Local Film Featured at U.N. Screened at Images
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Images Cinema will host a screening of "Heroic Girlz" on Sunday, April 19, at 2 p.m.The film began as a home-schooling project for four 11-year old girls and screened before an international audience at the United Nations Commission Conference on the Status of Women. The Images screening will also include "Making History," a documentary about the film featuring psychiatrist SuEllen Hamkins, an expert in female adolescent development. There will be a Q & A with the filmmakers and a reception. Tickets are $10.
"Heroic Girlz" tells the story of four modern-day girls who take on the roles of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, Louisa May Alcott and Amelia Earhart. Meeting in the afterlife, the girls revisit and recount a formative moment in the first 11 years of each of the famed women.
"We wanted to acknowledge the girls' coming of age through the study of language, theater arts and social sciences," said filmmaker Cindy L. Parrish. "The girls heard the story of 11-year-old Harriet Tubman who discovered her purpose in life when she tried to prevent the capture of a runaway slave. Each girl then imagined herself as an historical woman hero at age 11."
The film was written, directed and produced by Parrish, a playwright and English professor at the University at Albany, N.Y. The film is based on the play "Heroic Girlz," directed by Meg Agnew, theater director and teaching artist. Parrish, Agnew and Laura Yurko, an expressive arts practitioner, guided the girls in the writing, visual arts and theaters arts to create the play. Agnew and Parrish have also produced a curriculum guide.
"Heroic Girlz" stars Devyn Yurko, Elon Michaud, Thea Ezinga and Emma Parrish Post. The film received the 2007 Moondance International Festival Award for Best Children's Short.
For reservations: 518-781-3005 or cindyparrish@mac.com. Visit www.heroicgirlz.org for additional information. "Heroic Girlz" is underwritten by the Brabson Educational Foundation with support from the Women's Interfaith Institute, and Friends of the Women’s Rights National Historical Park.
