Pottenkijkers: Queer History Month: Dykes, Camera, Action!

Pottenkijkers dives into the archive with our next edition on the 25th of march. For the occasion of queer history month we paired up for a second time with IHLIA LGBTI Heritage. This time, we will screen a short compilation film, 90's Potten (2026), made specifically for this screening, which gives a snippet of queer and lesbian life in Amsterdam in the 90’s. It shows a collage of archival footage shot and/or conserved by Het Lesbisch Archief Amsterdam (the Amsterdam lesbian archive). Het Lesbisch Archief Amsterdam was set up in 1982 to preserve lesbian life in Amsterdam and make it visible and accessible. Later the archive would go up into what IHLIA is today. 

Together with this short we will screen the documentary Dykes, Camera, Action! (2018) by Caroline Berger. This documentary shows the history of lesbian filmmaking. Lesbians didn't always get to see themselves on screen. But between Stonewall, the feminist movement, and the experimental cinema of the 1970s, they built visibility, and transformed the social imagination about queerness. Filmmakers Barbara Hammer, Su Friedrich, Rose Troche, Cheryl Dunye, Yoruba Richen, Desiree Akhavan, Vicky Du, film critic B. Ruby Rich, Jenni Olson, and others share moving and often hilarious stories from their lives and discuss how they've expressed queer identity through film.