Thursday 29 November 2018

NEWS: A year-long celebration of women in cinema starts at HOME in January.





HOME announces Celebrating Women in Global Cinema - a year-long celebration of women in film taking place throughout 2019

In 2019 HOME Manchester will host a year-long programme of films and special events highlighting and celebrating women in film from across the world.

From specially curated retrospectives, seasons and special events, to takeovers of annual favourites such as Not Just Bollywood, this branded series of screenings and events will explore and challenge the place and space of female filmmakers from a variety of cultural, social and political perspectives.

Recognising the importance of accessibility and equality within the film industry from entry-level upwards, HOME has opened up six programming slots across the year to be curated by burgeoning female creatives and women looking to break into film exhibition, who are invited to attend a public “Meet Up” event in January to meet the HOME programming team, with a view to pitching their own content ideas.

Women in Global Cinema will partner with the recently launched Girls On Film podcast - the all-female review show presented by film journalist Anna Smith - to bring a series of live podcasts to HOME across the year. Championing the female perspective in film criticism and its importance to the exposure of female-led films, the events will include live debates, interviews and film reviews.
Celebrating Women in Global Cinema is co-curated by Rachel Hayward, HOME’s Film Programme Manager and Andy Willis, Senior Visiting Curator: Film and Professor of Film Studies, School of Arts and Media at University of Salford.
Rachel Hayward commented:
In 2019 we’re taking our on-going commitment to diverse and inclusive film programming to the next level with the theme of women in film permeating our cinemas for an entire year – as opposed to a one-off season or event. We look forward to celebrating what women from across the world have achieved in film to date and encouraging and supporting the female creatives of the future so that female voices in our industry become louder in the years to come.”

An overview of the programming announced so far follows:
Celebrating ground-breaking women working on both sides of the camera - from directors, writers and producers to on-screen talent - a series of mini-retrospectives will kick off in January with the ICO’s new retrospective of Margarethe von Trotta, one of the leading lights of the New German Cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. Other retrospective subjects will include: Euzhan Palcy, the first black woman to direct a Hollywood studio picture (A Dry White Season, 1989); Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding), one of India’s most critically acclaimed filmmakers; BAFTA-wining producer Rebecca O’Brien (I, Daniel Blake); and award-winning television writer and producer Debbie Horsfield (Poldark, Cutting It).

Further retrospectives and special events will explore the often complex relationship that influential female filmmakers and stars have had with Hollywood with subjects including: the Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony-award winning Barbra Streisand; controversial Italian director Lina Wertmüller, the first female Best Director Oscar nominee (for Seven Beauties, 1975); and, Ida Lupino, a pioneering director and producer who took on the male-dominated Hollywood studio system and worked on more than 130 films and television programmes from 1931-1978 and was the first woman to direct a film noir (The Hitch-Hiker, 1953).

New and specially curated seasons foregrounding women in film will include: Women, Organise!, a collection of films focussing on women’s activism and involvement in trade unionism marking the 120th anniversary of the GFTU (General Federation of Trade
Unions) in 2019; and, a major retrospective in May of pioneering Hong Kong filmmaker Angie Chen, whose expansive career spans award-winning short films and documentaries, collaborations with directors including Jackie Chan (Dragon Lord, 1982) and high-profile commercials.

Some of HOME’s most popular returning seasons will have a Celebrating Women in Global Cinema take-over, including Not Just Bollywood - HOME’s annual showcase of independent Indian filmmaking - which will devote the 2019 programme to female creatives in Indian film, including a retrospective on actor-director Nandita Das (Firaaq).

As a celebration of global cinema, the programme will include work from South and East Asia, Africa, Europe, and North, South and Central America. There will be a special season dedicated to women filmmakers in the Arab world, particularly in Lebanon and Palestine, in partnership with the School of Arts, Languages and Culture at the University of Manchester, in addition to a focus on women’s contributions to East Asian cinema, to be announced in 2019.

Further annual events will spotlight women in film including HOME’s Pride programme and year-round LGBTQ+ work, and ongoing partnership with the Women Over Fifty Film Festival. HOME will also continue to partner with The University of Manchester’s Sexuality Summer School whose 2019 “Queer Dialogues” programme will include an event with writer and activist So Mayer entitled “Dial(ogue) D for Dyke Disruption: A Queer Toolkit for Blowing Up the Film Canon” which will include talking points from queer and feminist filmmakers and critics from around the globe.

Similarly HOME’s Engagement and Industry programmes will foreground women’s voices. In-depth evening courses open to the public will explore women in cinematic spaces that are not deemed traditionally female - for example, “Women in Science Fiction” and “Women in Film Comedy” - while industry discussions with female creatives aim to increase the awareness of opportunities for women within the sector and inspire young audiences.  

Further screenings and work-in-progress content will be announced throughout the year - including a focus on women in documentary filmmaking and screenings of films by trans women - all of which will be Women in Global Cinema branded, allowing audiences to readily identify content by and about women.

#WomenAtHOME

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