The Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Visual Arts at Princeton University presents Courtney Stephens’ live performance/film essay, Terra Femme, on December 3 at 7:30 p.m. in the James Stewart Film Theater at 185 Nassau Street on the Princeton campus. The event is free and open to the public.
A still from filmmaker Courtney Stephens’ essay feature, Terra Femme. Photo courtesy of the artist
Terra Femme is an essay film comprised of amateur travelogues filmed by women in the 1920s-1950s. With a score by Sarah Davachi, the film weaves between geographical essay, personal inquiry, and historical speculation, examining these films as both private documents and accidental ethnographies. Representing the world through women’s eyes, the films raise questions about female representation in the archive, the role of amateurism in early non-fiction filmmaking, and the politics of the Western gaze. At once a film about longing for past worlds through cinematic excavation, this force flows in both directions as women from the past search for self-making in the act of looking.
In her accompanying performance, Stephens leads the viewer through errant cinematic scrapbooks, seeking out the stories behind the images and wondering after the early 20th century women who captured and witnessed them.
“Terra Femme is one of those rare cinematic experiences that feels simultaneously monumental and intimate,” said Professor Christopher Harris, who is hosting the event. “I’m terribly excited to have Courtney here in person to present her live-documentary performance for the first time at Princeton. I hope the Princeton community will join us for this special event that can’t otherwise be recreated on demand.”
In addition to Terra Femme, writer/director Stephens co-directed The American Sector with Pacho Velez, which questions the legacy of the Cold War on American self-understanding, following dozens of fragments of the Berlin Wall installed around the U.S. Invention, an experimental fiction feature, premiered in 2024 at the Locarno Film Festival. Her films have been exhibited at MoMA, The National Gallery of Art, The Barbican in London, Bozar in Brussels, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Thailand Biennale, and in film festivals including the Berlinale, Viennale, IDFA in The Netherlands, RIDM in Montreal, Mumbai, Hong Kong, SXSW, and the New York Film Festival. Stephens is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship; fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Union Docs, and the Wexner Center; and grants from California Humanities, the Sloan Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Art.
The event is being presented by Harris in conjunction with his fall course, “Places & Spaces: Exploring the Narratives of Site in Film.” The course focuses on the variety of ways filmmakers have imagined and represented the relationship between the virtual space of screens, primarily in the cinema but also on devices and in the art gallery, and the physical places we encounter in our daily lives.
The James Stewart Film Theater is an accessible venue. Guests in need of other access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at least one week in advance at lewiscenter@princeton.edu
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the Program in Visual Arts, which includes film studies and production, and the more than 100 performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts and lectures offered each year at the Lewis Center, most of them free.
