Joanie 4 Jackie, a video art project comprising "chainletters and zines," was established by interdisciplinary artist Miranda July in 1995 and later continued by students at Bard College. An active participant in the Riot Grrrl scene in the 1990s, July was frustrated by the lack of girls and women creating film and video -- particularly women of color, Queer women, women of lower socioeconomic strata, and older women -- and sought to remedy their absence with a project that embraced the "DIY" ethos of the Riot Grrrl subculture. The collection comprises over 300 videos, zines, and supporting materials collected, compiled, and circulated as part of the Joanie 4 Jackie project, as well as editing masters and videos documenting Joanie 4 Jackie events and media coverage. Also present are administrative files, correspondence relating to the project, posters, and ephemera.

Miranda July was born in Vermont in 1974, grew up in Berkeley, California, and currently lives in Los Angeles. She is a writer, a film director, and an artist. July moved to Portland, Oregon after quitting school in 1995, where she created the Big Miss Moviola project (later renamed to Joanie 4 Jackie for legal reasons), an underground all-female film network. July launched the project by creating a pamphlet, titled Challenge & a Promise, inviting girls and women to send in their homemade movies. The pamphlet emphasized that every movie would be accepted regardless of genre or topic. For July, the goal of the project was to provide a network for female artists to share their work and lives. The fliers were distributed at punk shows, colleges, and grocery stores, and later, to reach a wider audience, the project was advertised in the LA Weekly. Every female artist who submitted a movie received what July called a chainletter tape, which was a compilation of ten movies, including the submitted artist's movie. For each of these tapes, July included a zine with information about each artist from the compilation. Girls and women from all over the United States and Canada submitted films in hopes of being included in the chainletter.

23.79 Linear Feet (20 boxes, 2 flatfile folders)

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Open for use by qualified researchers. Audiovisual materials are unavailable until reformatted; contact Reference for information.