University of Salford professor amongst those celebrating women in cinema

A professor of Film Studies at the University of Salford is curating a year-long celebration of women in film.

Dr Andy Willis will be a part of the Celebrating Women in Global Cinema which will be hosted throughout 2019 at Manchester based cinema HOME.

As a senior visiting curator at HOME, he told ussays: “we thought it was about time (that), rather than have one short season that celebrated women, we would have a whole year devoted to it.

“Throughout the year we will be doing various different events about the history of cinema and contemporary cinema; writers, directors, producers. We’ll be working with lots of collaborators.”

Brilliant programming at @HOME_mcr #womenAtHOME Looking forward to seeing lots of inspirational women on screen https://t.co/ju5mcG4dBi

— Maxine Peake (@MPeakeOfficial) December 9, 2018

Dr Willis is co-curating the whole year alongside Rachel Hayward, HOME’s film programme manager.

“We’re really excited about the whole initiative; it’s the first time HOME’s done anything this big and we’re already getting a lot of positive feedback.

“It’s a really exciting, quite innovative event, and it’s one I think that the University is really pleased to be partnering with HOME on.”

The event starts in January with a retrospective of writer Debbie Horsfield, and will end next December with a study of women in Asian cinema.

“It’s cinema from around the world, not just Hollywood. It’s all four corners of the globe – not that the globe has four corners!

“Personally I have a particular interest in Hong Kong cinema. We’ve a (female) pioneer from Hong Kong, a director called Angie Chen and she’ll be coming over in May for a small retrospective of her work.”

Dr Willis is also looking forward to meeting British producer Rebecca O’Brien, best known for her work with Ken Loach.

“(She’s) a key person in his working methods so we’re really excited to have a retrospective of her work.

“From almost the beginning of cinema women have been involved, but the history of cinema has mainly been written around male directors and writers, and by male critics for that matter.

“We’re hoping to address that by focusing exclusively on women.

“All in all there’s lots of things going on across the whole year and I would recommend everyone to come along if you’re interested in global cinema or women in film generally, from to getting in to film to looking at some of the great filmmakers of the past who are overlooked mainly because they are women.”