Gazing: Early Women Travelers and Filmmakers with Courtney Stephens

Between 2010 and 2020 filmmaker Courtney Stephens conducted research into the history of early women’s travel writing (18th and 19th century) and early travel filmmaking by women (first half of the 20th century), culminating in Terra Femme, her feature-length essay film that premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in 2021. The project began on a Fulbright to India where Stephens was based in West Bengal and traveled extensively, from the high Himalayas to the Southern tip of Kerala. When her Fulbright ran out she began supporting herself through acting stints in the Bengali movie industry, including a supporting role as one of the women she was researching: Sister Nivedita, a turn of the century Irish disciple of Vivekananda. Other subjects of inquiry include Emily Eden, the sister of a mid-19th century Governor-General to India and Alexandra David-Neel, a French traveler who wrote extensively about Tibetan Buddhism (and would have an influence on the Beat generation).

Over the following years Stephens made return trips to India and presented her research at institutions including the Royal Geographical Society and the Penn Museum of Anthropology. Her research shifted from a focus on letters, diaries, and memoirs to early amateur filmmaking by women abroad. The final film incorporates footage from a dozen women, ranging from orphaned documents to notable figures whose footage has been preserved in prestigious archives. Stephens will show short clips from the final film and talk about her personal journey with the material, her time living in India, her shifting understanding of how Western women fit into the colonial story, and the process of turning experience into artwork.