Siân A. Williams

I’m a filmmaker and professional archivist based in Manchester, UK. For this project we used creative recreation sequences, animation and unseen personal archive to bring the ephemeral queer histories of 1980s dyke subcultures to life. I trained in photography and artist moving image at University of Wales and have also gained masters in critical theory and digital heritage, informing both my practice and archives career. I have over a decade of experience working in audio visual preservation and archive post-production, working at the BFI National Archive and Archives+ Manchester. I wanted to make the film because I’ve always felt a connection to the ethos of the Rebel Dykes. Their art and music was a formative influence when I was playing in DIY post-punk bands, and I was especially excited by the Rebel Dyke photographers that play with gender and identity and documented queer communities, all of which inspired my own visual art practice at the time. I devoured books like Del LaGrace Volcano’s ‘Love Bites’, ‘Nothing But the Girl: the Blatant Lesbian Image’ by Susie Bright and Jill Posener, and Tessa Boffin’s ‘Stolen
Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs’. Sex, desire and politics are all really important in the film, and especially the creative worlds and family that they build around them.