Directed by Chris Hegedus • 1979 • United States
Starring Norman Mailer, Germaine Greer, Jacqueline Ceballos
On April 30, 1971, a standing-room-only crowd of New York’s intellectual elite packed the city’s Town Hall theater to see 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—tangle with a panel of four prominent female thinkers and activists: Jacqueline Ceballos, Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston, and Diana Trilling. Part intellectual death match, part three-ring circus, the proceedings were captured with crackling, fly-on-the-wall immediacy by the documentary great D. A. Pennebaker and a small crew, with Chris Hegedus later condensing the three-and-a-half-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 plainly relishing his role as the pugnacious rabble-rouser and literary lion at the center of it all.
Up Next in Directed by D.A. Pennebaker
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65 Revisited
Directed by D. A. Pennebaker • 2007 • United States
In DONT LOOK BACK, D. A. Pennebaker immortalized Bob Dylan’s landmark 1965 British tour with one of the greatest music documentaries of all time. With 65 REVISITED, Pennebaker returned to his trove of archival footage to create an alternate rec...
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Baby
Directed by D. A. Pennebaker • 1954 • United States
D. A. Pennebaker credits this 1954 film with clarifying his focus. He took his daughter, Stacy, to the zoo with a short film scenario in mind: shots of Stacy running intercut with shots of the animals responding to her. But Stacy was more int...
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Lambert & Co.
Directed by D. A. Pennebaker and Richard Leacock • 1964 • United States
Starring Dave Lambert, Mary Vonnie, Sarah BoatnerA longtime fan of American jazz vocalist Dave Lambert, D. A. Pennebaker jumped at the chance to film him auditioning a new group of singers at RCA in 1964. The resulting film...
