The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Directed by | Connie Field |
Produced by | Connie Field |
Starring | Wanita Allen Gladys Belcher Lyn Childs Lola Weixel Margaret Wright [1] |
Cinematography | Cathy Zheutlin Bonnie Friedman Robert Handley Emiko Omori [2] |
Edited by | Lucy Massie Phenix Connie Field |
Distributed by | Clarity Films |
Release date |
|
Running time | 65 min |
Language | English |
The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter is a 1980 documentary film and the first movie made by Connie Field about the American women who went to work during World War II to do "men's jobs." [3] [4] [5] In 1996, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." [6] [7]
The film's title refers to "Rosie the Riveter", the cultural icon that represented women who worked the manufacturing plants which produced munitions and material during World War II.
Connie Field got the idea for the film from a California Rosie the Riveter reunion, and, with grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and other charitable sources, conducted interviews with many hundreds of women who had gone into war work. Out of these she chose five representatives—three black, two white—all marvelously lively, intelligent, and articulate women who recall their experiences with a mixture of pleasant nostalgia and detached bitterness.
The reminiscences are intercut with the realities of the period—old news, films, recruiting trailers, March of Time clips, and pop songs such as "Rosie the Riveter." These often serve to highlight the disparities between how women were portrayed in wartime media and the actual experiences of these five women. [8]
The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter premiered at the New York Film Festival in 1980, which at that time was one of the most important film festivals in America, and went on to be screened at over 50 film festivals around the world. The film was released in movie theaters in the United States, England and Australia to rave reviews. The Los Angeles Times called it "warm, engaging and poignant" and went on to say "the film has that Studs Terkel-like ability to discover the extraordinary in seemingly ordinary people. Terrific." Of the Rosies themselves The London Times said "the resilience, spirit and humour of Connie Field's indomitable heroines sends you out elated and loving them."
The film earned fifteen international awards for Best Documentary, was named "One of the Ten Best Films of the Year" by a number of publications, including the Village Voice and Film Comment, and was voted "Best Independent Feature of the Year" in American Film Magazine. It was originally broadcast on PBS's American Experience [9] and numerous international TV stations such as Channel 4 in England and the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The film has been in active distribution for over 30 years.
The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter was preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in conjunction with the Library of Congress in 2013. [10]
Sergeant York is a 1941 American biographical film about the life of Alvin C. York, one of the most decorated American soldiers of World War I. Directed by Howard Hawks and starring Gary Cooper in the title role, the film was a critical and commercial success, and became the highest-grossing film of 1941. In 2008, Sergeant York was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman is a 1974 documentary about symphony conductor Antonia Brico, including her struggle against gender bias in her profession. The film was directed by Judy Collins and Jill Godmilow. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Rosie the Riveter is an allegorical cultural icon in the United States who represents the women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new jobs replacing the male workers who joined the military. She is widely recognized in the "We Can Do It!" poster as a symbol of American feminism and women's economic advantage. Similar images of women war workers appeared in other countries such as Britain and Australia. The idea of Rosie the Riveter originated in a song written in 1942 by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb. Images of women workers were widespread in the media in formats such as government posters, and commercial advertising was heavily used by the government to encourage women to volunteer for wartime service in factories. Rosie the Riveter became the subject and title of a Hollywood film in 1944.
Hearts and Minds is a 1974 American documentary film about the Vietnam War directed by Peter Davis. The film's title is based on a quote from President Lyndon B. Johnson: "the ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there". The movie was chosen as the winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary at the 47th Academy Awards presented in 1975.
Henry David Jaglom is an English-born American actor, film director and playwright.
Molly Clark Haskell is an American film critic and author. She contributed to The Village Voice—first as a theatre critic, then as a movie reviewer—and from there moved on to New York magazine and Vogue. Her most influential book is From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies. She co-hosted Turner Classic Movies' The Essentials with Robert Osborne in 2006 for one season.
Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers is a 1980 documentary film about garlic directed by Les Blank. Its official premiere was at the 1980 Berlin Film Festival.
Thomas Furneaux Lennon is a documentary filmmaker. He was born in Washington, D.C., graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1968 and Yale University in 1973.
Days of Waiting (1991) is a documentary short film directed, written and produced by Steven Okazaki about Estelle Ishigo, a Caucasian artist who went voluntarily to an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. The film was inspired by Ishigo's book, Lone Heart Mountain, and won an Academy Award for Best Documentary and a Peabody Award. It was presented on PBS by POV and the Center for Asian American Media.
Daughter from Đà Nẵng is a 2002 documentary film about an Amerasian, Heidi Bub, meeting her biological family in Da Nang, decades after being brought to the United States in 1975 during Operation Babylift at the end of the Vietnam War.
Patricia Cardoso is a Colombian and American filmmaker. She is best known for her 2002 film Real Women Have Curves, which centers around the experiences of a young Mexican-American woman navigating the challenges of family, culture, and body image. The film's lasting impact was recognized in 2019, when it was selected by the Library of Congress for inclusion in the National Film Registry "as a cinematic treasure and worthy of preservation as part of America's patrimony". This honor made Cardoso the first Latin woman director to have a film included in the registry.
Andrea Kalin is an American independent filmmaker, writer, producer, and director. She is also the principal and founder of Spark Media and founder and executive director of Stone Soup Productions, a 501(c)(3) non-profit foundation.
Isaac in America: A Journey With Isaac Bashevis Singer is a 1986 documentary made by director Amram Nowak and producer Kirk Simon. It was broadcast on the PBS series American Masters.
Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter is a 1994 American documentary film directed by Deborah Hoffmann, with her wife, Frances Reid, as cinematographer.
Rosie the Riveter is a 1944 American musical film directed by Joseph Santley and starring Jane Frazee, Frank Albertson and Barbara Jo Allen. It is inspired by the iconic character of the same name.
Mike Valerio is a writer, producer, director, and executive in the entertainment industry for over 20 years. Valerio has worked on over a hundred TV shows, films, documentaries, and mini-series and over a dozen television networks and entertainment companies. Valerio is most famous for his 1999 film Carlo's Wake.
Marion "Muffie" Meyer is an American director, whose productions include documentaries, theatrical features, television series and children’s films. Films that she directed are the recipients of two Emmy Awards, CINE Golden Eagles, the Japan Prize, Christopher Awards, the Freddie Award, the Columbia-DuPont, and the Peabody Awards. Her work has been selected for festivals in Japan, Greece, London, Edinburgh, Cannes, Toronto, Chicago and New York, and she has been twice nominated by the Directors Guild of America.
Rosies of the North is a 46-minute Canadian documentary film made in 1999 by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and directed by Kelly Saxberg. The film recounts the story of the women at the Canadian Car and Foundry in Fort William, Ontario, who built fighter and bomber aircraft needed for the war effort in the Second World War. It also is the story of female engineer Elsie MacGill, who became known as the "Queen of the Hurricanes". The title of the film is an allusion to the wartime iconic image of Rosie the Riveter.
Connie Field is an American film director known for her work in documentaries.
Emiko Omori is an American cinematographer and film director known for her documentary films. Her feature-length documentary Rabbit in the Moon won the Best Documentary Cinematography Award at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival and an Emmy Award after it was broadcast on PBS that same year. One of the first camerawomen to work in news documentaries, Omori began her career at KQED in San Francisco in 1968.