Professor Emerita Liane Brandon will celebrate 50 years of groundbreaking documentaries produced by New Day Films during a four-day celebration organized by Duke University’s Archive of Documentary Arts, which holds the New Day Films Collection. The event will kick off with a free Zoom conversation with Brandon and her three co-founders of New Day Films on Wednesday, Oct. 19, at 7 p.m. 

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New Day Films, founded in 1971 as a filmmaker-owned co-op, has documented the history of a wide range of social movements, from the nascent women’s movement to anti-war activism, labor struggles, the fight for LGBTQ and disability rights, racial equality and other issues confronting society in the U.S. and abroad. Films in New Day’s collection have won Oscars, Emmys and numerous other awards and honors over five decades.

“Back then, cable, videotape, YouTube, social media, email and cell phones didn’t exist, and TV stations didn’t show independent social issue films. We felt that reaching our audiences was a political act...as much as the act of making films,” says Brandon, who served on the UMass Amherst College of Education faculty for 30 years.

Brandon’s own films were groundbreaking and among the earliest and most frequently used consciousness-raising tools of the women’s movement. They included Sometimes I Wonder Who I Am (1970), Anything You Want To Be (1971), and Betty Tells Her Story (1972). Her films won national and international awards, were featured at film festivals and on HBO, TLC, and Cinemax, and were presented at the Museum of Modern Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Barbican Centre in London, among others.

The first of four days of events will be an online discussion with the feminist filmmakers and founders of New Day. Brandon, Amalie R. Rothschild, Jim Klein and Julia Reichert will be featured and a Q & A with viewers will follow. The general public can register to join this event: New Day Filmmakers Zoom

The Zoom session will be followed by three evenings of in-person film screenings at the Rubenstein Arts Center at Duke University. More information about the four-day celebration is available here. For more information about New Day Films, visit newday.com