Fly Girls and Gorillas in the Mist - 2 more videos for Women's History Month

The theme of Women's History continues for two more weeks at the Library's Thursday Noon large-screen video series in the Koret Auditorium.

image source: American Experience

Thursday, March 22, 2012, at noon

Fly Girls (1999, 56 minutes)

During World War II more than a thousand women signed up to fly with the U.S. military. Wives, mothers, actresses and debutantes who joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS) test-piloted aircraft, ferried planes and logged 60 million miles in the air. Thirty-eight women died in service. But the opportunity to play a critical role in the war effort was abruptly canceled by politics and resentment, and it would be 30 years before women would again break the sex barrier in the skies.

Fly Girls is a documentary produced by PBS for their American Experience Series.

source: Wikimedia Commons

Thursday, March 29, 2012, at noon

Gorillas in the Mist (1988, 129 minutes)

Dian Fossey convinced Louis Leakey, the guru of African anthropologists, to allow her to set up a jungle camp in Rwanda and conduct a census of the gorillas. Over the years she grew into one of the great experts on these animals, learning to imitate their behavior so well that they accepted her in their midst. What comes through in this treatment is her fierce protectiveness of these animals – a woman who spoke her mind, for those that couldn’t. Though ultimately this strong stance cost her life, this film celebrates the bond that she shared with the gorillas.

Sigourney Weaver stars as Dian Fossey.

This series receives support from the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. All library programs are free and open to the public.