Joanie 4 Jackie

In 1995 Miranda July dropped out of college, moved to Portland, Oregon, and typed up a pamphlet that she imagined would be the start of a revolution of girls and women making movies and sharing them with each other. The pamphlet said: “A challenge and a promise: Lady, you send me your movie and I’ll send you the latest Big Miss Moviola Chainletter Tape.”

Documents

And it seemed like the hunger was there. When magazines like Sassy and Seventeen wrote about the project, dozens of girls wrote Joanie 4 Jackie asking to see these movies made by other girls. July wished she could also distribute the missing movies; the ones women weren’t making for a million insidious reasons. The Missing Movie Report was one of the many posters, brochures and postcards created for the project. In 2000 joanie4jackie.com launched, slow and unscalable it nonetheless seemed to imply great change was right around the corner.

Where Is She Now?

In 2003 July gave Joanie 4 Jackie to Bard College, where many of the interns had gone to school. Led by Professor Jaqueline Goss, a group of students produced four more Chainletter Tapes and many screenings over the next three years. In 2010 a senior named Vanessa Haroutunian rediscovered the project, contacted July, and the idea for this website was born. One of the first things we did was start tracking down the original participants; here you can read about what J4J meant to them and where they are now.

Contact + FAQ

Over the next seven years, a group of Joanie 4 Jackie supporters and participants created this site in collaboration with July; it was completed in January of 2017. The Getty Research Institute then acquired the entire physical archive, contextualizing Joanie 4 Jackie within feminist and video history and preserving it for all time. It is our greatest hope that you will create a much better network for women moviemakers, with the resources available today. Let us know when you do. In the meantime: don’t give up.