Filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt to Visit Holy Cross

Filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt will visit Holy Cross on Wednesday, March 3 and Thursday, March 4. Dedicated to telling compelling, visually interesting stories about women that don’t normally find their way to the screen, Kahn-Leavitt will discuss clips from her two documentaries, Tupperware! and A Midwife’s Tale. Tupperware! Screening and discussion Wednesday, March 3, 7 p.m. Stein 129

Narrated by Kathy Bates, Tupperware! tells the story of Brownie Wise, the self-taught saleswoman who built an empire out of bowls that "burped." Invented by Earl Silas Tupper in the 1940s, Tupperware sat on the shelves until Wise and her army of Tupperware Ladies mastered the art of home party selling. Soon, housewives of all shapes, sizes and means were earning thousands, even millions, selling Tupperware in living rooms. Idolized and celebrated by the women of the 1950s, Wise was the first woman to appear on the cover of Business Week. Tupperware! features rare archival company footage and clips from old home movies. A Midwife’s Tale Film screening and discussion Thursday, March 4, 2 p.m. Rehm Library

Kahn-Leavitt’s first documentary, A Midwife’s Tale, recreates scenes from the diary of Martha Ballard, a midwife and mother living in rural Maine in the late 1700s and documents how a modern-day historian attempts to understand the world of an 18th-century woman by piecing together the fragments of her sometimes cryptic diary entries. A Midwife’s Tale won numerous awards, including an Emmy for outstanding non-fiction as part of PBS’ American Experience series in 1998.

Laurie Kahn-Leavitt is a visiting scholar at the Women’s Studies research Center at Brandeis University, where she is working on a new series of films exploring the history of women in America. She has worked on numerous documentaries including American Experience, Eyes on the Prize, America’s Civil Rights Years 1954-65, and Frontline Special Report: Crisis in Central America. In 1992, she founded an independent film company, Blueberry Hill Productions, and in 2000, she launched the DoHistory.org Web site.

These events are co-sponsored by the Women’s Studies Program and the Pre-Business Program, as part of the Arthur Ciocca ‘59 Entrepreneurial Lecture Series.

Related information:

# Pre-Business Program # Women's and Gender Studies # www.dohistory.org