WANDA
by Barbara Loden, Fiction, 105', 1970, 35mm, USA
With Barbara Loden, Michael Higgins, Dorothy Shupenes

Married to a Pennsylvanian minor and mother of two children, Wanda doesn’t take care of them, or of her house. She passes the major part of her days slumped on her living room sofa, in her dressing gown and hair-curlers. Without personality or will, she lets herself become "divorced". Alone, without a place to live or go, nor means of subsistence, she wanders around without any precise goal. However she meets a thief, Denis, whom she follows for a time… Single film directed and written by the wife of the well known filmmaker Elia Kazan, Wanda is a cult film of the Seventies. Barbara Loden will die 10 years later of a cancer, at the age of 48.

BARBARA LODEN
Barbara Loden (1932-1980) had a theatre (Broadway) and cinema acting background. She met her husband Elia Kazan in 1960, while working in his film Wild River with Montgomery Clift. In 1961, she interpreted Ginny in Splendor in the Grass. She is however known as a filmmaker for her one and only film, Wanda (1970) for which she writes the scenario and interprets the main character. This independent New Yorkian cult film received many film awards.