Scum Manifesto
Essential Documentaries
•
29m
Directed by Carole Roussopoulos and Delphine Seyrig | 29 mins | 1976
A crucial piece of early feminist video art from the Les Insoumuses collective that documents a staged reading of would-be Andy Warhol assassin Valerie Solanas’s notorious misandrist call-to-arms of the same name—the acronym stands for “Society for Cutting Up Men”—in which readers Seyrig and Roussopolous emphatically recite Solanas’s treatise on the tragic consequences of “vagina envy,” then unavailable in France, while, between them, a television set flickers with news images that testify to the ubiquity of rampant violence throughout the male-dominated world.
Up Next in Essential Documentaries
-
The Competition
Directed by Claire Simon | 121 mins | 2016
The Competition begins, significantly, with the image of a locked gate—that of La Fémis, one of the most prestigious film schools in the world, offering hands-on training from working professionals and accepting only 40 students per year from hundreds of... -
The French
Directed by William Klein | 130 mins | 1982
“For me, this film encapsulates everything I loved and love about the tennis of that moment; and in the hands of the great and singular William Klein, it is at once a gripping sports page, a fascinating piece of reportage, and a work of art.”—Wes ...
-
The Image Book
Leaving November 1
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard | 84 mins | 2019
A cinematic collage, an esoteric essay film, a wide-reaching, freewheeling ontological history of the moving image, and a sorrowful survey of the fallen world at the beginning of the 21st century, Special Palme d’Or winner The Image...