2019 Wisconsin's Own Films: We Were Hardly More Than Children

We Were Hardly More Than Children by Cecelia Condit
Shorewood WI 

Running Time: 9 minutes
Screening Time: Sat, Sept 7th 6:45pm
Experimental, Women, Narrative, Documentary

"We Were Hardly More Than Children" tells an epic tale of an illegal abortion as lived by two friends on a frightful journey through a world that has little concern for their survival.


Website

Director's Bio:

Since 1981, Condit has created videos and heroines whose lives swing between safety and terror, beauty and the grotesque, innocence and cruelty. Her work puts a subversive spin on the traditional mythology of women in film and the psychology of sexuality and violence. Exploring the dark side of female subjectivity, her “feminist fairy tales” focus on friendships, age, and most recently the natural world.

Condit has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, American Film Institute, National Endowment for the Arts, Mary L. Nohl Foundation, Wisconsin Arts Council and the National Media Award from the Retirement Research Foundation. Her work shows internationally and is represented in collections including the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and the Centre Georges Pompidou in France.

She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In addition, Condit received a B.F.A. in sculpture from the Philadelphia College of Art and M.F.A. from Tyler School of Art of Temple University in photography. At present, she is professor emerita in the Department of Film, Video, Animation and New Genres at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Formerly, she was a professor and director of the graduate program in film.

Director's Statement:

"We Were Hardly More Than Children" is a tale of trauma and friendship. Lena's story is of the Cape Cod artist, Diane Messinger, whose paintings are throughout the piece. Diane's paintings are the anger she doesn't feel and the hurts she doesn't remember.