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Film screening: "She's Beautiful When She's Angry"

Friday, March 8, 2019
7:30 p.m., followed by commentary and Q&A with director Mary Dore. Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, University at Albany Downtown Campus.

She's Beautiful When She's Angry poster
 

Free and open to the public.

(USA, 2014, 92 minutes, color)

“We felt like we were changing the world,” says one of the women in Mary Dore’s SHE'S BEAUTIFUL WHEN SHE'S ANGRY, a story of the outrageous and often brilliant women who founded the modern women’s movement from 1966 to 1971.

The Village Voice called it “One of the year’s best films…. an urgent, illuminating dive into the headwaters of second-wave feminism.”

Rachel Saltz wrote in her New York Times review:
"Reminds us feminists didn't just feel they were changing the world -- they changed it... Makes clear: the fight isn't over."

SHE'S BEAUTIFUL WHEN SHE'S ANGRY takes us from the founding of NOW, with ladies in hats and gloves, to the emergence of more radical factions of women’s liberation; from intellectuals like Kate Millett to the street theatrics of W.I.T.C.H. (Women’s International Conspiracy from Hell!).

In a review published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle wrote:

“'She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry,'” a documentary about this movement, has two broad aims: The first is to rescue from the flood of time the colorful story of this era. The second is to refute the illusion of inevitability. The movie tells us, contrary to what we might tell ourselves, that change did not come about through some process of societal evolution. It came about through the specific acts of specific women."

Artfully combining dramatizations, performance and archival imagery, the film recounts the stories of women who fought for their own equality, and in the process created a world-wide revolution. SHE’S BEAUTIFUL does not try to romanticize the early movement, but dramatizes it in its exhilarating, quarrelsome, sometimes heart-wrenching glory.

The film does not shy away from the controversies over race, sexual preference and leadership that arose in the women’s movement. SHE’S BEAUTIFUL WHEN SHE’S ANGRY captures the spirit of the time --- thrilling, scandalous, and often hilarious.

The screening is sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute as part of its Classic Film Series, presented with support from Marc Guggenheim, UAlbany Class of ‘92.

Watch the trailer


Flick Nation Interview - Mary Dore, "She's Beautiful When She's Angry"