Queen of England during a time of great economic and social change, she saw England cemented as a Protestant country. During her reign she witnessed the defeat of the Spanish Armada leaving Britain to later become one of the world’s dominant superpowers. Cate Blanchett's performance as the matriarch is amazing.
Queen of England during a time of great economic and social change, she saw England cemented as a Protestant country. During her reign she witnessed the defeat of the Spanish Armada leaving Britain to later become one of the world’s dominant superpowers. Cate Blanchett's performance as the matriarch is amazing.
Presiding over one of the largest empires ever seen, Queen Victoria was the head of state for most of the nineteenth century. She became synonymous with the period symbolising propriety and middle class values. Queen Victoria sought to gain an influence in British politics whilst remaining aloof from party politics. Though the film The Young Victoria focuses more on Victoria's (Emily Blunt) early year in the throne, it is an excellent film.
This documentary, produced by the American Social History Project, deals with the organizing struggles of women workers in the early 20th century and this country’s most notorious incident involving women workers, the horrific 1912 Triangle Shirt Waist factory fire in New York City.
One of the only films to really tell the story of the women's suffragete movement and it did it well. Katja von Garnier's film tells the remarkable and little-known story of a group of passionate and dynamic young women, led by Alice Paul (Hilary Swank) and her friend Lucy Burns (Frances O'Connor), who put their lives on the line to fight for American women's right to vote. The issues covered in the film are faced by many women such as the balancing act between love and career.
The 1930s was a radical time for women. Suddenly the U.S. entry into World War II created an unprecedented demand for new workers. Notions of what was proper work for women changed overnight. Thousands of posters and billboards appeared calling on women to "Do the Job He Left Behind." Rosie the Riveter was born -- the symbol of working women during World War II. This excellent documentary focuses on five former "Rosies" who movingly recall their histories working in Detroit, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco during the war. Their testimony is interwoven with rare archival recruitment films, stills, posters, ads and music from the period which contrast their experiences with the popular legend and mythology of Rosie the Riveter.
Sally Field won an Academy Award for her starring role in this film as a minimum-wage cotton mill worker in the South who becomes a leader in organizing a union at her plant. Based on the real-life Crystal Lee Sutton who joined up with the Textile Workers Union to battle textile corporation J.P. Stevens. Women have made great contributions to the politics of American Labor and this film highlights one important story. Another good film in this genre is
Probably the most important and famous woman in aviation history, Amelia Earhart is a legend. On May 20–21, 1932, Earhart became the first woman—and the second person after Charles Lindbergh—to fly nonstop and solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Flying a red Lockheed Vega 5B, she left Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, Canada, and landed about 15 hours later near Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The feat made Earhart an instant worldwide sensation and proved she was a courageous and able pilot. Then, on August 24–25, she made the first solo, nonstop flight by a woman across the United States, from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey, establishing a women's record of 19 hours and 5 minutes and setting a women's distance record of 2,447 miles. Her mysterious and tragic end often foreshadows her amazing career but we know how important she was.
But there were other important women in the aviation industry too. An excellent documentary highlighting their stories is Fly Girls. The film centers on the more than a thousand women signed up to fly with the U.S. military during World War II. Wives, mothers, actresses and debutantes who joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS) test-piloted aircraft, ferried planes and logged 60 million miles in the air. Thirty-eight women died in service. But the opportunity to play a critical role in the war effort was abruptly canceled by politics and resentment, and it would be 30 years before women would again break the sex barrier in the skies.
Halle Berry, the first African American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, played the first woman to be nominated for the Best Actress Oscar in this biopic on Dorothy Dandridge. The film centers on her challenging career and the racism she faced as a black actress in Hollywood.
Focusing on one of the most important women in modern history, The Iron Lady tells the story of Margaret Thatcher's political career. Born in October 1925 at Grantham, a small market town in eastern England, she rose to become the first (and for two decades the only) woman to lead a major Western democracy. She won three successive General Elections and served as British Prime Minister for more than eleven years (1979-90), a record unmatched in the twentieth century. The film didn't get amazing reviews but Meryl Streep won the Oscar for her performance as The Iron Lady.
An amazing look at the life and times of feminist icon Gloria Steinem. Steinem, it hardly needs mentioning, was the face of Second Wave feminism, and though she resists the description “icon,” there are many who consider her to be just that. Steinem is now 77 and still active in the feminist movement. But this isn't all hard-hitting information about the feminist movement. It also shows the softer side of Gloria, a self-confessed glamour girl and how she often struggled with her media portrayal as the "pretty feminist."
This HBO film debuts this month and focuses on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin when she joined the McCain campaign as the Republican candidate for Vice President and subsequently changed the game of politics forever.
