Marjorie Keller (1950–1994)[1] was an experimental filmmaker, author, activist, film scholar.
[3] As a girl, Keller's mother schooled her in the feminine arts of cooking, gardening and entertaining.
Keller never gave up these skills (she even used them as inspiration for her films), even though other feminists of her time frowned upon such domestic jobs.
B. Ruby Rich (a friend, former lover of Keller's and another important member of the feminist film movement), fondly remembers a Passover dinner that Keller made in this passage from her memoir: "And the food was great, because Margie was already a fabulous cook: for a rebel girl of that era, she was remarkably versed in the female arts.
During her years at Tufts and the Art Institute of Chicago, Keller was instructed by American avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage and colleague of Saul Levine, Ruby Rich and Diego Cortez .
She was arrested for participating in a protest at the White House against Nixon's price control policies, and she actively demonstrated at the Republican National Convention in 1972.
Keller openly supported the issues of welfare reform, labor union rights, and AIDS awareness throughout her life.
Keller openly rejected the structural rules and regulations based on feminist film theory.
Marjorie Keller's work exists in the experimental realm of the lyrical and the "diary" film styles pioneered by Stan Brakhage, Gregory Markopoulos, and Marie Menken (all of whom are cited as being big influences.
): silent, color; 8 mm Film Notebook: 1969-76; Part 2, Some of Us in the Mechanical Age, 1977 (27 min.
): sound, color; 16 mm Keller's dissertation, The Untutored Eye: Childhood in the Films of Cocteau, Cornell and Brakhage was published in 1986.
She also published a children's pop-up book that she wrote and illustrated herself titled The Moon on the Porch.
[11] In addition to being a filmmaker, author, activist, and scholar, Keller also served on the board of directors of the Collective for Living Cinema and was the founding editor of their journal, Motion Picture from 1984 to 1987.