Set ten years after a revolution in the USA, Born In Flames is a depressingly prescient film that shows a government struggling to deal with many groups - feminists, those fighting for gay rights, minorities, etc - it used to be able to just ignore completely. Adelaide Norris (Jean Satterfield) is the main figure rallying people around her, firing up large numbers of women who want the equal treatment that they fought for without being dismissed by the men around them.
Written and directed by Lizzie Borden, basing the work on a story by Ed Bowes, this is consistently interesting and consistently on the nose throughout. Filled with a righteous fury, it's even more rewarding (and horrible) nowadays, when we see the fight back against people who are just hoping to have some proper semblance of equality.
What may have seemed like complete fantasy, or unbelievably over the top comedy, back in the early 1980s has been proven to be almost non-fiction when you look at the world around us nowadays. Look at the reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement. Look at the tiresome and constant annual questions of "why can't we have a straight pride month?" and "when is International Men's Day?" (November 19th, as anyone who follows Richard Herring on Twitter will already know) Look at every straight, white male whining about being marginalised and erased from society, stunningly unaware of how prominently placed they are in every facet of our society. It's like listening to someone who won £50m in a national lottery and cannot stop complaining about how they didn't win on the week that the jackpot was £100m.
The cast all do good work, with it being mainly women (of course). It seems that the material resonated with everyone involved - again, no surprise - and people seize the opportunity to embrace their hopes, dreams, and fierce refusal to allow the world to maintain a status quo that has been tipped hugely in favour of one particular demographic for centuries.
Notable also for featuring both Kathryn Bigelow and Eric Bogosian in small roles, Born In Flames is a perfect way to confront viewers with outdated attitudes and oppression that all still loom large today. It's a prehistoric bug caught in amber, but someone made sure they could extract the DNA and synthesise it to keep dinosaurs alive, rampaging around the world and treating all of the smaller animals in the food chain with disdain.
I've only seen one other film from Borden, Working Girls, but she's absolutely someone I recommend to those seeking out important female film-makers of the 21st century. It's a shame that her filmography is not as large as it deserves to be, but be sure to watch her features whenever the opportunity arises.
10/10
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