Inspired by the 100-year anniversary since women gained the right to vote in the UK (and named after last year’s social media hashtag created after US Senate leader Mitch McConnell prevented colleague Elizabeth Warren from finishing reading out a letter by Coretta Scott King), Barbican Cinema presents a timely season of feature films and documentaries looking at women’s rebellious and often dangerous efforts to gain equality, as captured in selected cinematic journeys from around the world.
Screenings include: Shola Lynch’s Chisholm ’72 – Unbought and Unbossed , documenting the brave rise of Shirley Chisholm, who ran to be the first black female presidential candidate of the United States in 1972; Rakhshan Bani Etemad’s Our Times portraying the stories of Iranian women campaigning and standing for change in their country’s 2001 elections; The Divine Order , byPetra Volpe, focusing on Swiss women campaigning for the vote in the early 70’s; for aspiring feminists, the Disney classic Mulan; Annie Goldson and Peter Wells’s Georgie Girlabout Georgina Beyer, the first trans woman to be elected to national office in New Zealand in 1999; Heiny Srour’s Leila and the Wolves , a feminist story of Arab women through several decades of the 20th century; a double bill including 1913 silent film The Suffragette , featuring silent screen diva Asta Nielsen playing a militant British suffragette, and highlights from Make More Noise! (BFI National Archive) with live musical accompaniment by Wendy Hiscocks as part of the Silent Film and Live Music series; Eva Mulvad ’s Enemies of Happiness – a portrait of Afghan activist and former politician Malalai Joya; and Be Pretty and Shut Up , by French actress and activist Delphine Seyrig, featuring a series of interviews with French and American actresses in 1976 and depicting women’s experiences in the film industry at the time.
Nevertheless She Persisted: Suffrage, cinema and beyond is part of the Barbican’s 2018 The Art of Change season, which explores how the arts respond to, reflect, and potentially effect change in the social and political landscape. Dates 18–24 Apr 2018, Cinema 1, 2 & 3. Book here
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