This groundbreaking thought about the feminist documentary film in a political vein examines its aesthetics in terms of the forms and contents that it takes repetitively. The authors summarizes this tendency as follows:
They are filmed in domestic space, and their words serve to redefine that space in a new. "women-identified" way. Either the stance of the people filmed or the stance of the film as whole reflects a commitment of changing the public sphere as well; and for this reason, these filmmakers have used an accessible documentary form [realist documentary]. (p. 521)
Noting endlessly reoccurring theme of a woman telling her story about her struggle against the public sphere, Lesage elicit the non-hierarchical relation between the filmmaker and her subjects that deeply resides within its narrative structure, which is in contrast with the sense of the male artist's 'seizing' the subject and presenting it as one's 'creation'. Thus, the collective process of self-conscioussness is intended at the outset. Lesage puts the power of collective knowledge production in the following way:
There is a knowledge that is already there about domestic life, but it has not necessarily been sopken in unolonized, women-identified terms. Women's art, especially the Feminist documentary films, like consiousness-raising groups, strive to find a new way of speaking about what we have collectively known to be really there in the domestic sphere and to wrest back our identity there in womens' terms. (p. 517)
