Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker
United States,
1979
In 1971, Norman Mailer, fresh from the controversy over his essay “The Prisoner of Sex” and the backlash it received from leaders of the women’s movement, convened with four prominent feminist thinkers and activists—Jacqueline Ceballos, Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston, and Diana Trilling—at Manhattan’s Town Hall for a zeitgeist-defining battle of wills and wits. Part intellectual death match, part three-ring circus, the often raucous proceedings were captured with crackling, fly-on-the-wall immediacy by documentary greats D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, who condensed the three-hour affair into this briskly entertaining snapshot of a singular cultural moment. Heady, heated, and hilarious, Town Bloody Hall is a dazzling display of feminist firepower courtesy of some of the most influential figures of the era, with Mailer relishing his role as the pugnacious provocateur at the center of it all.