Daughters of Chaos (1980) by Marjorie Keller

Wednesday, October 21, 2026, 7:00 pm

Marjorie Keller Films

Alternative Visions — Program 7

BERKELEY ART MUSEUM AND PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE

2155 Center Street

Berkeley, CA 94720

Presented in association with Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Admission: $18 General / $12 Cinematheque Members
Event tickets here

Alternative Visions
September 9–November 18, 2026

This fall BAMPFA’s long-running annual series of historical and contemporary experimental film includes the work of dozens of artists across ten programs, beginning with a program of cinematic investigations into automation and AI with Gibbs Chapman in person. The series continues into November with a program of films made by members of the Oakland-based Black Hole Collective Film Lab. Brydie O’Connor is in person with her archival portrait of queer experimental film pioneer Barbara Hammer. The late Marjorie Keller’s intimate 16mm films have a rare screening to mark the publication of a new book about her work. Artist Naeem Mohaiemen presents and discusses A Missing Can of Film (2025) in conjunction with BAM’s exhibition Private Frontiers. A selection of works made by COUSIN collective artists, including Sky Hopinka’s 2017 consideration of the Dakota Access Pipeline protest and Lindsay McIntyre’s film about caribou and lichen—made using those materials in the photographic process—screen with Lebanese artist Christophe Katrib’s This Dissonance (2024). Harun Farocki’s influential 2003 essay film War at a Distance and Gazan artist Mahmoud Alhaj’s recent videos examine how perception can be limited in the context of war and/or conflict. (Kate MacKay, Film Curator)

Alternative Visions
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Alternative Visions, program 7: Marjorie Keller Films
Introduction: Steve Anker

A key figure of American experimental film from the 1970s until her untimely death in 1994, filmmaker, scholar, activist and teacher Marjorie Keller redefined Stan Brakhage’s approach to personal, handmade films in feminist terms. Keller’s subjects ranged from social and political critiques to intimate portraits of people who populated her world and her intricate visual and sound editing is pointed while also being poetically suggestive. Following the release of Daughters of Chaos in 1980, critic Amy Taubin wrote, “Its central concern is female bonding… Keller’s strongest gifts as a filmmaker [are] the subtlety of her awareness of gesture and the extraordinary fluidity and assurance of her editing.” (Steve Anker)

SCREENING: She/Va (1973) by Marjorie Keller (U.S.); 16mm, color, silent, 2 minutes. Source: Anthology Film Archives. Part IV: Green Hill (1972) by Marjorie Keller (U.S.); 16mm, color, silent, 3 minutes. Source: Anthology Film Archives. Daughters of Chaos (1980) by Marjorie Keller (U.S.); 16mm, color, 20 minutes. Source: Anthology Film Archives. The Fallen World (1983) by Marjorie Keller (U.S.); 16mm, color, 9 minutes. Source: Anthology Film Archives. Herein (1991) by Marjorie Keller (U.S.); 16mm, color, 35 minutes. Source: The Film-Maker’s Cooperative.
TRT: 69 minutes

NOTE: San Francisco Cinematheque will present a related screening of films by Marjorie Keller on November 5, 2026. Details coming soon!