HOME
announces Women, Organise! – a new programme
of films about women’s activism and the fight for workers’ rights, Sat 4 – Fri 10
May 2019
Further events announced for ongoing
Celebrating Women in Global Cinema
programme, including retrospective of pioneering Hong Kong filmmaker Angie Chen
HOME Manchester is
delighted to announce the programme for Women, Organise! – a curated season
of films and special events exploring how women have fought for their rights in the workplace, their
involvement in trade unionism, and how these experiences have been shown on
screen. The season is supported by the General
Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) which celebrates its 120th
anniversary in 2019, and is curated by Andy Willis, Senior Visiting Curator: Film
and Professor of Film Studies
at University of Salford with HOME’s Head of Film Rachel
Hayward. Women, Organise!
is part of HOME’s ongoing year-long Celebrating
Women in Global Cinema programme.
Looking at women’s activism around the world, films
screening include Ken Loach’s portrayal of Mexican cleaning staff fighting to
unionise in the LA-set Bread and Roses,
Korean filmmaker Ji-young Boo’s account of non-contract supermarket workers in Cart, and the 1957 Hollywood musical The Pajama Game starring Doris Day as an
Iowa factory worker.
Other leading female performances include Sally Field’s
Oscar-winning portrayal of a millworker protesting against unhealthy working
conditions in Norma Rae and Charlize
Theron’s and Frances McDormand’s Oscar-nominated roles as miners in Niki Caro’s
North Country, inspired by the first class-action sexual harassment suit in
the United States. Also based on real events is Roy Battersby’s Leeds – United! about the collective
action of female textile workers in Leeds, originally broadcast in 1974 as a
BBC ‘Play for Today.’
Documentaries in the season include the award-winning A Feeling Greater than Love (Shu'our Akbar
Min el Hob) from Lebanese director Mary Jimanus Saba, and The Nightcleaners, a key work of British
political cinema from the Berwick Street Film Collective about low-paid and
victimised female cleaners in 1970’s London. Queer Feminist collective Club des
Femmes will also introduce a double-bill of two documentaries representing the
vital role that women have played in working class struggle and resistance:
Madeline Anderson’s I am Somebody
about a 1969 hospital strike in South Carolina, and Glasgow-set Red Skirts on Clydeside about women’s
activism during the Glasgow rent strikes if 1915 from Jenny Woodley and
Christine Bellamy of the Sheffield Film Cooperative.
The season will also
include introductions and Q&As with filmmakers, such as Humphrey Trevelyan
(The Nightcleaners), Leeds
– United! producer
Kenith Trodd, and Union leaders of today, such as Sarah Woolley of the Bakers
and Allied Food Workers Union (BFAWU) who will introduce the screening of North Country. Members of trade unions will
receive a 10% discount on tickets for films and events in the season (upon
presenting a valid union membership card at HOME’s Box Office).
Women,
Organise! is part of HOME’s year-long
commitment to championing women in film across the world and encouraging the
female creatives of the future. Further upcoming and newly announced
events include:
·
A major retrospective from Sun 12 –
Tue 14 May of pioneering Hong Kong filmmaker Angie Chen who will also be in Manchester - having established
herself in the male-dominated film industry of the 1980s, working alongside
high-profile figures such as Jackie
Chan (Dragon Lord, 1982) as an Assistant
Director and emerging as a filmmaker in her own right at the height of Hong Kong
cinema’s ‘New Wave’, Chen moved away from feature films and into commercial directing
and high-profile promotional work for clients including the Hong Kong
government. After a 20-year hiatus, Chen returned to feature-length filmmaking,
and has made a trio of award-winning documentaries in the 21st
century including: The Darling Life
(2008), a look at owner’s relationships with their pets, inspired by her
closeness to her aging dog, and the award-winning films One Tree, Three Lives (2012) and I Got The Blues (2017), both intimate accounts of influential
artists Chen has known in her life
·
Special
screening of Rafiki plus Q&A with director Wanuri Kahiu on Sun 14 April - a
love story about two young women in modern-day Nairobi and the first Kenyan
film ever selected for the Cannes Film Festival. On the same day, LGBTQ+ cult
classic The Watermelon Woman will screen, the first feature film
directed by a black lesbian. Filmmaker and star Cheryl Dunye plays a
character determined to make a to make a documentary about a forgotten,
uncredited black actor from the 1930s known only as ‘The Watermelon Woman.’
Both films will screen separately on further dates in April
·
Special
screening of new documentary A Deal With The Universe
followed by a Q&A with Manchester-based producer Loran Dunn on Fri 12 April – this autobiographical debut feature
from transgender filmmaker Jason Barker charts the incredible story of how
Jason came to give birth to his child, and offers intimate insight into gender
identity and new parenthood
·
The second in our series of live recordings of
the female-fronted Girls On Film podcast which champions the
female perspective in film criticism on Wed 24 April – presenter and film
journalist Anna Smith will be joined
by film critic and radio presenter Rhianna
Dillon and Total Film editor-in-chief Jane Crowther
·
“Dial(ogue) D for Dyke Disruption: A Queer
Toolkit for Blowing Up the Film Canon” – a special event on Mon 20 May with
writer and activist So Mayer
which will take a look at mainstream cinema through an LGBTQ lens
·
Screening
of The Seashell and the Clergyman
with a live score from Sheffield-based musical project In The Nursery on Sun 9 June. Widely recognised as the first
surrealist film and hailed by the BFI as one of the “10 great feminist films”, The Seashell and the Clergyman is an
important early example of radical experimental feminist filmmaking. Director
Germaine Dulac delivers a complex, multi-layered film featuring a deeply
subversive central female character. The film will screen with a new soundtrack
courtesy of In The Nursery who have presented live electronic accompaniment to
numerous silent classics in addition to releasing more than two dozen albums
and appearing on soundtracks and trailers for films including Gran Torino and Game of Thrones
·
Q&As
with female directors of new cinema releases, including: Jessica Hynes for The Fight (Fri 3 May); Josephine Decker for Madeline's Madeline (Fri 10
May); Naziha Arebi for Freedom Fields (Wed 29 May)
·
A
special retrospective of filmmaker Euzhan
Palcy in October - the first black woman to direct a Hollywood studio
picture (A Dry White Season, 1989)
and the first black director to win a French César award.
#WomenAtHOME
All
upcoming Celebrating Women in Global Cinema screenings and events can be found here,
with more to be confirmed throughout the year.
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