Artist Lynn Hershman Leeson has been making a documentary about feminist art off and on since 1964, when she says she was a “freshly radicalized graduate student at Berkeley.” Since then, while making her own identity-obsessed art (performance, photography and more) as well as three films of different genres starring Tilda Swinton, she has gathered 12,428 minutes of footage—feminist performances, protests and interviews included.

While that stop-and-go working method surely has its disadvantages, fundraising momentum among them, it also has an upside. The result—an 83-minute feature called "!W.A.R." with a nod to the 1960s collective known as "Women Art Revolution"--surveys a broader range of artists over a broader period of time than any other that film on the subject to date.

It covers a cluster of artworks exploring issues of identity, sexuality and domesticity, from a 1964 performance piece by Yoko Ono inviting the audience to cut off her clothes to a 1992 performance by Janine Antoni using her hair as a paintbrush, with colorful bits from the Guerrilla Girls (shown above) at various turns.

It includes conversations with deceased artists like Nancy Spero and Hannah Wilke. And it revisits the political roots of feminism, which shared its lifeblood with the same cultural revolution that led a generation to protest the Vietnam War. In the process, the film does not pretend to be comprehensive but offers a sampling of moments in the rather fluid and dynamic history of feminist art, in which seeming achievements are frequently undercut and apparent obstacles often overcome.

Below we've culled a list of 10 memorable moments, both good and bad, that figure in the film.

"!W.A.R." had its L.A. debut at the Hammer Museum Tuesday and runs at the Laemmle Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills from Friday to June 23.

--Jori Finkel

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FIVE LOWS IN THE HISTORY OF FEMINIST ART

1962: The first edition of H.W. Janson’s "History of Art," which quickly becomes a classroom staple, does not include any women artists.

1971: The catalogue for LACMA’s groundbreaking “Art and Technology” show is published, featuring a