The National Gallery of Art, South by Southwest, The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Hong Kong, Camden, Mumbai, Luxembourg, Dhaka, and San Francisco International Film Festivals. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, a California Humanities Grant, fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Pocantico, and the Sloan Foundation, and was one of Filmmaker Magazine‘s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. A graduate of the American Film Institute, she co-founded the Los Angeles microcinema Veggie Cloud and has curated film programs for The Getty, Museum of the Moving Image, Union Docs, and Flaherty NYC.

Filmography

Ida Western Exile (2015), Mixed Signals (2018), The American Sector (2020), Cinema-19 (co-director, 2020), Perfect Fifths (2021), Terra Femme (2021).