!Women Art Revolution - A Secret History

American artist Lynn Hershman Leeson has been involved in media art since the seventies. For this film, she has viewed and distilled several hundred hours of interviews and taped conversations with colleagues, friends, art historians, curators and critics into a singular documentary describing the history of the Feminist Art Movement. No less than 42 years of unique film material was put at the director’s disposal – material which provides a fascinating insight into the diversity and power of feminist art. The result is a work in which the filmmaker has managed to retain her subjective approach without suppressing the complexity and the contradictions which characterise this rich movement and its protagonists. Interviews with young proponents open up the dialogue across different generations, while descriptions of the various changing perspectives of the interviewees make clear both the achievements as well as the mistakes of this artistic movement. The tenacity and the courage of the artists and works featured in the film substantiate the claim to which a growing number of art historians would subscribe, namely: the Feminist Art Movement is one of the most formative art movements of the twentieth century.
by Lynn Hershman Leeson
with Yvonne Rainer, Judy Chicago, Guerilla Girls, B. Ruby Rich, Carolee Schneeman
USA 2010 83’

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