‘Pioneers’ will be broadcast on Colorado Public Television channel 12 during prime time on Wednesday Sept 19 at 7pm. Don’t miss it!
Enjoy a tour, tea and screening of an excerpt of 'Pioneers' at the Molly Brown House Museum. Director, Erika Volchan O'Conor will be presenting 'Helen Henderson Chain, an Except from 'Pioneers'' at the Molly Brown House Museum's Sept 15, 2018 Tea Time.
Molly Brown was a contemporary of Denver painter Helen Henderson Chain (1849-1898). One of Henderson Chain's paintings now hangs in the house. Learn the story behind this pioneering woman and enjoy tea!
The stories of inspirational and influential women are all too often left untold. Pioneers is part of an important effort to reconstruct women’s history and celebrate the contributions women have made to culture and society. The women of Pioneers serve as models for how to live rich and creatively rewarding lives in the face of prohibitive social restrictions and discrimination. Through their actions, large and small, they made dramatic differences in the quality of life and accessibility to opportunities for themselves and others. They stood up to misogyny, racism, and classicism. They promoted greater accessibility to arts education. They championed the local identity while celebrating foreign culture. They tirelessly pursued their creative passions. These women are representative of so many other influential women of the American West, whose stories have yet to be told.
Unfortunately, we still face many of the social, political and environmental challenges of those days. In the art world, works by women and minority groups are still appallingly underrepresented. The environmental degradation that Eve Drewelowe bemoaned in the 1970s has become ever more critical. Immigrants and other members of our communities still face discrimination, intimidation and violence. The women of Pioneers did not passively stand by. Witnessing flagrant discrimination against immigrant communities, Helen Henderson Chain set up a school to teach them English, and Jean Wirt Sherwood, volunteered her time at Jane Addams’ Hull House, to teach art and arts appreciation. At a time when it was unacceptable for a woman to go to a restaurant unaccompanied, Jean Wirt Sherwood set up safe spaces for Chicago working women to eat lunch, form a community, and enjoy reproductions of art. Just as Muriel Sibell Wolle stood up against racist policies and conventions of her day (at a time when the KKK burned crosses in the center of town), so must we all support one another and interrupt systemic institutional racism. There is still much work to be done. Each time I watch this film, I feel newly invigorated to strive for improving my community and pursuing my interests. I believe that you will likewise feel inspired.
Join filmmaker Erika O’Conor at the Center for Colorado Women’s History for a screening of her documentary, “Pioneers”, which tells the stories of four Colorado women artists who courageously confronted social stigma and prejudice in their pursuit of equal opportunity and artistic expression. Helen Henderson Chain, Jean Wirt Sherwood, Muriel Sibell Wolle, and Eve Drewelowe - their stories exemplify the important influence that women have had on culture and society across the American West. Acting with intrepidity and spirits of benevolence, these women serve as role models for those who champion social progress and value artistic expression today.
Celebrate Women's History Month at the upcoming screening of 'Pioneers' at the Boulder Chautauqua!
Jean Wirt Sherwood, one of the four pioneering subjects of the film, lectured at the very first Boulder Chautauqua in 1898. It seems more than fitting that this film should play there in her honor.
The stories of inspirational and influential women are all too often left untold. Pioneers is part of an important effort to reconstruct women’s history and celebrate the contributions women have made to culture and society. The women of Pioneers serve as models for how to live rich and creatively rewarding lives in the face of prohibitive social restrictions and discrimination. Through their actions, large and small, they made dramatic differences in the quality of life and accessibility to opportunities for themselves and others. They stood up to misogyny, racism, and classicism. They promoted greater accessibility to arts education. They championed the local identity while celebrating foreign culture. They tirelessly pursued their creative passions. These women are representative of so many other influential women of the American West, whose stories have yet to be told.
Director talk and private screening of 'Pioneers' for Denver's historic Cactus Club.
Capturing the social, racial and gender dynamics of a defining era in American history (1870-1970), 'Pioneers' (85 min) tells the stories of four Colorado women artists who courageously confronted social stigma and prejudice in their pursuit of equal opportunity and artistic expression. Helen Henderson Chain, Jean Wirt Sherwood, Muriel Sibell Wolle, and Eve Drewelowe - their stories exemplify the important influence that women have had on culture and society across the American West. Acting with intrepidity and spirits of benevolence, these women serve as role models for those who champion social progress and value artistic expression today.
Screening of 'Svetlana Boym: Exile and Imagination' at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris.
This one hour documentary film is about the life and work of Svetlana Boym, literary and cultural critic, media artist, novelist and playwright. In 1980, age 21, Svetlana left the USSR for the US, unable to pursue studies at the Leningrad university because of the Jewish quota. After graduate studies at Boston University and Harvard, she became the Carl Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard.
A brilliant writer of ambitious scope and great imagination, combining personal memoir with philosophical essay and historical analysis, she explored motifs of exile, nostalgia, the diasporic imagination and different forms of freedom in Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Mandelstahm, Akhmatova, Brodsky, and many others, in a total of six books, with two more about to appear.
Through videos of her lectures and interviews, together with photographs since her childhood, and her own photographs, and photomontages, we convey this remarkable person and her scholarly, critical, and artistic contributions. Interviews with family, teachers, colleagues, students and friends, including writer Masha Gessen and artist Vitaly Komar, provide different perspectives. The text of the film is, for the most part, drawn from her writings.
Exuberant, ironic and witty, Boym was a charismatic critic and teacher until her untimely death from cancer, summer of 2015, at age of 56, after nearly a year long struggle.
Distributed by The Museum of Modern Art, NY, The Circulating Film Library.
It had its premier at Harvard University in May 2017.
Director: Judith Wechsler
Editor: Erika Volchan O'Conor
Muriel Sibell Wolle (1898-1977) left New York City after falling in love with Colorado's ghost towns. As chair of the University of Colorado, Boulder's Art Department she championed students of all genders and races, in a time when the shadow of the KKK loomed large. She is best known for immortalizing hundreds of mining and ghost towns of the American West in her publications.
Special screening of 'Pioneers' at the historic Gold Hill Inn, the original site of the Bluebirds' summer getaway.
