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UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Sundance Institute and The Andrew J. Kuehn Jr. Foundation present

Working Girls

Working Girls
July 6, 2021 - 12:00 am to July 11, 2021 - 11:59 pm

Watch now on Eventive

This screening is presented for free viewing from Tuesday, July 6 through Sunday, July 11 (ending midnight, Pacific Time) on Eventive. The live Q&A will take place on Thursday, July 8 at 4 p.m. (PT) on Zoom.

Note: the screening is available only in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland.

New digital restoration!

Working Girls

U.S., 1986

Sex work is portrayed with radical nonjudgment in Lizzie Borden’s immersive, richly detailed look at the rhythms and rituals of society’s most stigmatized profession. Inspired by the experiences of the sex workers Borden met while making her underground feminist landmark Born in Flames (1983), Working Girls reveals the textures of a day in the life of Molly (Louise Smith), a lesbian photographer working part-time in a straight Manhattan brothel, as she juggles a steady stream of male clients, balances relationships with her coworkers with the demands of an ambitious madam, and above all fights to maintain her sense of self in a business in which the line between the personal and the professional is all too easily blurred. In viewing sex work through the lens of labor, Borden boldly desensationalizes the subject, offering an empathetic, humanizing, often humorous depiction of women for whom this work is just another day at the office.

Please join us for a live Q&A with filmmaker Lizzie Borden, sex work activist Antonia Crane, filmmaker Jessie Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli and artist and producer Coco Ono on Thursday, July 8 at 4 p.m. (PT) on Zoom. Patrons who register for the free screening will receive the Zoom link with their registration confirmation.

Color, in English, 93 minutes. Director: Lizzie Borden. Screenwriter: Lizzie Borden, Sandra Kay. With: Louise Smith, Ellen McElduff, Amanda Goodwin.

Digitally restored by The Criterion Collection and the UCLA Film & Television Archive, in conjunction with Sundance Institute. Funding provided by The Criterion Collection and Sundance Institute. Laboratory services by Criterion Post and Roundabout Entertainment, Inc.

Part of: Outfest UCLA Legacy Project Screening Series