Actor-turned-writer director Barbara Loden's only feature film Wanda (1970) tells the story
of an alienated working-class woman Wanda Goronski (played by Loden) who abandons her life as
a coal miner's wife and mother electing instead to drift. Bracing in its realist texture and
proto-feminist in its sensibility it received critical acclaim upon release winning the
Critics' Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1970. Today Wanda is considered one of the most
notable films made by a woman director and a core work of American independent cinema.
Elena Gorfinkel's study of this singular film traces Loden's creative process and
unconventional approach to filmmaking. Drawing on archival sources including scripts
interviews production records oral history and previously unseen ephemera she examines the
film's de-dramatised aesthetic one that rebukes the artifice and "slickness" of Hollywood.
Gorfinkel considers Loden's craft in her framing of cinematic time manipulation of gesture
voice and posture narrative ellipsis and in her use of location and non-professional actors.
Providing an account of Wanda's exhibition and reception in the 1970s and after she traces the
film's feminist legacies and its lasting influence on contemporary filmmakers artists and
writers.
