Three films at Arts Festival expertly address their topics
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From the documentary "Between the Folds," paper sculpture by Chris K. Palmer.
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Free art-related films will be screened at the Harris Theater, Downtown, during the next week courtesy of Pittsburgh Filmmakers in conjunction with the Three Rivers Arts Festival. A list of all 10 ran in Thursday's PG (read it here).
Following are reviews of three films:
• One exploring secret, private and public collections of erotic art.
• Another recalling the feminist art movement, which challenged the secret power structures that excluded women's art from prestigious national conversations.
• And the third, a sleeper that may be the best offering of all, visiting contemporary origami from elementary classrooms to university offices.
There are two major audiences for director Lynn Hershman Leeson's "!Women Art Revolution": Feminists who were involved in the 1960s activist movement that demanded gender equity in arts institutions, and young female artists born after the struggles documented here.
But this historically rich, well-made film also speaks within the broader context of the re-evaluation of the social contract in the U.S., when racial, class and gender equality were on the table, as was the unpopular Vietnam War.
In 1966, Ms. Hershman Leeson borrowed a camera and began filming people who stopped by her Berkeley living room. Then she forgot about the footage, which had been stored in boxes in her studio, until 2004. Partly because she's a filmmaker ("Teknolust," "Conceiving Ada," "Strange Culture") and partly because she has a conscience, she began to look for the story inside that raw footage. She wanted to honor the women, she says of the film, who introduced the concepts of social protest, collaboration and public art that addressed the political imperatives of social justice and civil rights.
First Published June 3, 2011 12:00 am
