Decades ago, Joseph Campbell wrote the now, iconic book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, while teaching at an all girls school, Sarah Lawrence College, in New York. The brilliance of his insights in identifying an archetypal narrative structure of the mono-mythic hero has been celebrated, studied, extolled and modeled ever since, but what if there's more to the story? What if the issue is not the mono-mythic hero, valiantly slaying dragons that's the problem, but our insistence that this is the primary, if not exclusive, template of heroism?

Today, perhaps more than ever before, we are confronted with global challenges that cannot be conquered by the archetypal lone hero that has become an almost fetishized template for everything from Hollywood blockbusters to Jungian analytic theory. Too often, what has been lauded as the feminine heroine in film and cinema is simply a woman walking out this historically masculinized archetypal template of heroism. We need new stories, or perhaps, the ability to see the stories that have always been there, hidden in plain sight, because we have been looking through the lens of a cultural complex that has blinded us to a deeper reality. What if there is a broader, deeper archetypal reality of heroisms that extend beyond the limiting storyline of dominance and conquering?

In this series on Women in Film & Cinema, we will look at films and television shows through the lens of the stories that have not historically been seen as heroic, the stories that have not been told relative to new models of heroism that are relevant to both women and men. I invite you to join me for conversations with two women who have had successful careers within the Hollywood filmmaking industry as we look at contemporary cinema and TV through a wider lens that makes room for the multi-faceted journeys of women that reveal a broader archetypal picture of heroism; perhaps one that is becoming increasingly more relevant for the challenges of the 21st Century.

Each conversation in this series will include a 45 minute discussion followed by a 30 minute open conversation with attendees. We invite you to watch (or re-watch) these films and join us for a conversation.