Michele Manenti

The Criterion Collection is releasing trailblazing filmmaker Martha Coolidge’s feature film debut, the autobiographical docudrama “Not a Pretty Picture,” in August. In 1962, as a 16-year-old boarding school student, Coolidge was date raped. A dozen years later, she worked through the experience in her unflinchingly personal hybrid of documentary and fiction. A high-stakes experiment in metacinema that broke new ground with its uncompromising examination of date rape, Not a Pretty Picture delves into questions about the on-screen representation of sexual violence and the limits of artistic catharsis.