Tom Felton film unearths ‘epic story’ of female archaeologist

From The Guardian:

He is one of the most recognisable actors in the world, known for his role as Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter franchise. But now Tom Felton wants to use his platform to spotlight someone whose historical achievements have been obscured for decades.

Felton has produced his first feature film, Canyon Del Muerto, recounting the story of Ann Axtell Morris, one of the US’s first female archaeologists, who worked with the Navajo in the 1920s to uncover North America’s earliest civilisation, the Anasazi.

“It’s an epic story that hasn’t been told before,” Felton said. “Ann Morris was only recently acknowledged as a credible archaeologist, even though she set the tone for the next 100 years of young women having the opportunity to enter the field.”

The film, expected to be released this spring, also stars Felton as Morris’s husband, Earl, who is often cited as the model for George Lucas’s Indiana Jones character. It explores how Morris’s accomplishments were overshadowed by her husband’s fame and prejudices against women.

The film was the first to be granted access to shoot in the sacred and culturally significant landscape of Canyon de Chelly on Navajo tribal lands in Arizona. It has been praised by Jonathan Nez, the president of the Navajo Nation, who called it “an extraordinary showcase of our land, our people and our culture”.

Read more here at The Guardian

The Truth Behind the Story of Dinah and the Red Tent

Biblical historian Ralph Ellis readily admits the Bible is not short of tales of violence, epic blood-shed and revenge. 

Hidden away in Chapter 34 of the book of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, is the story of Dinah.

One of the shortest yet most dramatic Old Testament tales, the story is one of rape, murder and pillage, with family feuds and bloody acts of revenge thrown in.

And now it is about to hit our screens in a new mini-series with steamy sex scenes, gory murders and even baby-snatching.

"The reality is very different, It is good that people get to hear the story of Dinah, because it actually makes the historical accounts that we find in the Bible more real."

read more here @ Wales Online and @ Christianity Today

‘Daughters of the Forest’

The Mbaracayú forest is located at a remote spot in Paraguay, formed by the upper basin of the Jejuí river and the Mbaracayú Forest Nature Reserve. The place is a sanctuary for a number of endangered species and a hotspot of biodiversity.

But for people living around the area, daily life can be a challenge. Going to school, for instance, is not easy, not only because children have to make their way there by cutting through the thick vegetation that takes over the roads, but also because of a lack of resources for education as well as the prejudices society has against women.

In 2008, Moises Bertoni Foundation, the body that manages the natural reserve, established the Mbaracayú Educational Center as an initiative to offer quality education for teenage girls living in and around the reserve. It offers high school technical degrees in environmental sciences.

This is the focus of the 2015 film “Daughters of the Forest,” directed by San Francisco, California-based Samantha Grant. The documentary will be shown at the 10th Annual Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, to be held in March 23-27.

Read More Here @ Global Voices

See Also: 

• Daughters of the Forest
• The Daughters of the Forest

A Danish Royal Affair

From History Today:

In 1769 the German outsider, Johann Struensee, arrived in Copenhagen as the physician and companion to the deranged Christian VII. By the end of that year he had not only made great political strides in a country that had the most complete absolute monarchy left in Europe, but had also become the lover of the queen, George III’s youngest sister, Caroline Mathilde. With her agreement, and the acquiescence of the king, Struensee took over the running of the state and attempted to transform Denmark into a model of enlightened absolutism. Struensee and Caroline Mathilde had a daughter; radical reforms multiplied; chaos mounted; enemies massed; violence and tragedy ensued.

Now, thanks in part to the surge of popular interest in Scandinavia, the first film to tackle the story has been released. A Royal Affair stars Alicia Vikander and Mads Mikkelsen. 

It is a beautiful film, tonally taking its cue from the historical epics of Luchino Visconti. Like these, it builds tension to gathering disaster with visual clues. The director, Nikolaj Arcel, is creditably true to the facts. At no point does he seriously deviate from the historical record. But this is a feature film not a documentary attempt to recreate the past and, like every historical fiction, it is therefore also necessarily a portrait of the present. 

Fear Of Reprisals Over "Saving Face"

From LINK:

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy made history earlier this year when she won Pakistan’s first Oscar, feted across the country for exposing the horrors endured by women whose faces are obliterated in devastating acid attacks.

Her 40-minute film focuses on Zakia and Rukhsana as they fight to rebuild their lives after being attacked by their husbands, and British Pakistani plastic surgeon Mohammad Jawad who tries to help repair their shattered looks.

When “Saving Face” scooped a coveted gold statuette in the documentary category in Hollywood in February, campaigners were initially jubilant.

The Acid Survivors Foundation Pakistan (ASF) had cooperated on the film but some survivors now fear a backlash in a deeply conservative society — and are taking legal action against the producers.

Hysteria or The Invention of the Vibrator

From the Examiner:

Hysteria deals with a rather dark period in women's history, and especially that of the medical profession. Set in 1880 Victorian London, where doctors still rely on blood sucking leeches as a regular form of treatment, medical science was even more clueless when it came to the care of women. It didn't help that health care was basically an all boy's club, and that guys knew even less about females than we do now, which is still extraordinarily little. Women were thought to be joyless, sexless creatures. It was either that or they were promiscuous lunatics needing to be institutionalized. There was no middle ground. So when it came to women dealing with common issues like depression, anxiety, or discontentment, guys just conjured up a catch-all by labeling it "female hysteria".

See also: Female Hysteria from wikipedia and The Victorian Era website.

Thirty Performances That Remade Women's History

From Paste Magazine:

Paste is celebrating with a look back at two decades worth of films and 30 talented female leads whose roles re-told and re-wrote key moments in history. The performances are not ranked (they appear chronologically) and the list is in no way all-encompassing, although we have tried to include a bit of everything and everyone—no actress appears more than once (we’ll make a separate list for Meryl Streep later).

As we’re sticking to biopics and female-centered period pieces, many great performances by many brilliant actresses do not appear, and it must be said that performances by women in comedies, thrillers, and other genres have also worked to re-make history. Similarly, many women who have played alongside male leads have been left out (like Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line or Laura Linney in Kinsey) but surely will—and do—appear on other lists. It also pained us to leave out Alanis Morissette’s unforgettable cameo as “God” in Dogma, probably the greatest, most accurately cast role ever.

Film: The Flowers of War

From Film Journal International:

Epic tale of young women desperate to survive the Japanese invasion of Nanking in 1937. China's Oscar entry for Best Foreign-Language Film offers powerfully realistic and inventive war scenes. Alas, some of the dialogue may register as a bit too saccharine for Western ears.

Adapted by Liu Heng from the novel by Yan Geling, The Flowers of War offers two distinct species of "flowers”: One group consists of beautiful courtesans on the run, while the other encompasses cloistered schoolgirls who sing in the church choir and who deeply mourn the recent death of their Catholic priest. To save both the prostitutes and the adolescent girls—who recoil from any association with fallen angels—Miller must put on the Father's black robes and emulate priestly behavior. Gradually, he acquires a new dignity and compassion. He stops trying to bed the sultry leader of the courtesans, Yo Mo (Ni Ni), and begins to treat her like the clever, formidable survivor that she is.

Christian Bale in China from China Buzz

Film: Mozart's Sister

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

In the 18th century, social convention dictated women in Europe were not allowed to play the violin. Maria Anna ''Nannerl'' Mozart, born in 1751, was brilliant at it. Women were not meant to be composers. Nannerl was an inspired composer.

But she had a talented younger brother, Wolfgang, who got all the attention

The story is only partly speculative, told as if from inside the Mozart family. It is definitely intriguing and perhaps a little sad. After the first burst of life as a young prodigy, Nannerl's evident talents had to be left unused when Wolfgang overtook her place in their father's ambitions.

Four Women Western Writers

From New West:

When we did the Western Literature Association survey of Most Important Authors, very few women made the list. Willa Cather got her fair share of votes. Mari Sandoz was the next favorite, followed by Leslie Silko and Mary Austin. After that came such names as Amy Tan, Sandra Cisneros, Pam Houston, Terry Tempest Williams and Ann Zwinger. With the exception of Cather, none had sufficient support to be called "important".

For my list of significant Western women writers, I chose the four I find most unforgettable, four women I have spent many evenings with and who belong in the library of any well-read Westerner.

• Mary Hunter Austin
• Willa Catha
• Mari Sandoz
• Dorothy Jackson

Cleopatra - Art Throughout The Ages

From the National:

The Greek writer Plutarch first wrote about her in a book called Parallel Lives sometime around 100 AD. He said she met Antony "at the very time when women have the most brilliant beauty and are at the acme of intellectual power". The Roman historian Cassius Dio went further. She was, he said: "a woman of surpassing beauty".

But neither actually saw her and were writing long after her death. They spawned an enduring myth that has been sustained ever since by books, ballets, operas, films and paintings. She remains one of the most famous women in history.

William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw both wrote plays about her famous romances, and these have inspired a continuing flow of other dramatic portrayals.

Most great actresses seem to have played Cleopatra at some stage in their careers and she has featured in films since the dawn of the silver screen.

Film - The Conspirator

From Gateway:

"The Conspirator" is the story of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), the only woman charged as a co-conspirator in the killing of President Lincoln, and the mother of John Surratt, one of the eight conspirators that included John Wilkes Booth. The 28-year-old Fredrick Aiken is a Union solider who recently returned from the war and is just beginning to practice law. His mentor, Reverdy Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) asks him to take the case. He is reluctant at first but soon begins to see the injustices in Surratt's military tribunal.

This movie isn't just about the execution of Surratt. Though it plays like a legal thriller, you never get that David and Goliath feel. History has told us how this story ends, and it's fairly clear from almost the first courtroom scene that Aiken has no chance of winning.

The Princess of Montpensier

From Film Journal:

It’s not easy to make a 140-minute Medieval-set film, even one about sexual desire and rivalry, pulse with passion. That is the challenge veteran French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier grapples with in The Princess of Montpensier, his middling adaptation of Madame de La Fayette’s short story about various men vying for the affections of an unhappy princess in 16th-century France.

Tavernier has assembled a cast of rising young stars to inject some heat into the handsomely mounted proceedings, but what their photogenic presence and the director’s own agility behind the camera can’t give the film is a sense of urgency. Despite the intelligence and savoir-faire that clearly went into making The Princess of Montpensier, the movie gives the impression of going through the motions rather than engaging the viewer with its ideas and images, which mostly feel familiar.

Set against the backdrop of the war between Catholics and Protestants, The Princess of Montpensier centers on a young heiress, Marie de Mezieres (Melanie Thierry), and the different men who, to varying degrees, love her, want her, revere her, and resent her: the insecure prince whom she is forced to marry (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet); the prince’s cousin, a studly knight with questionable intentions (Gaspard Ulliel); a quick-witted duke with a devilish gleam in his eye (Raphael Personnaz); and the count of Chabannes (Lambert Wilson), a retired warrior who becomes Marie’s tutor and pines for her from the sidelines in what is by far the film’s most persuasive and palpable emotion.

Elizabeth Taylor - Legend Lost

From The Hype News:

The star of "Cleopatra" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles surrounded

by family after a long battle with congestive heart failure that sent her to the hospital six weeks ago.

In a career spanning seven decades, Taylor first gained fame in 1944's "National Velvet" at age 12 and was nominated for five Oscars. She won the best actress award for "Butterfield 8" (1960) and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966) with actor Richard Burton, whom she would marry twice.

Taylor's eight marriages, health problems, prescription drug addiction and ballooning weight often overshadowed her career, but she overcame adversity and used her fame to advocate for causes such as AIDS education and research.

Her death triggered an outpouring of tributes from Hollywood luminaries like Barbra Streisand, recording stars such as Elton John and politicians including former president Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Farewell to Hollywood Legend Jane Russell

From BBC News:

Former Hollywood actress and sex symbol Jane Russell has died at the age of 89.

The brunette was discovered by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, who cast her in his 1943 Western The Outlaw.

Some of her most memorable films include the The Paleface (1948) with Bob Hope, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) with Marilyn Monroe.

She died on Monday at her home in California of a respiratory-related illness, her daughter-in-law confirmed.

6 Generations - Story of Chumash Women

From Santa Ynez Valley News:

Audiences at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival applauded “6 Generations,” a movie that brings Chumash history to life.

The film, available on DVD at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, features performances by Ernestine Ygnacio De Soto, a living Barbareno Chumash descendant.

Her mother was the last Chumash native speaker, and her grandmother and great-grandmother helped anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and John P. Harrington understand the Chumash language in the early part of the 20th century. These early recordings can also be heard at the museum.

The film’s producer, museum anthropologist John Johnson, shares screenwriting credits with De Soto.

“History is often told using information from the dominant culture,” Johnson says, but De Soto’s story is told through the voices of generations of Chumash women.

With “6 Generations,” De Soto says she is “honoring her children, her ancestors, and herself,” by keeping the flame of Chumash history alive. She and her family are not members of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians.

This film enhances her one-woman performance with rare, historic photographs and recordings of the Chumash language and songs, as De Soto becomes each of six women in her family covering 200 years of Chumash life in Santa Barbara.

The Iron Lady: Meryl as Margaret

From BBC News:

Film fans have been given their first glimpse of Hollywood actress Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in upcoming film The Iron Lady.

Shooting has just begun on the film, written by Sex Traffic's Abi Morgan and directed by Mamma Mia's Phyllida Lloyd.

The film follows Baroness Thatcher as she broke through class and gender barriers to become prime minister.

The film also stars Jim Broadbent as Denis Thatcher. The cast also includes Richard E Grant and Anthony Head.

Hideko Takamine - Gone But Not Forgotten

From The Age:

OVER the course of nearly 200 films, Hideko Takamine, developed from an endearing child star into an actress who powerfully represented the Japanese woman's search for identity and autonomy in the years after World War II. She has died in Tokyo of lung cancer, aged 86.

Takamine, who often seemed to be gallantly fighting back tears with her famously gentle smile, was widely regarded by Japanese and foreign critics as one of the three great actresses of the classical Japanese cinema.

Her two peers were the aristocratic Kinuyo Tanaka, who worked extensively with the director Kenji Mizoguchi and Setsuko Hara, whose portrayals of modern middle-class women were associated with the films of Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story).

Takamine was most notably the muse of Mikio Naruse, who, although not as well known a director in the west as Mizoguchi and Ozu, is frequently ranked as equally important in Japanese film history. For Naruse, Takamine often played women from rural or lower-middle-class backgrounds who were forced to make their own way in the world, often saddled with weak or unfaithful men.

Egyptian Film: 678

From Ahram Online:

No film in Egypt's recent history has attempted the task of addressing the problem of sexual harassment with as much dedication as 678. Despite the daunting nature of such an ambition, Mohamed Diab's film, for the most part, succeeds in tackling the plethora of challenges that comes with such a monumental task.

According to a survey conducted by the Centre for Women's Rights (ECWR) in 2008, 98 per cent of foreign-born women and 83 per cent of Egyptian women have experienced some form of sexual harassment. 62 per cent of Egyptian men admitted harassing women and 53 per cent of those blame women for instigating this kind of behaviour.

Chicago: The Girls of Murder City

From the Clyde Fitch Report:

Look at those eyes. In their time, in their prime, they must have held all the power of incantatory spells. They were the eyes of a killer.

They belonged to Beulah Annan, who was the inspiration for Roxie Hart of Chicago — the 1924 play, the 1927 silent, the 1975 musical and the 2002 Oscar-winning film (and that 1942 Ginger Rogers flick). A married woman accused of shooting her lover in the back, Annan’s murder trial was inescapably tabloid-ready.

And as Douglas Perry explains in his new book, The Girls of Murder City: Fame Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago, all Chicago was ready for a ripping-good yarn. Except, arguably, for Belva “Belle” Brown, more formally known as Mrs. William Gaertner as well as “Stylish Belva,” whose own sordid accused-murder tale scored headlines a few weeks before Annan’s. A multiple divorcee and cabaret performer, she was the inspiration for the one and only Velma Kelly.