AAUW Women's Suffrage Film Series Continues 1/25

The second film in the Women's Suffrage Film Series, SUFFRAGETTES IN THE SILENT CINEMA, will be screened on Saturday, January 25 at 2 pm at Oldcastle Theatre. The series is organized by the Bennington Branch of the American Association of University Women, and co-sponsored by the Bennington Free Library and the Bennington Center for the Performing Arts—Home of Oldcastle Theatre. The series, which traces the American women's suffrage movement from just after the Civil War through the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, is free and open to the public.

SUFFRAGETTES IN THE SILENT CINEMA, which contains clips from a variety of silent films, follows the suffrage movement into the "modern age." A time capsule from the dawn of women's suffrage as a mass movement, the documentary looks at how the new medium of film was used for messaging by anti-suffragists and suffragists alike. Director, historian and novelist Kay Sloan will introduce the film via Skype; the discussion afterwards will be led by Jyotika Virdi, professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Windsor in Ontario.

The series will move to the Bennington Free Library on Saturday, February 1, concluding with a feature film about a new generation of 20th-century suffragists known as "Iron Jawed Angels." Directed by Katja von Garnier, the film casts aside sepia-toned images of earnest women suffragists in favor of plucky, wildly funny (and, yes, sexy) suffragists who took the fight for the 19th Amendment to the streets and risked everything to get it across the finish line. It traces the generational transfer of leadership from Carrie Chapman Catt (Anjelica Huston) to Alice Paul (Hilary Swank) and other young activists.