By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Mary Dore
Country: united_states
Year: 2015
Running time: 87
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3199456/combined
Chris says: “The feminist movement’s early years (roughly 1966-71) seem like such a fruitful topic for a documentary that one wonders why it hasn’t been done before, or at least with the scope of Mary Dore’s thorough, entertaining and wonderfully-titled film. Tracking feminism from its roots in the civil rights movement to later offshoots focused on race, homosexuality and publishing, it covers a lot of ground in ninety minutes. The wide-ranging breadth of found footage contained within is enough to recommend it, covering everything from the Equal Rights Amendment to Our Bodies, Our Selves (plus such priceless moments as a circa-1970 local news anchor’s now astonishingly archaic reaction to a protest march). Links between past and present are made by cutting directly from archival footage to the same person decades later, interviewed by Dore and her crew—a simple tool, but an effective, powerful one. An attempt to portray the movement today by having young women read onscreen poems and essays dating from the period the film covers doesn’t fare as well (it’s a distraction); framing the film with a modern-day reproductive rights protest in Texas demonstrates the movement’s legacy far more successfully. 4 cats
“(This film screened at the 12th Annual Independent Film Festival of Boston)”