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!Women Art Revolution
by Lynn Hershman Leeson
Tuesday, January 24 2012 | 7:30pm
Capilano University
North Shore Credit Union Centre for the Performing Arts
2055 Purcell Way, North Vancouver
A call to arms, a critically important history lesson, a restorative, a cri de coeur, a riotous Guerilla grrrrrl celebration of creativity, thought and power — director Lynn Hershman Leeson’s film is all these things and more! The film is culled, or perhaps more correctly curated, from over forty years of footage collected by the filmmaker, who states, "I began to shoot this film 40 years ago. I've been waiting all this time for the right ending." An exhaustive survey of the past four decades of feminist art practice, !WAR reads like a laundry list of artists, historians, curators and critics. But the film is anything but dryly academic; it throbs with blood, pain, joy, and ultimately triumph. Artists and hell raisers from Hannah Wilke, Judy Chicago and, of course, the inimitable Guerilla Girls hold forth on their experiences as women artists. The footage that Hershman has collected makes you laugh through your tears. It covers comedy to tragedy — from the US Congress wrangling for hours over whether Chicago's The Dinner Party was pornography or art, to the Guerrilla Girls holding universities, galleries and museums over the flames, through hilarious campaigns designed to reveal how ridiculous gender discrimination actually is, to the death of Ana Mendieta, who died after falling from a 34th floor apartment. Mendieta’s new husband, sculptor Carl Andre, was tried for her murder, but with no witnesses he was acquitted. In an act of fury and defiance, protestors papered the gallery that featured Andre's work, chanting, "Where’s Ana? Ask Carl!"
The ferocity, courage and intelligence of such women artists resulted in the most significant art movement of the late 20th century. Featuring a rocking soundtrack including Laurie Anderson, Janis Joplin, Sleater-Kinney, The Gossip, Erase Errata and Tribe 8, !Women Art Revolution will convince you to grab your gun, your paint brush, your hammer and chisel, and join the revolution. Women, sisters, to Arms! To Arms! To Art! —DW
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