In this post, I would like to talk about a documentary I watched for the assignment. The name of the documentary is “She is Beautiful When She is Angry.” It captured the second wave of the feminist movement chronologically with footage from that time and interviews with women who were heavily involved in that movement. They reflect on how it was, how they engaged with it, and how they felt. It starts with a brief explanation of what it was like for women to live in the U.S. before the second wave of the movement. Then, the formation of the National Organization for Women, followed by WITCH (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, Jane Collective, and so on. It ends with the video from the 40th anniversary symposium of the organization called “Our Bodies Ourselves.” I found this documentary when I looked up documentaries related to gender studies on Google, and the title caught my attention. I read some reviews that people wrote about it, and it sounded inspiring. I liked it a lot because it was informative, and with the footage and listening to actual living people reflecting on the plane, it made me feel like I was living in that era. I liked that the documentary included one negative outcome of the movement, which made the documentary objective in a way. However, the lack of representation of Black people and transgender people was irritating. There were only two or three black people who were interviewed out of close to 30 women. The struggle transgender people experienced during the movement or the effort they put into making their voice heard was not mentioned at all. These were the main weaknesses I noticed in the film, but overall, I would still recommend this documentary even to those who do not really know anything about feminism.
