Film Screening: Stop Strip Searching (1986)

Derry Film and Video Workshop’s (DFVW) film Stop Strip Searching documents the intensive use of strip-searching of women political prisoners in the north of Ireland in the early 1980s. Including interviews with ex-prisoners, legal experts, activists, psychologists and the family members of prisoners inside at the time, the film was used as a campaigning tool and toured widely in Ireland and beyond. The issue of strip-searching exposed a fracture within the nascent women’s movement in Ireland, between those who wanted to address this form of state violence against women, and those who feared the political alignment with Irish republicanism that support of the campaign might suggest. Directed by Anne Crilly, it was the first film made by the newly founded collective.

Derry Film and Video Workshop (1984–1990) was a women-led film collective in Derry, in the north of Ireland. In the late 2010s, collecting, preserving, and re-centring the remarkable history and archive of the Derry Film and Video workshop (DFVW) was taken up by curators-artists Sara Greavu and Ciara Phillips, resulting in the exhibition project We realised the power of it – Derry Film and Video Workshop. An iteration of this project is currently on view at the exhibition state of us at de Appel, made in collaboration with EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art, which features a chapter foregrounding the campaign against the strip-searching of women political prisoners in the north of Ireland, including rushes made for the DFVW’ film Stop Strip Searching.

After the screening follows a conversation with Anne Crilly and Sara Greavu.

Tickets will soon be available through Kriterion's website.