Acting Like Women

🤩 Acting Like Women, dir. Cheri Gaulke, 2026, USA, 90 min.
🌊 West Coast premiere
Sunday, June 21, 2026, 3:30 PM, BAMPFA (Berkeley)

Acting Like Women (© Cheri Gaulke)

Frameline blurb: Art, activism, and female-powered performance burst onto the scene in 1970s Los Angeles, forming a tight-knit and transformative creative community. Centered around the early days of the Woman’s Building, these artists explored the body, gender, and identity — challenging the entrenched sexism of the art world while forging groundbreaking new modes of expression that would influence generations to come.

Director Cheri Gaulke, herself deeply embedded in this vibrant performance art scene, turns her lens on the radical ideas, daring works, and inventive strategies these women used to create and share their art. Executive produced by Lily Tomlin alongside her longtime partner Jane Wagner, Acting Like Women is both a personal and historical portrait. Drawing on rich archival footage and interviews with the artists — along with the voice of Tomlin herself — the film captures a pivotal moment in feminist art history. Featuring music by Billie Eilish, The Linda Lindas, Fanny, Phranc, and Holly Near, this dynamic documentary traces the roots of feminist performance art and its enduring legacy.

My take: A wealth of history of both feminism and performance art, as well as the substantial overlap between the two. I was still a child in the 1970s, gradually becoming more aware of feminism, while still not yet grappling with my sexual orientation. I also lived in Dallas, which was, at that time, a dismal backwater in the overall art scene. Seriously, the three best art museums in Dallas were all in downtown Fort Worth. Even after I moved to northern California, I never heard of the Los Angeles Woman’s Building; my loss.

If you have any interest in art, art history, activism, feminism, or empowering marginalized people of all stripes, this film is a must see. If you have no interest in any of those things, what planet are you from?

We only missed by 4 days getting the world premiere, but the Bentonville Film Festival needs some love, too.

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