The Pantagraph featured Illinois State Professor William McBride’s Six Week Film School focusing on “Wonder Women Directors” in a recent article.
The Six Week Film School began in fall 2016 and features a series of films, all free of charge, following a common theme. The film screenings are then followed by a discussion of the film led by McBride.
This semester’s series will consist of the following films. All screenings are scheduled for Wednesdays at 7 p.m. at the Normal Theater.
January 24: Christopher Strong (1933), directed by Dorothy Arzner. The movie features Katharine Hepburn in one of her defining early roles as a free-spirited female aviator who becomes involved with a married member of British Parliament.
January 31: The Hitch-Hiker (1953), directed by Ida Lupinio. It’s about two everymen (Edmond O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy) who pick up a serial-killing hitcher (William Talman) with a paralyzed eyelid that keeps him watching them, even while asleep.
February 7: A League of Their Own (1992), directed by Penny Marshall. The story of the first all-female baseball league that springs up in the Midwest, circa the World War II era.
February 21: Lost in Translation (2003), directed by Sofia Coppola. A small chamber piece about a lonely, aging movie star (Bill Murray) and a conflicted newlywed (Scarlett Johansson) who cross paths in Tokyo for a memorable encounter.
February 28: Selma (2014), directed by Ava DuVernay: McBride calls DuVernay’s Oscar-nominated chronicle of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s campaign to secure equal voting rights via an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, “a momentous achievement.”
March 7: Wonder Woman (2017), directed by Patty Jenkins.
