The third and final installment in the Women's Suffrage Film Series, IRON JAWED ANGELS, will be screened on Saturday, February 1 at 2 pm at the Bennington Free Library (note change of venue from the previous two films). 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.

The series concludes with a feature film about a new generation of 20th-century suffragists. When arrested and imprisoned for obstructing traffic during street protests, militant suffragists Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and others launched a hunger strike. Their resistance when paid guards tried to force-feed them earned them the nickname "Iron Jawed Angels." Directed by Katja von Garnier, the film updates the story for modern audiences, casting aside sepia-toned images of earnest women suffragists in favor of plucky, defiant (and, yes, sexy) activists who took the fight for the 19th Amendment to the streets and risked everything to get it across the finish line.

The film traces the generational transfer of leadership from Carrie Chapman Catt (Anjelica Huston) to Alice Paul (Hilary Swank), Lucy Burns (Frances O'Connor) and other radicals. Among other historical roles depicted in the film are Elizabeth Cady Stanton's daughter Harriet Stanton Blatch (Margo Martindale), the Reverend Anna Shaw (Lois Smith), African American civil rights leader Ida B. Wells (Adilah Barnes), Polish-American trade union organizer Ruza Wenclawska (Vera Farmiga) and labor lawyer Inez Millholland (Julia Ormond), who famously led the 1913 Women's Suffrage Procession on horseback.