03.09.2026
Groundbreaking filmmaker, photographer, and Professor Emerita Liane Brandon presented Still Marching 1970-2017; which featured her historic photographs documenting two landmark Boston women’s marches held nearly 50 years apart. Through her images and personal recollections, Brandon offered a unique perspective on both events – as participant and observer – while reflecting on the early days of the Women’s Movement. On March 8, 1970, Brandon, then a member of Bread and Roses of Cambridge – one of the nation’s earliest women’s liberation organizations – photographed the International Women’s Day march. It was the largest demonstration for women’s equality in Massachusetts since the Boston Suffrage March of 1914. Her photographs are believed to be the only existing color images of that historic event. Nearly five decades later, on January 21, 2017, Brandon returned with her camera to document the Women’s March for America. An estimated 175,000 people gathered on Boston Common the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, joining similar marches in more than 600 cities nationwide where nearly six million Americans demonstrated for women’s rights, healthcare reform, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, and racial equality. Brandon’s photographs capture the events and issues that still resonate in women’s ongoing fight for equality – and revealing the enduring spirit, energy, and determination of those who continue to march.
About the Speaker
Liane Brandon is an award winning independent filmmaker, photographer and University of Massachusetts/Amherst Professor Emerita. She was one of the first independent women filmmakers to emerge from the Women’s Movement. She is a co-founder of New Day Films and was a member of Bread and Roses, one of the earliest “women’s liberation” collectives in Massachusetts. Her groundbreaking films Sometimes I Wonder Who I Am (1970), Anything You Want To Be (1971), and Betty Tells Her Story (1972), were among the most frequently used consciousness raising tools of the Women’s Movement. Her films, which also include Once Upon A Choice (1980) and How To Prevent A Nuclear War (1987), have won numerous national and international awards, and have been featured on HBO, Cinemax and the Criterion Channel. They have twice received Blue Ribbons at the American Film Festival, and have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, the Barbican Centre in London, the Tribeca Film Festival and many other venues worldwide. Her film Betty Tells Her Story was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2022. Currently working as a photographer, her credits include stills for the PBS series American Experience, Nova, and American Masters. Her photos have been published in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and many other publications. Actively involved with the rights of media artists, her lawsuit (Brandon v. The Regents of the University of California) won a landmark victory for filmmakers’; protection of their titles. Brandon’s historic films and papers are held in the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University. Her films are in active distribution through New Day Films. Before becoming a filmmaker and professor, Brandon worked as a ski instructor, lifeguard, waitress, high school teacher and professional stunt woman.