War Paint: Women at War

6/14/2025

There is some astonishingly evocative artwork contained in this feature-length documentary but I’m not at all sure that the accompanying narration did that too much credit. Using works of physical and photographic art, we are exposed to a plethora of illustrations of conflict ranging from courageous women in Iran protesting the activities of the morality police through to the code-breakers and industrial labourers of the Second World War. With attitudes from the military gradually altering thanks to the likes of folks like Lee Miller, photography starts to get up close and personal with the true atrocities of war and to stimulate conversations about just what warfare actually is? Imagery of ships, planes, guns are here but so are those more subliminally oblique and/or effective. Those look