Medium uncool: Women shoot back; Feminism, film and 1968 - A curious documentary

A microhistory of the interconnections - both literal, through personal rel ations, and theoretical - between radical feminism and avant-garde film cul ture views culture as a model for politics during the 1960s. In short, radi cal feminism owed much of its rhetoric and practice to avant-garde film. Be ginning with the screenings of Schmeerguntz, feminists moved against female stereotypes with the Miss America action (to get media coverage), document ed the history of women's struggle in Newsreel's The Woman's Film (to chall enge the news media), and experimented with visions of femininity through p ersonal films and happenings (to unravel domesticity - its bliss and horror ). This parallels three 1960s film practices: New Hollywood, a commercial r esponse to the end of the studios and the rise of television (filmmaking as industrial production); documentary, to track issues within New Left pelf ties (filmmaking as collective activity); and the Underground, a celebratio n of the counter-culture (filmmaking as personal vision).