Part of Staff Picks and programmed by Brooke, who says: “One of the greatest examples of essential feminist cinema that you’ve probably never heard of! Influenced by her documentarian roots, Weill’s depiction of young women navigating life in ‘70s New York City is everything I love about independent filmmaking. Truly a touchstone of American feminist cinema, I only wish I could’ve had access to this film as a budding female filmmaker.”
When her best friend and roommate abruptly moves out to get married, Susan (Melanie Mayron), trying to be an artist while making ends meet as a bar mitzvah photographer on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, finds herself adrift in both life and love.
A wonder of American independent cinema by Claudia Weill (who, when she was admitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a director in 1981, was one of only four women ever to have received that honor), GIRLFRIENDS is a remarkably authentic vision of female relationships that has become a touchstone for makers of an entire subgenre of films and television shows about young women trying to make it in the big city. This 1970s New York time capsule captures the complexities and contradictions of women’s lives and relationships with wry humor and refreshing frankness. (Synopsis from the Criterion Collection)
“‘What I tried to do was show that female friendship is as fragile, delicate, supportive, complex, nourishing, painful and difficult as a love affair,’ Miss Weill said the other day over lunch at Sardi's. ‘It is not unlike a marriage,’ she went on. ‘At the end of the day, you share meals, you talk about what you did, you go to movies together and you see friends together.’” —New York Times (Aug 4, 1978) “One of the first films to remove male-centric narratives from its major plot points. Romantic interactions with men form its secondary stories, not its primary ones…. The generations of filmmakers (and regular women) who came after GIRLFRIENDS entered cultural consciousness owe the film—and Weill—a great debt. It was she who elevated their experiences beyond everyday monotony and gave them a new story — their story — to be a part of.” —Elyssa Goodman, Vice “GIRLFRIENDS was radical when it was released in 1978 and remains so…. Weill pioneered an entire subgenre of independent women in the city and GIRLFRIENDS is an overlooked classic.” —Katie Goh, Little White Lies
