She has a Beard

New York, 1975. Dancer Forest Hope walks the streets of Manhattan, microphone in hand. Her unshaven beard catches the attention of passersby and becomes a topic of conversation. That growing hair sparks a range of opinions and perspectives, laying bare emerging tensions surrounding gender expectations and stereotypes.

Brazilians Rita Moreira and Norma Bahía Pontes settled in New York in the early 1970s, expelled from their country by the dictatorship. Rita, a self-taught journalist, and Norma, a film director and critic, explored the potential of the Sony Portapak, one of the first lightweight portable video cameras. In the style of cinéma vérité and with their provocative intervention, they documented the pulse of a dissident generation that pushed its way through, embracing its contradictions, learning to define itself (lesbian feminists or feminist lesbians?), and imagining strategies for community survival.

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