Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill’s riveting documentary, shot over 3 months, following a group of women going through basic training for the US Army.
Fifty started out but only thirty made it through to the end. They concentrate on three of the young women: an 18-year old black woman whose constant giggling and grins drive the platoon sergeant to distraction, another who provides encouragement and support to the others who find it hard, and a third woman who also finds she cannot tolerate army life but is more inhibited. You see each of them change as they face the challenges and rigours before them, all captured with startling intimacy by Broomfield and Churchill.
As Broomfield states on his own website: “Joan and I went through Basic Training for 14 weeks. Fred Wiseman lent us a tape recorder. [D.A.] Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus lent us a cutting room. We only got funding after it was shot. We both lost 20 pounds making it – it was so hot.”
After the screening directors Nick Broomfield (in person) and Joan Churchill (via live Zoom from California), will discuss the film with Jason Wood.
“…shouldn’t be missed … includes footage that’s absolutely eye-boggling … honestly put together, which says more than a thousand fictions but almost looks like fiction…”
The Guardian
“A Tour de Force for Broomfield and Churchill.”
Variety
“Soldier Girls’ is an extraordinary look at a platoon of women undergoing base training at Fort Gordon, Georgia. The enormous strain the women are under, the sadism of their superiors and the element of role playing inherent in Army life contrive to create some tremendously dramatic moments. Scene after scene in ‘Soldier Girls’ shows the truth to be much much stranger than fiction.”
Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“One of the funniest, most thought-provoking studies of the US Army I’ve seen … A wonderfully original piece of work.”
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
SOLDIER GIRLS / Nick Broomfield, Joan Churchill / UK / 1981 / 87 mins
Nick Broomfield studied Law at Cardiff, and Political Science at Essex University. He then went on to study Film at the National Film School, under Professor Colin Young.
Nick first got interested aged 15 when discovering his love for photography on a foreign exchange visit in France. “A great way to strike up conversations, and a great excuse to ask questions about the World around you”. He made his first film Who Cares about Slum Clearance in Liverpool, while at University, by borrowing a wind up Bolex camera, and shooting it on short ends.
Professor Colin Young at the NFS had a great influence on his work encouraging participant observation, as well as introducing him to the lovely and most talented Joan Churchill. Together Joan and Nick made several films, Juvenile Liaison, Tattooed Tears, Soldier Girls, Lily Tomlin and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. They also have a son together.
Nick was originally influenced by the observational style of Fred Wiseman, Robert Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker before moving on largely by accident to the more idiosyncratic style for which he is better known. While making Driving Me Crazy in 1988, a film hopelessly out of control, Nick decided to place himself and the producer of the film in the story, as a way of making sense of the event.
This experiment led to a sense of greater freedom, from the confines of observational cinema, and to a more investigative and experimental type of filmmaking. ie The Leader, His Driver and The Driver’s Wife, Aileen Wuornos, Kurt and Courtney, Biggies and Tupac.
He is the recipient of the following awards, amongst others: Sundance first prize, British Academy Award, Prix Italia, Dupont Peabody Award, Grierson Award, Hague Peace Prize, Amnesty International Doen award.
Joan Churchill began her career shooting on iconic music films, including Gimme Shelter, No Nukes, and Jimi Plays Berkeley, which she also directed. She worked on An American Family, the definitive vérité study of dysfunctional family life, Punishment Park, which reflected the domestic turmoil of the Vietnam era and Pumping Iron, which introduced the world to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Churchill has collaborated extensively with Nick Broomfield on numerous films including Lily Tomlin, Aileen: Life & Death of a Serial Killer, Kurt & Courtney, Biggie & Tupac, Tattooed Tears and Sarah Palin: You Betcha! Her work on Soldier Girls earned her a BAFTA, the first woman to be so honored, as well as the Sundance Grand Jury Prize.
Churchill and her partner, Alan Barker, work on long term projects as directors, producers and crew including: two TV vérité series, The Residents and the Emmy-winning American High. They have recently brought out two shorts on their mentor, legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler. Their other recent credits include Bedlam, a DuPont Columbia Award-winning film and Medicating Normal, both about the broken mental health system.
Churchill is the first pure documentary cinematographer to be accepted into the American Society of Cinematographers and one of the few women. She received their inaugural Lifetime Documentary Award in February, 2025. Her accolades include DOC NYC’s Life Time Achievement Visionary Award, a BAFTA, two DuPont Columbia Awards, the Prix Italia, IDA’s Award for Outstanding Cinematography; CamerImage’s Outstanding Achievement in Documentary Filmmaking.
Teacher and mentor, Churchill has been the Kodak Cinematographer in Residence at UCLA 2006 (the first woman and first documentary filmmaker selected). She has taught documentary and film workshops at UCLA, USC, Chapman, Loyola Marymount University, Art Center College, and The National Film & Television School in the UK. She has shown her work, won awards and served on juries and panels for MacArthur, Peabody, Sundance, AFI, MoMA, Traverse City, Tribeca, LA Film Festival, Film at Lincoln Center, IDFA, Sheffield, Full Frame, Cameraimage, Viennale and La Cinématheque du Documentaire a la BPI. A member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, she has served on the AMPAS documentary executive board for 14 years.
Jason Wood as an Executive Director at the British Film Institute and the author of multiple books on popular culture, including the collaboration with Nick Broomfield on Documenting Icons (published by Faber).