Women of '69, Unboxed

Nineteen women who graduated from Skidmore College in 1969 and recently turned 65 are profiled in this talking-heads documentary by filmmaker Peter Barton, which serves up another portrait of aging boomers looking back on their heady school days. At the heart of the film is a relic of those times: a Skidmore “yearbox” that replaced the conventional yearbook and consisted of artistic portraits of students, full of free-spiritedness and promise. What emerges is a sense of how much American culture was changing in the latter half of the ‘60s: the prim and proper Skidmore girls who entered the 1964 freshman class would soon be standing up to campus authorities on the subjects of free expression, alcohol, sex, and more. Five years later, everything was different, as issues of pursuing a career or motherhood—or juggling both—became paramount for some of these women after college. An interesting, collective story that serves as a microcosm of American life for women during a time of great change (1969 was also the year that Hillary Clinton graduated from Wellesley College) and during ensuing decades, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)