TERRA FEMME is an essay film comprised of amateur travelogues filmed by women in the 1920s-1950s. The film is at once geographical essay, personal inquiry, and historical speculation, examining these films as both private documents and accidental ethnographies. The films present a new type of traveler: no longer a male seeker of conquests, she might be a divorcee on a tour of biblical gardens, or a widow on a cruise to the North Pole. Showing the ways in which women have seen the world, the films raise questions about female representation in the archive, the role of amateurism in early non-fiction filmmaking, and the politics of the Western gaze.