Maryse Holder, "Women’s Video Festival"
Off Our Backs (October 1972): Pag.18.

In this extensive review of the first Women's Video Festival in 1972, Maryse Holder begins and concludes by comparing film and video as media in relation to women. She describes and comments on many of the video works on in the festival in detail. Among the works discussed are documentaries by Keiko Tsuno, Jackie Cassan, Ann Arlen, Queer Blue Light Video, Under One Roof Video, and Women's Video News Service. The reviewer also praises the more experimental works by Shigeko Kubota and Joanne Kyger.

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Robin Reising, øWomen on tape: Spinning Tales and TailspinsÓ
The Village Voice (October 5, 1972): Pag.46.

In this review of the first Womens Video Festival, Robin Reisig gives an account of the festival and a critical judgment on some of the works presented. The reviewer discusses The Rape Tape by Under One Roof Video, Tattoo by Susan Milano, Descartes by Joane Kyger, and Let it Be by Steina Vasulka, among others.

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Rob Pinney, "Annual video-tape extravaganza stresses a women's point of view"
Popular Photography (1973): 22, 108.

Roy Pinney reviews the Second Annual Womens Video Festival, held at The Kitchen in 1973. He hails the videotape as the ønewest art form to articulate the inner spirit of our timeÓ and argues that the medium is a valuable tool for female artists to reach out with their messages. He particularly stresses the fact that it is a brand new medium that gives women øan opportunity to participate on an equal footing with men right from the beginning of its development.Ó Pinney welcomes the Vasulkas screening projects, since there are few places for artists videos to be shown. Organizer Susan Milano points out that the opportunities for exhibiting tapes are still scarce.

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Richard F. Shepard, øMs. Message.Ó
The New York Times, Going Out Guide (October 5, 1973)

In this announcement for the Womens Video Festival the writer states, øeven those women chained to household chores with no other company than soap operas or the Watergate hearings on the small screen will find this television different.Ó

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Introduction to Women's Video Festival catalogue, Susan Milano
(1976)

In this two-page introduction to the catalogue for the 1976 Womens Video Festival, Susan Milano looks back at the past years festivals and posits her arguments for a separate forum for showcasing womens videotapes. Milano recounts the history of the Womens Video Festival: Although there were many women working with video in the early 1970s, Steina Vasulka, who was organizing video screenings at the Kitchen at the time, noticed that women were underrepresented in their programs. Vasulka asked Milano to create a venue exclusively for womens work and the Festival was born. Milano states that the need for the festival continues to exist.

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Martha Gever, "Video Politics: Early Feminist Projects"
Afterimage vol. 11, no. 1/2 Summer 1983.

In this extensive article, published in Afterimage in 1983, Martha Gever discusses the feminist political documentary of the 1970s in the context of a neglected history. Gever discusses the social, technical and aesthetic forces that informed the political video documentary and its relation to feminism and women videomakers. Gever discusses four documentaries in detail, which were presented at the Women's Video Festivals in 1973 and 1974: Politics of Intimacy by Julie Gustafson, Harriet by Nancy Cain, Ama l'Uomo Tuo by Cara DeVito and 50 Wonderful Years by the video collective Optic Nerve. Gever argues that economic, cultural and political conditions have relegated this work to a forgotten social history.

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Barlow, Melinda M. "Feminism 101: The New York Women's Video Festival, 1972-1980"
Camera Obscura (Dec 1, 2003) vol. 18, no. 54, pp. 3-40.

This exhaustive 37-page essay on the history of the Womens Video Festival addresses the fact that the Festival has been largely ignored since the 1970s. The essay was published in 2003 in Camera Obscura, a journal dedicated to feminist perspectives on film, video, and television. The author of this study is Melinda Barlow, associate professor of film studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, specializing in womens film and videomaking. In her study, Barlow recounts a thorough description of the Womens Video Festival, discussing the importance of this venue in the early 70s and the situation for women working with video at the time. Barlow focuses on the 1975 and 1976 editions of the Festival, when the organizers created three thematically distinct viewing environments.

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