War Paint: Women at War (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 at brutality that doesn’t just involve bullets. The violence towards body and mind are touched upon, as are their toxically pervasive effects not just on the victim but on the families, as psychological elements of control and depravity play an increasingly demonstrable part in what can only be described as mankind’s inhumanity to itself. Do women have a different eye for photography, sculptures, painting than men when it comes to this sphere of art? Well it asks that question but given they are no works included by men, it’s hard to compare and contrast. We are rather told what to think by those with an agenda to promote, maybe even an axe to grind, and some of the points Margy Kinmonth seems to be making are very much formulated to the message she has chosen to deliver here. Some of the commentary - especially about supposed masculinity of all things military (aren’t ships always ‘she’?) just isn’t true and references to works hidden in basements and attics seems designed to suggest there is some sinister or malevolent male reason for subduing these frankly quite revelatory piece of art rather than them just being forgotten about, or hidden away for safe keeping or maybe even, as is often the case when you see holocaust victims interviewed, kept out of mind because of the traumatic memories they might induce in people who just want to get on with their new lives. It’s that need to create then poke the controversy bear that rather grated on me after a while. What was interesting, though, was the eclectic mix of contributors who could create one hell of an exhibition if there works were ever to be displayed, as they intended, in a single space uncluttered by chatter.