I Still Am a Woman, Pissed Off and Curious

Filmmaker Friedrich recalls traveling across post-colonial West Africa in 1976, when she was 21, in this intriguing if somewhat overwhelming account. Less a linear narrative than a scrapbook of journal entries and photos, the book traces Friedrich’s travels alongside her political musings. She’s sharply attentive to gendered power dynamics, particularly in her encounters with Nigerian women, registering both solidarity and the vast distance between their lives. Her commentary on patriarchy, race, and class often feels strikingly contemporary, though it’s rooted in the social tensions of the 1970s. She can be biting (“If the country is ‘being brought into the modern world,’ it usually means that the wife of the President has a microwave oven & that the facilities for tourists are improving”), but moments of political rupture, including the assassination of Nigerian president Murtala Ramat Muhammed, prompt sober reflections on U.S. influence abroad. The sheer volume of material, coupled with frequent changes of location and a lack of recurring figures, can be disorienting. Still, Friedrich’s striking black-and-white photographs—of people, townscapes, and art—help paper over some of the confusion. Clear-eyed and unsentimental, this succeeds as a self-aware meditation on the difficulty of telling complex truths. (Mar.)