The Women Behind the Camera: The Reclamation of Body, Pleasure, and Physical Space through Experimental Film and Video, 1965-1975

This study investigates the use of film and video as political tools for women to promote collectivity, raise consciousness, and incite both social and political change. Through textual analysis of seven experimental films and videos, from the years 1965-1975, it is apparent that women used techniques of reclamation of three major aspects of identity formation—namely, body, pleasure, and physical space—to individually take steps toward liberation, while adding to the social phenomenon of second-wave feminism. Through this analysis the following question is addressed: how, and why, did the female media makers of the women’s liberation movement and sexual revolution implement both film and video to challenge social constructions and ideas regarding femininity, domesticity, and sexuality? The textual analysis performed in relation to this research question is rooted in cultural materialism and takes historical, economic, and cultural factors into account.