Directed by Barbara Loden • 1970 • United States
Starring Barbara Loden, Michael Higgins
With her first and only feature film—a hard-luck drama she wrote, directed, and starred in—Barbara Loden turned in a groundbreaking work of American independent cinema, bringing to life a kind of character seldom seen on-screen. Set amid a soot-choked Pennsylvania landscape, and shot in an intensely intimate vérité style, the film takes up with distant and soft-spoken Wanda (Loden), who has left her husband, lost custody of her children, and now finds herself alone, drifting between dingy bars and motels, where she falls prey to a series of callous men—including a bank robber who ropes her into his next criminal scheme. An until now difficult-to-see masterpiece that has nonetheless exerted an outsize influence on generations of artists and filmmakers, WANDA is a compassionate and wrenching portrait of a woman stranded on society’s margins.
Restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Restoration funding provided by Gucci and The Film Foundation.
Up Next in 30 Years of The Film Foundation
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Soleil Ô
Directed by Med Hondo • 1970 • France, Mauritania
Starring Robert Liensol, Théo Légitimus, Gabriel GlissandA furious howl of resistance against racist oppression, the debut from Mauritanian director Med Hondo is a bitterly funny, stylistically explosive attack on Western capitalism and the lega...
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Black Panthers
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1970 • United States
Agnès Varda turns her camera on an Oakland demonstration against the imprisonment of activist and Black Panthers cofounder Huey P. Newton. In addition to evincing Varda’s fascination with her adopted surroundings and her empathy, this perceptive sho...
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Downpour
Directed by Bahram Beyzaie • 1972 • Iran
Starring Parviz Fannizadeh, Parvaneh Massoumi, Manuchehr FaridWith brash stylistic exuberance, this first feature from Bahram Beyzaie helped usher in the Iranian New Wave. When he takes a job as a schoolteacher in a new neighborhood, the hapless intellec...
