As the hot-button topic of same-sex marriage wiggles its way into the mainstream at an ever-hungry pace, there is another movement doing quite the same, albeit with far less fanfare. The women's-rights movement took off in the '60s and yet, nearly 50 years later, female workers still do not get paid the same wage as their male counterparts, their childbearing abilities are forever on the voting block for white men in Congress to decide, and God forbid she ever gets angry about it…
A new documentary by filmmaker Mary Dore sheds light on the women's-rights movement during 1966-1971. She's Beautiful When She's Angry is currently making the rounds, opening for one week in Chicago on Friday, March 13, at the Music Box Theatre. As a special treat to moviegoers, women from the film will be on hand to participate in a Q&A following the opening night screening.
"I think it's important for all people to know their history, and this story has been so ignored, and often distorted. Too many people know the term 'feminazi' more than they know of anything about the 1960s women's movement," Dore said, while at a screening in Boston February 26. "These women thought big. They demanded free 24-hour childcare, free abortions on demand, and while they didn't realize all their goals, they re-imagined the world and brought about so many important changes."
She's Beautiful When She's Angry takes viewers for a ride through the founding of the National Organization for Women ( NOW ) as well as the socialist feminist world of Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell ( W.I.T.C.H. ). Up until this point, there has not been a theatrical documentary concerning the early women's-rights movement. According to the film's website, Dore's retelling does not "…shy away from the controversies over race, sexual preference and leadership that arose in the women's movement. She's Beautiful captures the spirit of the time—thrilling, scandalous and often hilarious."
"I was always interested in the very early days of the women's movement, and the important question has always been, 'How do you start a movement?' As I did more research, it was clear that the women's movement was closely tied to earlier activism, particularly in the civil rights movement, and the new left of the 1960s," Dore said. "I initially planned to cover from 1966 ( the founding of the National Organization for Women ) through 1970 ( when across the country, tens of thousands of women marched on Women's Strike Day, August 26, 1970 ). We decided to extend the period to 1971 because of the little-known story of the near-passage of a national childcare bill in late 1971, and because we wanted to include footage from Town Bloody Hall, the Chris Hegedus/D. A. Pennebaker documentary about fascinating debate between Norman Mailer and several prominent feminists."
Dore hopes the crowds leave with a sense of grit, gusto and, possibly, some organizational oomph.
"She's Beautiful When She's Angry is a portrait of grass roots organizers who took many approaches to fighting for equality. They didn't agree on everything, but ultimately they broke open the narrow gender roles of that period, which reverberated worldwide. The message is that ordinary people can make significant social change, if they get together and organize," she said.
With a subject rooted decades ago, was it difficult to compile copious amounts of footage into one legible piece?
"Yes and no. I've made a lot of history films and I'm an archive nerd, so finding footage isn't horribly difficult—except that it takes a lot of time and money," Dore said. "Many state and public archives are seriously underfunded, so they don't have the staff to index all of their materials. A lot of great people went way beyond their duties when I asked them for help."
Still, sometimes the help is worth it.
"I randomly called the State Historical Society of Iowa and a librarian there, Mary Bennett, found the amazing news clip of a self-professed 'male chauvinist' reporting on Women's Strike Day. Some of this footage hasn't been seen in over 40 years, and some of it never aired at all," Dore said.
Such historical footage has potential to alter the lives of young women everywhere—should the subjects at hand choose to participate. Regarding future activists, Dore shared, "History is important, and women's history has been buried or maligned forever. It's your job to learn from previous movements' successes, and from their mistakes. Each generation builds on the next and doesn't buy the nonsense that these things 'evolve' naturally. No, it takes movements to make change."
In fact, local organizers have the opportunity to start now by helping to screen She's Beautiful When She's Angry in their proximity.
"People can write to us on the website and suggest a theater or a town where they would like to get the film shown. When the theatrical winds down in a couple of months, we will also be organizing community and group screenings via an online group like TUGG, where people can organize their own events at a local theater," Dore said.
Dore took the leap while living in Boston.
"My first women's group was organized around studying an early paperback version of Our Bodies, Ourselves in Boston. I still have my copy with my consciousness-raising group's phone numbers written inside the cover. At that time, most of us were utterly ignorant about our bodies and the term for anything below your navel was 'down there.' That book had an enormous impact on millions of people, so I knew from the beginning that the Boston Women's Health Book Collective was one of the stories we had to include," Dore said. "They were ordinary women, who fought their way into medical libraries and gathered materials from women all over to write that book. Our Bodies, Ourselves has provided the book materials to progressive women around the world to adapt it for their own cultural context. For free! For decades! How admirable is that? Many other women's health groups at the time did amazing work, too, but I thought their story was amazing on so many levels."
Hear these and more stories when She's Beautiful When She's Angry heads to Chicago at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave., on March 13.
