NEW ROCHELLE, NY — The New Rochelle Public Library and the Zonta Club of New Rochelle will present a five-part film series, “Extraordinary Women,” each Tuesday evening at 7:00 pm during the month of March. The free movies will be shown on the big screen of the Ossie Davis Theater and will be followed by discussions.
On March 1, He Named Me Malala will be shown. This documentary tells the remarkable story of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai, who was targeted by the Taliban and severely wounded by a gunshot when returning home on her school bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. The then 15-year-old as singled out, along with her father, for advocating for girls’ education, and the attack on her sparked an outcry from supporters around the world. She miraculously survived and is now a leading campaigner for girls’ education globally as co-founder of the Malala Fund. It was released in 2015 and runs 90 minutes. It is rated PG13.
Trials of Spring will be viewed on March 8. When a young Egyptian woman travels from her village to Cairo to add her voice to the tens of thousands of Egyptians demanding an end to 60 years of military rule, she is arrested, beaten, and tortured by security forces and later punished and imprisoned by her family for daring to speak out. Unbreakable, she sets out in a search for freedom and social justice in a country in the grips of a power struggle, where there is little tolerance for the likes of her. The film was released in 2015 and runs 90 minutes.
From award-winning Hawaiian filmmaker Kimberlee Bassford, Winning Girl will be shown on March 15. The following week, on March 22, Apache 8 will relate the true story of an all-women group of firefighters who formed to protect their reservation. The last film in the series, on March 29, will be Women in Space, a PBS documentary from the “Makers” series that traces the history of women pioneers in the U.S. space program.