Making Change The Australian Women’s Liberation Movement in Catherine Dwyer’s Brazen Hussies

In the opening moments of the new Australian documentary Brazen Hussies (Catherine Dwyer, 2020), an on-screen intertitle notes that the women’s movement was ‘reignited’ between 1965 and 1975. That word stuck with me because, while it was most definitely true of that time period, it’s fair to say that the movement has once again reignited in the contemporary age.

While the twenty-four-hour news cycle can allow for the impression that all movements are happening all of the time, social justice is often cyclical, and activism and justice have strong ebbs and flows. Issues that grab public attention inevitably lose their cultural marquee value at one point or another for something else, only to swing back around again when the political winds blow in that direction once more. This phenomenon can be reflected in cinema, too, in which a deluge of titles on a given subject tend to emerge as a response to some (perceived or real) revived interest. For instance, once marriage equality passed into law in the United States, Australia and elsewhere around the world, films on the subject quickly vanished, with queer-activist narratives diverted primarily to transgender-rights issues instead.

But a whiff of those gains being challenged and there is no doubt that cinema will get back into gear. It’s what filmmakers, and in particular documentarians, have been doing for generations.

‘Sexism and the women’s liberation movement’

Brazen Hussies fits neatly into its own trend, one that has been impossible to ignore over