Born in Flames
1983, 80 minutes, color, sound, English
Courtesy of First Run Features

Set in America ten years after the Second American Revolution, Born In Flames is a comic fantasy of female rebellion. When Adelaide Norris, the founder of the Woman's Army, is mysteriously killed, a seemingly impossible coalition of women- crossing all lines of race, class, and sexual preference- emerges to blow the System apart. In a series of thrilling and often humorous encounters between groups of women ranging from militant black lesbians to white punk feminist musicians, Born in Flames covers a wide range of radical feminist ideas.



Born Linda Elizabeth Borden to an upper-class family, Lizzie Borden legally changed her name after hearing about the famous axe murderer. She studied painting at Wellesley and worked as a film critic in New York City while making short films in the '70s. After five years of production, she completed her first feature in 1983. Shot with an extremely low budget and no script, Born in Flames envisioned a socialist revolution brought on by women working together across race and class lines. Though not very accessible, it's still regarded as a classic of feminist independent film and has been widely debated over the years. Her next feature, Working Girls, was also shot in a kind of faux-documentary style although with a more manageable budget. It positioned prostitution as a reasonable source of income for middle-class women, focusing on a lesbian photographer working in an upscale brothel. Working Girls won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance. She made her third film in 1992, the big-budget erotic thriller Love Crimes, which was a failure in many respects. For the rest of the '90s, Borden worked on television and straight-to-video projects, directing the horror TV show Monsters, the Showtime series Red Shoe Diaries, and the Playboy video Inside Out. She didn't return to filmmaking until 1994 to direct a segment in the anthology film Erotique. - Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide