Using never-before-seen archival footage, stills, interviews and dramatic re-creations, it weaves together a story of scientist, adventurer and international celebrity Margaret Mead, whose ideas shaped how we think about ourselves.

A portrait of one of the most influential women of our time. Using never-before-seen archival footage, stills, interviews and dramatic re-creations, it weaves together a story of scientist, adventurer and international celebrity Margaret Mead, whose ideas shaped how we think about ourselves. The film tells how she first gained attention in the 1920 s and 30s with her pioneering studies of youth and gender in Samoa and New Guinea. By age 33, the five-foot, one-hundred-pound Mead had traveled three times around the globe, explored uncharted lands where few men and no women dared to go. By age 34 she had published three bestsellers, taken the second of three husbands, and revolutionized our understanding of what it means to be male or female. When she was not doing fieldwork, most of her professional years were spent at the American Museum of Natural History. In her later years she was often seen on television as a bespectacled, sometimes outrageous advice-giver to the Vietnam War generation. This film deals with the controversies as well as the accomplishments of her life. Here is a valuable film for Women's Studies, Anthropology and History, as well as public library audiences. This film was partially funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.—Anonymous