!WOMEN ART REVOLUTION -- World Premiere

2010 TORONTO INTERNATIONAL  FILM FESTIVAL

 Over 40 years in the making, "!Women Art Revolution" features intimate interviews with pioneering women who changed the direction of art. 

Original score composed by Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Sleater-Kenney.

"!Women Art Revolution," the new film from Lynn Hershman Leeson, will premiere at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival in the Documentary category. Over 40 years in the making, Hershman Leeson’s film draws from hundreds of hours of in-the-moment interviews with her contemporaries—visionary artists, historians, curators and critics—and presents an intimate portrayal of their fight to break down barriers facing women both in the art world and society at large.
 

In the 1960s, the Feminist Art Movement emerged to politicize female artists and challenge complexities of gender, race, class and sexuality. Through interviews with her colleagues, Hershman Leeson—a pioneering, award-winning multimedia artist—traces the history of the movement from its relationship to the anti-war and civil rights forces of the 1960s, through its groundbreaking contributions to women’s art of the 1970s, to the emergence of The Guerilla Girls, who became the conscience of the art world and held galleries and museums accountable for discrimination. Ultimately, Hershman Leeson and her collaborators would become part of what many historians now claim is the most significant art movement of the late 20th century.
 

Hershman Leeson says of the film, “In Berkeley in 1966, I borrowed a camera, figured out how to use it and shot people coming through my living room. Then I forgot about all that footage and it was stored in boxes in my studio until I found it in 2004. I felt it had become even more relevant and it was a personal imperative that I complete the project!  I felt a tremendous responsibility to find the story inside that raw footage and to honor the women who struggled to invent themselves  and who  introduced the concepts of social protest, collaboration and public art that addressed directly the political imperatives of social justice and civil rights. This film took 42 years and it needed all that time to find the optimistic and uncompromising legacy.”

Showing dates and locations

September 12, 12:15 p.m.
AMC 2, Toronto, Canada

September 14, 7:45 p.m.
AMC 10, Toronto, Canada

September 19, 3:45 p.m.
AMC 7 ,Toronto, Canada