Julie Taymor will discuss “The Glorias,” her unconventional biopic of Gloria Steinem, at the next Girls Club event. The conversation will take place Thursday, October 1, at 6 p.m. EST and is open to the public. Be sure to register in advance.
Founded by Women and Hollywood publisher and founder Melissa Silverstein, the Girls Club is a community for women creatives, culture-changers, and storytellers to connect, create, network, advocate, support, and redefine entertainment. The Girls Club is offering a one-month membership free of charge when you sign up. If you identify as a woman and would like an invitation to this community, please email girlsclubnetwork@gmail.com and let us know a bit about who you are and what you do.
“The Glorias” is available September 30th for purchase on digital formats and streaming exclusively on Prime Video. Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, Janelle Monáe, and Bette Midler star.
Find Girls Club event details, the film’s official synopsis and trailer, and Taymor’s bio below.
Synopsis: Journalist, fighter, and feminist Gloria Steinem is an indelible icon known for her world-shaping activism, guidance of the revolutionary women’s movement, and writing that has impacted generations. In this nontraditional biopic, Julie Taymor crafts a complex tapestry of one of the most inspirational and legendary figures of modern history, based on Steinem’s own memoir “My Life on the Road.” “The Glorias” (Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, Lulu Wilson, Ryan Keira Armstrong) traces Steinem’s influential journey to prominence — from her time in India as a young woman, to the founding of Ms. magazine in New York, to her role in the rise of the women’s rights movement in the 1960s, to the historic 1977 National Women’s Conference and beyond.
“The Glorias” includes a number of iconic women who made profound contributions to the women’s movement, including Dorothy Pitman Hughes (Janelle Monáe), Flo Kennedy (Lorraine Toussaint), Bella Abzug (Bette Midler), Dolores Huerta (Monica Sanchez) and Wilma Mankiller (Kimberly Guerrero).
Taymor gives us her singular take on that rare genre, the Female Road Picture, one in which the female leads do not die in the end, and where the “narrative” is not driven by romance or a bad marriage, or unrequited love or, for that matter, men. Gloria’s road story is about her “Meetings With Remarkable Women.” And that is a love story in itself.
Bio: Julie Taymor is a director, producer, and writer. Her film credits include “Fool’s Fire”; “Oedipus Rex,” starring Jessye Norman, which received an Emmy Award as well as the International Classical Music Award; “Titus,” starring Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange; “Frida,” starring Salma Hayek, which garnered six Academy Award nominations and won two; “Across the Universe,” which received Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations; “The Tempest,” starring Helen Mirren; a cinematic version of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” filmed during her critically acclaimed, sold-out stage production at Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn.
Her Broadway adaptation of “The Lion King” debuted in 1997. An instant sensation, it received 11 Tony Award nominations, with Taymor receiving awards for Best Director and Costume Designer. The show has played over 100 cities in 19 countries, and its worldwide gross exceeds that of any entertainment title in box office history. Other theater credits include the play “Grounded,” starring Anne Hathaway, at the Public Theater as well as Broadway’s “M Butterfly,” starring Clive Owen, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” “The Green Bird,” and “Juan Darien: A Carnival Mass,” which earned five Tony Award nominations including one for her direction.
Taymor is a recipient of the 1991 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, as well as a 2015 inductee into the Theater Hall of Fame for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater, the recipient of the 2015 Shakespeare Theatre Company’s William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre, and a 2017 Disney Legends Award honoree.
