Tribeca Review: “Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print”

Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print (Cecilia Aldarondo/Alice Gu/Salima Koroma, 2025) 4 out of 5 stars

The groundbreaking, feminist Ms. magazine (groundbreaking because it was feminist), founded in 1971, changed the media landscape by bringing women’s concerns directly into the mainstream (where they should always have been). Though the publication faced some initial misogynist pushback, it quickly caught on and became one of the decade’s success stories. In the new documentary Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print, directors Cecilia Aldarondo, Alice Gu, and Salima Koroma analyze the early years of the then-monthly (now quarterly) periodical, exploring the challenges it faced and hurdles it overcame.

Watching the film, it is impossible not to be struck by how little has changed in our public discourse since then, in part because the toxic manosphere has revived sexist ideas better left in the dustbin of the past. It is this very fact, however, that makes Dear Ms. such a vital work and important record. The contempt in which I hold those responsible for bringing us backwards is limitless. May their moral corruption rot their souls to the core.

This is a portmanteau (aka, anthology) movie, with each director taking one section. First up is Salima Koroma (Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street), with Part One: “A Magazine for All Women.” Then comes Alice Gu (Really Good Rejects), with Part Two: “A Portable Friend.” Finally, Cecilia Aldarondo gives us Part Three: “No Comment.” In this triptych, each portion has its own distinct style, which proves visually engaging since the same people interviewed earlier pop up again in different compositions.

The history is complicated, especially when it comes to issues of race and porn. Anyone who was fortunate enough to see Shaina Taub’s musical Suffs on Broadway (and if you didn’t, be sure to catch it when it comes to a town near you), knows that the saga of feminism is fraught with conflict over white women expecting their African American sisters to fall in line, even at the cost of racial emancipation. Though the editors of Ms. had good intentions, they were originally all white, and Dear Ms. shows how this sometimes blinded them to a more inclusive approach.

And then there were the debates about pornography that raged into the 1980s and proved divisive. Some feminists, like Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, wanted to effectively ban all porn as anti-woman, while others saw it as potentially empowering. Those two sides could not agree; meanwhile, the right side of the political spectrum saw an opportunity to make common cause with the anti-porn crusaders, to messy results.

Among those on screen (in new interviews or in archival footage) are co-founder Gloria Steinem; original editors Patricia Carbine (also a co-founder), Suzanne Braun Levine, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin; later editors Marcia Ann Gillespie and Margaret Sloan-Hunter; contributors Jane O’Reilly, Lindsy Van Gelder, and Michele Wallace; feminist sex workers Annie Sprinkle and Veronica Vera; academic Dr. Lisa Coleman; actor Alan Alda; and many more. It’s an exciting mix of voices, all of whom contribute to a rousing ensemble that casts an eye both critical and admiring on what happened when. The result is a very well-balanced documentary determined to tell the story in all its highs and lows. That objective approach is itself noteworthy. Vive la révolution!

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Christopher Llewellyn Reed is a film critic, filmmaker, and educator, as well as Film Festival Today's Editor. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.