Format: digital video
Duration: 38 minutes & 44 seconds and growing
Year: 2007 - ongoing
I began They have a name for girls like me. in 2006 when I lived in Buffalo, New York. I had long loved the film Valley Girl and wanted to make a video with it, since the main character was named Julie, like me. Another film I loved at the time, Chantal Akerman’s Je Tu Il Elle, also starred a Julie character. Some quick research brought to my attention the 1956 film Julie, starring Doris Day, and the 1975 Bollywood film Julie. I edited all four films down to just the parts where someone utters the word “Julie,” creating an exhausting repetition of the word.
I continued to research Julie films and I discovered an array of typical and also atypical female roles in global cinema: wanton women, slutty teens, rebellious housewives, and more. For the next decade, whenever I screened the video at a festival or gallery, I cut and added another Julie film. In 2016, I decided to do a big push. I tracked down as many films as I could find that had a main character named Julie. The result is the most recent 2017 edit, containing thirty-five films total from around the world and throughout cinema history. It’s been an emotional journey: some films ignite my fury against hetero-patriarchy and white supremacy, while other make me fall in love with the movies all over again. It’s been a delight to destroy certain Julie films and a joy to spend time with other Julie films that teach me about humanity and imagination.