!Women Art Revolution (2011)

83% of critics liked it
(23 reviews)
64% of users liked it
(158 ratings)

Through intimate interviews, art, and rarely seen archival film and video footage, !Women Art Revolution reveals how the Feminist Art Movement fused free speech and politics into an art that radically transformed the art and culture of our times. --(c)Official Site

Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 23 min.
Directed By: Lynn Hershman Leeson, Lynn Hershman-Leeson
Genres: Musical & Performing Arts, Documentary

In Theaters: Jun 1, 2011 Limited
On DVD: Mar 19, 2012
Studio: Zeitgeist Films

Critic Reviews

Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader
Contrasting with the ferment of the times, the film is orderly and rather subdued, but it's an excellent introduction to a movement that produced artists as diverse as Yoko Ono, Cindy Sherman, and Miranda July.
G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle
By the end of the film, you'll be searching out the work of Judy Chicago, Sheila de Bretteville, Faith Ringgold, Miranda July and the Guerrilla Girls, among many others.
Tom Long, Detroit News
It's both enlightening and a bit messy, but then history is always messy.
Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
An astute mix of interviews with artists, critics and experts on the movement.
Sebastian Smee, Boston Globe
It's affecting, and the tone, which is polemical, is also rueful and realistic.
Stephanie Merry, Washington Post
We weren't all there watching the struggle take place, and a more clearly stated thesis or a simple delineation of cause and effect could have gone a long way.
Sarah Boslaugh, Playback:stl
...a real trip down memory lane for people involved in the early feminist movement in the United States (the soundtrack alone will push your nostalgia button), and a great resource for teaching...
Stan Hall, Oregonian
A compelling story emerges of a feminist art movement inspired by the civil rights and anti-war movements, its loosely organized members striving for equality and recognition through guerrilla protest tactics that were in themselves art.
Kim Voynar, Movie City News
This doc is real gem -- as relevant to the feminist art movement as Exit Through the Gift Shop was for street art, albeit less flashy in its composition.
Don R. Lewis, Film Threat
An important film about the women's art scene which has never really received its due.
Matt Mazur, PopMatters
What the director succeeds in doing is constructing a powerful educational tool that incorporates primary documents and oral histories of the women who made the movement, giving them space to finally have their voices heard.
Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid
[The] footage -- some 125 hours of it -- became perhaps the only known record of an entire movement of art that was otherwise unseen and undocumented.
Sara Maria Vizcarrondo, Boxoffice Magazine
A staunch declaration of identification and reverence.
Kelly Vance, East Bay Express
Has meaningful things to say about race, class, power, sexuality, and economics as well.
Mike Scott, Times-Picayune
These women deserve to have their voices heard, and this film finally lets them have their say.
Doris Toumarkine, Film Journal International
Self-described "patchy" documentary about a determined movement of female artists to gain visibility in a male-dominated world pummels with scores of talking heads and archival material.
Lauren Wissot, Slant Magazine
Lynn Hershman Leeson introduces us only superficially to her dozens of pioneering friends.
David Fear, Time Out New York
To see this seismic subculture memorialized with such an amazing trove of archival clips is worth tolerating pretentious blather; you feel like you're bearing witness to a monumental act of reclamation.