"The documentary Who Does She Think She Is? delivers its fair share of such dispiriting statistics. But its impulse is visionary, not plaintive. Exploring the challenges of being a female artist and, in particular, the thorny balancing act between motherhood and artistic expression, Pamela Tanner Boll and Nancy Kennedy have made a vibrant film."

By Sheri Linden | Los Angeles Times 

Challenges for the Female Artist It wasn’t until 1986 that H.W. Janson’s History of Art,” a widely used textbook, took the bold step of including in its pages representatives of a certain group. The artists granted such acknowledgment for the first time? Women.

The documentary Who Does She Think She Is? delivers its fair share of such dispiriting statistics. But its impulse is visionary, not plaintive. Exploring the challenges of being a female artist and, in particular, the thorny balancing act between motherhood and artistic expression, Pamela Tanner Boll and Nancy Kennedy have made a vibrant film.

Following their muse, the five women profiled detonate land mines of guilt and provoke accusations of selfishness. Friends and spouses can’t always see past the either- or equation—work or family—that remains a deeply ingrained view of women’s place in the world, even in this so-called postfeminist age. Still, the artists persist. Some of their stories are more resonant than others, but they all illustrate vividly that tragic figures like Camille Claudel and Sylvia Plath are not the only templates for women pursuing a life of creativity.

With its playfully pointed use of archival clips and with its subjects’ striking talents on display, the well-crafted film celebrates courage: It takes guts to resist the constraints of accepted wisdom. Sculptor and painter Maye Torres, who endured a difficult divorce to build a modest yet idyllic life for herself and her sons, says it was not a matter of choosing studio time over family: “It was choosing who I was.”

This article was originally published in the Los Angeles Times.