After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, I looked back to the “pre-Roe” era, drawing on early film and familial memory to explore how women have taken control of their bodies and lives. Through a research-based and materially grounded practice, I stitched together a lineage of bodily autonomy and resistance.
Two early films directed by women anchor the body of work. The first, Alice Guy-Blaché’s 1906 film Madame’s Cravings, portrays a pregnant protagonist who gleefully disrupts social norms — stealing absinthe, tobacco, and candy while her partner tends to their child. Her untamed desires and public act of childbirth, captured more than a century ago, subvert prescribed ideals of maternal propriety and bodily control. I heightened this subversion by hand-painting passages of the film — green for absinthe, and yellow, red, and blue for the lollipop — transforming the protagonist’s cravings into vivid, material expressions of desire and agency. The second film, a 1931 documentary by Marvin Breckinridge, chronicles the Frontier Nursing Service, which delivered maternal care by horseback in rural Appalachia and dramatically reduced maternal and infant mortality rates. Together, these films challenge the omission of reproductive life on screen. After the implementation of the 1934 Hays Code, depictions of pregnancy and childbirth disappeared from American cinema for decades. By revisiting works made before this period, I recover a visual history that resists the cultural erasure of reproductive experience.
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
This film quilt utilizes footage from the 1931 film “The Forgotten Frontier,” directed by photojournalist Marvin Breckinridge. She filmed it via hand-cranked camera to document the humanitarian work being done in Kentucky by her cousin, nurse Mary Breckinridge, and the other nurse-midwives of the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS). Mary founded the FNS to address poor maternal health and high infant mortality. The film shows nurse-midwives riding horseback through rivers, forests, and snow to provide midwifery child delivery for people living in underserved areas in Kentucky's Appalachian Mountains. The FNS resulted in an immediate decrease in maternal and infant mortality.
This film quilt is done in a "Kentucky Star" pattern, which is a pattern used in a Kentucky quilt that won the 1933 contest at the Chicago World Fair.
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
This film quilt utilizes footage from the 1931 film “The Forgotten Frontier,” directed by photojournalist Marvin Breckinridge. She filmed it via hand-cranked camera to document the humanitarian work being done in Kentucky by her cousin, nurse Mary Breckinridge, and the other nurse-midwives of the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS). Mary founded the FNS to address poor maternal health and high infant mortality. The film shows nurse-midwives riding horseback through rivers, forests, and snow to provide midwifery child delivery for people living in underserved areas in Kentucky's Appalachian Mountains. The FNS resulted in an immediate decrease in maternal and infant mortality.
This film quilt is done in a "Kentucky Star" pattern, which is a pattern used in a Kentucky quilt that won the 1933 contest at the Chicago World Fair.
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer