American centre focuses on women’s liberation
View(s):As the world celebrate international women’s day during the month of March, the American Centre its weekly film screening focuses on cinema on with the title ‘Women’s History Month and screens films on every Tuesday at 6pm at its auditorium. ‘Iron Jawed Angels’ screening on March 4 takes a fresh and contemporary look at a pivotal event in American history and Iron Jawed Angels tells the true story of how defiant and brilliant young activists Alice Paul, played by Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry, Insomnia), and Lucy Burns, played by Frances O’Connor (Windtalkers, Artificial Intelligence: AI), took the women’s suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
‘Million Dollar Baby’ will be screened on March 11. Maggie Fitzgerald, a poor thirty-one year old waitress from the very lower classes and with a dysfunctional loser family, decides to make a difference through boxing. She convinces the experienced hardened boxing trainer Frankie Dunn to coach her and be her manager, with the support of his old partner Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris, who sees her potential as a boxer. Frankie has a problematical relationship with his daughter, and practically adopts Maggie along with her career.
‘Amelia’ will be screened on March 18. With her lanky Middle-America looks and her toothy grin, Hilary Swank is a natural fit for the adventurous figure of Amelia Earhart, the world’s most famous aviatrix. Amelia ticks through the major achievements of Earhart’s career: her 1928 flight across the Atlantic (as a passenger, not a pilot), which made her the first airborne woman to make the trip; more triumphantly, her 1932 solo transatlantic journey; her marriage to publisher George Putnam; and of course the mysterious 1937 around-the-world flight that ended in her vanishing, with engineer Fred Noonan, somewhere near Howland Island in the mid Pacific.
‘Mona Lisa Smile’ will March 25 and it is woven around Katherine Ann Watson who has accepted a position teaching art history at the prestigious Wellesley College. Watson is a very modern woman, particularly for the 1950s, and has a passion not only for art but for her students. For the most part, the students all seem to be biding their time, waiting to find the right man to marry. The students are all very bright and Watson feels they are not reaching their potential. Although a strong bond is formed between teacher and student, Watson’s views are incompatible with the dominant culture of the college.