CIRCA: Radical Harmonies

RADICAL HARMONIES (2002) is an 88-minute documentary produced and directed by Academy Award nominee Dee Mosbacher that chronicles the history of queer music by (mostly lesbian) women. Through festival and performance footage, interviews, and archival material from the 1960s to the 1990s, RADICAL HARMONIES delves into a musical culture based on a commitment to feminism, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In its heyday during the 1970s and 80s, the Women's Music Cultural Movement offered a message that was different from the mainstream musical culture. For the first time ever, women made festivals accessible through sign language interpretation, differently abled accommodations, and sliding scale ticket prices. The movement also gave birth to an alternative industry that changed women and music forever. It opened doors for women producers, photographers, sound and light technicians, along with women-owned recording, sound, and distribution companies.

This groundbreaking documentary presents performance footage and interviews with legendary artists such as June Millington, Cris Williamson, Holly Near, and Linda Tillery, who recalled the triumphs of having their songs amplified and recorded by women sound engineers and other professionals in an otherwise male-dominated industry. RADICAL HARMONIES features such early performers of Women's Music as Fanny, Meg Christian, Margie Adam, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Judith Casselberry, Mary Watkins, and Vicki Randle as well as later artists including Ubaka Hill, Indigo Girls, Toshi Reagon, Ani DiFranco, Nedra Johnson, Bitch and Animal, Tribe 8, and Sexpod.