She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry (2014) + Chisholm ’72 (2004)

July 3, 2015 | By

ShesBeautifulWhenShesAngry_posterOpening tomorrow at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema is Mary Dore’s great doc on the women’s movement, which runs throughout July and should offer several generations a mass of information that rarely circulates in the mainstream media except as maybe sound-bites or Wikipedia links in blogs and op-eds.

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry (2014) is filled with interviews and archival footage, but its biggest draw is seeing the degree of change that emanated from the stubborn actions of ordinary people. Read from a more contemporary vantage: if you disagree with bad policy, bad leadership, bad laws, and can’t tolerate rot in government, you have to act and be relentless, although the doc closes with a statement (quoted in my review) which sums up the permanence of any law – hard-won victories can be eroded through slight legislation and restrictions, and if there’s no mechanism to control, let alone an awareness of what’s happening, freedoms and rights one cherishes can be significantly reduced.

Chisholm72Paired with Dore’s prescient film is a doc I reviewed back in 2005. Shirley Chisholm was profiled in a great doc by Shola Lynch, Chisholm 72: Unbought & Unbossed (2004), released on DVD by Fox. Chisholm appears fleetingly in Dore’s film, and I figured spotlighting Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate and her 1972 Presidential campaign, made sense.

 

 

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com

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