What Thelma and Louise Say to Us Today
The legacy of Ridley Scott and Callie Khouri’s 1991 feminist road trip...
Special (In Person) Guest Speaker:
Jennifer Townsend
Jennifer Townsend has made a powerful documentary film about the effect of the 1991 movie called Thelma and Louise.
We will hear about the continuing relevance and deep impact of Thelma and Louise both on people at the time of the film’s release and in today’s #MeToo environment.
Jennifer Townsend is a woman of many lives. She began working outside the home at the age of eight, selling cookies door-to-door after school to help her family. She raised four children as a single mother, while simultaneously attending college and law school. Jennifer was not content with choosing a lifelong profession or occupation. Her driving curiosity led her to careers as an attorney, an epidemiologist, a stock options trader, and a commercial real estate broker.
Jennifer's venture into filmmaking began in her early seventies when she bought a video camera and set about teaching herself how to shoot and edit short films. She produced "Old Folks at Home", a series of short documentaries which captured refreshingly candid vignettes of the senior generation.
A few years later, filled with fear and trepidation, she dove off a cliff to produce and direct her feature documentary: Catching Sight of Thelma & Louise. The film has screened at twenty film festivals and won numerous awards, including Best Documentary and Audience Award. It has screened on public television in Sweden and Finland and was featured in a Women's Rights festival in Seoul, Korea. Catching Sight is used as a teaching tool in college courses from Gender
Studies and Social Work to Criminal Law, Media and Filmmaking.
