We are pleased to announce that the BFI’s Hires and Sales Manager Jelena Milosavljevic, film critic Christina Newland and film journalist and Editor-at-Large for Empire magazine Helen O’Hara will join season curator Ruby McGuigan onstage for this panel discussion.
Behind every group of emotionally stunted cowboys, aviators or detectives lies a wise-cracking woman. Or so it seems in the films of Howard Hawks, where we find some of early Hollywood’s boldest heroines. But what made a woman ‘Hawksian’, and why did she disappear? Join our panel as we dig into the trope, examine its legacy and question what it really means to be ‘one of the boys’.
About the panel
Jelena Milosavljevic is an experienced film and event curator who has worked in film exhibition for over 10 years. Upon finishing her postgrad studies in film, she spent several years programming and working in film education before becoming Programme Director at the Phoenix Cinema. Jelena has worked at the BFI as Events Programmer, leading on contextual events for the public programme at BFI Southbank, and currently works as the BFI’s Hires and Sales Manager.
Christina Newland is the lead film critic at the i newspaper and a journalist on film, pop culture, and boxing who has written for VICE, Sight and Sound, the BBC, MUBI Notebook, and Empire, among other publications. Her newsletter on women in in crime film and television, Sisters Under the Mink, won a UK Freelance Writing Award in 2021.
Helen O’Hara is an author, film journalist and Editor-at-Large for Empire magazine, a publication she has worked with for almost 20 years. Originally from Northern Ireland, she qualified as a barrister before deciding not to be rich and instead to write about film for a living. She co-hosts the Empire film podcast weekly and is a regular figure on the BBC and other TV and radio channels. Helen has written three books; the most recent is Women vs Hollywood: The Fall and Rise of Women in Film, a Radio 4 Book of the Week and Sunday Times Film Book of the Year in 2021. She would like to be Hildy Johnson but fears she’ll never quite be able to carry off that hat.
RAZOR SHARP: THE FABULOUS WOMEN OF HOWARD HAWKS
Razor Sharp: The Hawksian Woman Revisited
Thu 1 Jun 18:15
Twentieth Century
Thu 1 Jun 20:40; Fri 16 Jun 18:30; Thu 22 Jun 21:00
Barbary Coast
Fri 2 Jun 18:20; Thu 15 Jun 20:40
Bringing Up Baby
Sat 3 Jun 12:00; Mon 19 Jun 20:40; Fri 23 Jun 18:20
Only Angels Have Wings
Sat 3 Jun 15:45; Thu 15 Jun 14:30; Tue 27 Jun 17:50
Ball of Fire
Sat 3 Jun 17:55; Tue 20 Jun 20:30
To Have and Have Not
Sun 4 Jun 19:00; Fri 23 Jun 20:40
I Was a Male War Bride (aka You Can’t Sleep Here)
Wed 7 Jun 20:35; Sun 25 Jun 18:30
Rio Bravo
Mon 12 Jun 17:50; Sun 18 Jun 14:30; Fri 30 Jun 20:20
His Girl Friday
Wed 14 Jun 20:50; Sat 17 Jun 13:30; Thu 29 Jun 18:20 (+ intro by Catherine Wheatley, King’s College London)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Thu 15 Jun 18:15: Thu 29 Jun 21:00
The Big Sleep
Wed 21 Jun 18:25; Wed 28 Jun 20:45
The Thing from Another World
Sat 24 Jun 18:30; Fri 30 Jun 18:15
Philosophical Screens: The Philosophy of Marriage: His Girl Friday
Thu 29 Jun 20:15 BFI Reuben Library
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
Questions/comments? Contact the Programme Notes team by email