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February 08, 2006
One Night Only: 'If Women Ruled the World' Rules Upper West Side
The Reeler had a chance Tuesday to catch up with Richard Karz, whom I first met late last year while The New School held up a screening of his documentary 9/11/03: A Day in the Life of New York for a fire drill. We are over it now, I think--so much so that Karz is set for a screening of his 2002 film, If Women Ruled the World, tonight at Makor.
Comprising interviews and lengthy segments of a VIP dinner party held in 1999, Women features a seemingly endless array of A-listers discussing the personal and political evolution of gender equity. The result overwhelmed everyone, and not just because they scratched their heads at a documentary featuring former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor alongside Angelina Jolie, Liv Ullmann, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Jordan's Queen Noor, Janet Reno, and a few dozen other internationally influential women. "What's kind of significant about it is that was really the begininng of an awareness of kind of the revolution stalling," Karz told me. "Women had reached this plateau, and it was that point when people began becoming aware of the increasing difficulty that young women were having balancing family and career--a sense of wanting to return to their family obligations to the detriment of their career goals. Those are basically the main dilemmas that women are facing today. The issues that are addressed head-on in the show are issues that continue to be relevant and continue to keep coming back in the news."
Women retained such currency that PBS broadcast the documentary 18 times since acquiring it in 2002. And now, a more tragic relevance has emerged with the passing of one of Karz's featured guests: Betty Friedan, the revolutionary feminist who passed away last week at 85. "Friedan is kind of the star of the show in a lot of ways," Karz said. "She was a bridge. There was an article I read recently about choice feminism, and it was kind of using Betty Friedan as an argument for why career is so critical for women, and why career should take precedence in women's lives. Certainly, (Friedan's book) The Feminine Mystique is all about the importane of career for women and realizing their full potential. But in the end, Betty's opinions evolved insofar as she tended to stress the mutuality of womens' drives for both career and family.
"There was one critical point in the dinner party where there was this debate between the older feminist generation and the younger feminist generation--the post-feminists--about career versus family. And at one point, Betty kind of interjected that we must not look at it as either/or. Women's roles as community builders are essential. Women's roles in the workplace are essential. We cannot see these as mutually exclusive."
Tonight's screening indeed will unspool in Friedan's honor, followed by a discussion between Karz and Barnard College president (and another of the film's dinner guests) Judith Shapiro. Remember Friedan, and feel free to fire away with your questions. Just remember to mind the alarm this time around.
Posted by stvanairsdale at February 8, 2006 11:11 AM
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