2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

Christine Noschese, a Co-Founder and former Director of the National Congress of Neighborhood Women, director of the documentary Metropolitan Avenue, screens her new film, Brooklyn Roses which blends documentary and fiction to re-examine her childhood and her mother’s feminist struggles in 1950’s and 60’s working class Brooklyn.

When her mother dies, Noschese returns to her childhood home to decide what to keep and what to discard. When her mother was still alive, Noschese shot a dramatic film, June Roses, in this same house. Sorting through her mother’s belongings, and props left over from the film, she realizes how her perceptions have changed and the characterizations of her mother in the earlier film did not tell the whole story. Recording new documentary footage to create Brooklyn Roses, Christine deconstructs the earlier narrative raising questions about narrative and documentary storytelling and their capacity to convey truth.

Christine Noschese is a writer, director and producer of documentary and fictional films. June Roses, a fictional narrative, premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York at New Directors/New Films. Her documentary Metropolitan Avenue was broadcast nationally on PBS, and received the prestigious John Grierson Award for Best Documentary and was for a National Emmy for Best Director. She co-directed Women of the Northside Fight Back, a film about working class women fighting the destruction of their homes to make way for a factory, which premiered at the landmark 1975 NYC Women’s Video Festival.

A conversation with Noschese will follow the screening.