ABSTRACT
Roberta Findlay is an important cult film director because despite the fact that few would attempt to defend her work as necessarily “great”, the aggressive, unrelenting tastelessness, rawness and general spirit of don’t-give-a-fuckness that marks her films is for many of us unparalleled. These films are marked by a unique blend of sleazy honesty: they are what they are, and never seek to apologise for it. Findlay’s filmmaking career effectively began when she met Michael. With her signature frankness, Roberta has stated that her first steps into adult film were simply because she was nervous Michael would “succumb to his leading ladies” if she wasn’t around. The mythology surrounding Findlay as a kind of forgotten woman auteur is tempting as a site for retrospective canonisation, but the reality of her practice makes such missions difficult to say the least. Roberta did everything from voiceovers to playing floozies and masochistic victims.
