Maso and Miso Go Boating

In Maso et Miso vont en bateau, the feminist video collective Les Insoumuses responds, with acid humor and political rigor, to a television broadcast by Bernard Pivot on the “Year of Women,” which featured Françoise Giroud, then Secretary of State for Women's Affairs, commenting on a wide selection of statements by French public figures. Through diversion, collage, and scathing commentary, four feminists dismantle, point by point, the mechanisms of trivialized sexism and media condescension in the face of misogynistic discourse. Assuming video as a tool for emancipation—as opposed to television—the film asserts itself as a radical feminist manifesto, an act of political piracy, and a centerpiece of the history of militant video. An emblematic production of the Simone de Beauvoir Center, it was widely distributed in France and internationally, despite attempts at censorship.