Can you name three female artists? The people asked that question outside the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art can’t get much beyond Frida You-Know-Who-I-Mean. That’s old, sad news to Lynn Hershman Leeson, the director of “!Women Art Revolution” — “!W.A.R.” — a documentary history of the feminist art movement.  Adrian Piper, Betye Saar, Nancy Spero, Martha Rosler and Carolee Schneemann (that’s five for next time you’re asked) are just some of the artists interviewed by Ms. Hershman Leeson, who in the mid-1960s, a young artist herself, borrowed a camera and started shooting the friends and colleagues who passed through her living room in Berkeley, Calif. She continued off and on over the years, wherever she could. (Judy Chicago holds forth in a college bathroom at one point.) These interviews form the backbone of “!W.A.R.,” and like the film, they’re passionate, contentious, funny, sincere, politically attuned. They’d make you nostalgic for the struggle except, as many point out, the struggle continues.  The artists talk about how their work was condescended to or ignored, excluded from galleries and museums. (“Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” the Guerrilla Girls, some of whose masked members appear here, asked in the ’80s.) Ms. Hershman Leeson’s documentary sets out to correct the historical record and goes further, making the case that feminist art — varied, messy, conflicted and engaged with the times — is at the very center of that history.  As a matter of principle, Ms. Hershman Leeson shows as much of that art as she can, including her own. She debated with herself about using her work, she says, but decided, enough with omissions. (To that end there’s an archival Web site, rawwar.org.) After all, if this is “!W.A.R.,” omission is the enemy. And Ms. Hershman Leeson’s fighting spirit is contagious.  Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan.Written, directed and edited by Lynn Hershman Leeson; directors of photography, Hiro Narita, Antonio Rossi, Fawn Yacker, Lise Swenson and Ms. Hershman Leeson; music by Carrie Brownstein; produced by Ms. Hershman Leeson, Kyle Stephan and Alexandra Chowaniec; released by Zeitgeist Films. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. This film is not rated.
A documentary makes the case that the feminist art movement has been more influential than is generally acknowledged.