Goddess Remembered
1989 · 54m · Canada
Directed by Donna Read
Genres: documentary, essay film, historical
Tones: contemplative, mythic
Thirty-five thousand years of goddess-worshipping religions are saluted through Merlin Stone, Carol Christ, Luisah Teish, and Jean Bolen. The speakers link the loss of goddess-centred societies to today's environmental crisis.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Stone, Christ, Teish, Bolen—four voices speaking goddess theology in '89 feels almost too earnest, too straightforward for my taste, but the film's refusal to make this 'accessible' or dramatize the argument is perversely stubborn, and I respect that.
Read positions this essay within a rigorous lineage of feminist historiography and spiritual reclamation, letting scholars speak at length without editorial second-guessing—the 54 minutes unfold with the deliberation of a seminar, which is exactly where this film belongs.
The decision to let four distinct voices carry the entire weight—no archival montage crutch, no mystical score padding—means everything rests on the specificity of each speaker's thought, and that constraint is what makes the film breathe.