Now Available: Kirk Tougas’s 1972 Feminist Portraits 2020

Posted February 22nd, 2022 in Announcements, New Acquisitions, New Digital Files, News / Events

Now available from Canyon Cinema: Kirk Tougas’s 1972 Feminist Portraits 2020.

1972 Feminist Portraits 2020 (2021, 115 minutes, color, sound, digital file)

Two moments in history, two documents, 1972 and 2020. Two Vancouver feminist activists speaking directly. Two portraits.

Part One – 51 minutes
1972: Joan Campana champions collective action on behalf of half the human race, a movement for all women regardless of political or cultural or religious affiliation, single or married. Building on the suffrage movement of the 1920’s and the great wave of feminism of the 1960-70s, she demands safe spaces for women and girls, equal pay, an education, female medicine, freedom from harassment and exploitation. A sisterhood of shared discovery, demanding equality and independence.

Part Two – 64 minutes
2020: Nearly 50 years later, Meghan Murphy, prominent activist for the needs and rights of women and girls, finds feminism challenged by an ideology of individual identity and gender-identification, that is, the politics of self. For some, pornography and prostitution are now empowering, and gender reassignment is a trend. Girls seek puberty-blockers wishing to be boys; men seek to transition. Discussion is now hate, feminists are cancelled, and belief challenges science. Has “woman” become meaningless?

Note: May be exhibited as a single-channel theatrical presentation (parts one and two presented sequentially) or two-channel installation (parts one and two projected side-by-side, as a diptych).