Busy summer!

Hello supporters! You haven’t heard from Rebel Dykes for a while so I thought I’d do a blog post and update everybody about where we are up to.

As I am sure most of you know, we showed a 20 minute work in progress cut at BFI Flare LGBT film festival in March this year. Thank you to everybody who came, and to everybody who partied the night away with us afterwards. The film showing was great fun, but most importantly, the discussions which followed provided some really useful critique and insight. Because of this we extended our production period. Since then we have been busy completing a few additional interviews and filming extra material. We have also uncovered a few wonderful archive films which we have been busy digitising. We feel we have the material that will really make a difference to the final film.

As well as continuing the film production, this summer we took the Work in Progress cut on the road, and have shown it at a number of venues around England. Maybe you have caught it yourself? Do hope you liked it, and if you did don’t forget to share the love via our social media links!

Ed Webb-Ingall showed the piece in Studio Voltaire in London in June, as part of a presentation and intervention which is looking at the impact and legacy of Section 28.

We were very proud to show it at L Fest in July, where it was added to the programme by Therese Heath-Ellul, from Wotever Film Festival.

Later in July, we were proud to have been invited to Newcastle by Divine Trash and supported by Northern Pride, The NewBridge Project and Tyneside Cinema, Northern Film & Media for a one day workshop, where we met a bunch of talented and exciting local women film makers, and we dissected our film-making process, and learnt a lot from the women at the workshop.

And finally, in August the film cut was shown by Claire Kurylowski as part of Kuntinuum’s event at Somerset House, “Are we still aching for dyke focussed spaces”. So all in all, an exciting and busy summer.

Now we are back into post-production mode. Sian and Harri have put aside time to do the huge amount of editing and story-telling they have to do as editors and directors. I am updating the website (have a look round, and keep an eye on it). Me and Hannah will be tweeting, posting on Facebook and getting back onto instagram. Do us a favour, retweet, share and invite your friends to like us. We are going to need you all in this final push.

I am planning a new funding drive, so I will be bothering you via Kickstarter at some point. I’d love you to prime anybody you know who might be able to help us out financially, and let them know we’ll be needing all our friends soon! Do email me if you have any suggestions, I’m happy to meet up with any prospective funders to discuss the marketing of the film. My email address is contact@rebeldykes1980s.com

And finally the question you are all asking - when can we see the final film? I’m afraid I can’t tell you exactly - though we are aiming for Spring 2017 at the moment.

What we have learnt so far is that film-making is complex, and takes longer than you would ever imagine, and more work and commitment than we anticipated. What we can tell you, is that it will be finished, and it will be wonderful. We know you are all going to be so proud to be part of it!

So thank you! We couldn’t have gotten so far without you.