Charlotte Alumna Jan Millsapps’ Madame Mars Project Gets A Screening
April 10, 2024 – 7:30 PM
Independent Picture House
Jan Millsapps’ Madame Mars: Women and the Quest for Worlds Beyond The International Picture House is set to be screened at the Independent Picture House April 10 at 7:30pm, with a meet and greet at 6:30pm, and a discussion after the film plays.
The Madame Mars project reframes the story of space exploration as a feminist issue, connecting the original space age that denied opportunities to women, to current Mars initiatives that still lack a full commitment to diversity, and argues for a more inclusive spacefaring future.
In our first space age, we watched as buff-bodied astronauts and can-do men in mission control got us to the moon and back, while space exploration remained an impossible dream for women. Before affirmative action policies, the few women who managed to find positions in the aerospace industry faced formidable and unrelenting workplace challenges. Before STEM education efforts, there were few opportunities and little or no encouragement for girls who yearned to someday explore space.
Now, nearly half a century since humans left Earth orbit, a new space age has begun. How can we ensure that women play integral roles in current and future space exploration efforts worldwide, not only as high profile astronauts, cosmonauts, and taikonauts, but as skilled members of the global “village” it will take to make all of this happen?
As our next space age begins, the need is clear to create new models for space exploration and to expand the roles, not only for those who travel in space and eventually settle on other worlds, but also for the ground-based scientists and technicians so vital to the success of any off-Earth mission.
As a transmedia production, Madame Mars uses documentary storytelling, global online outreach and interactive participation to tap into public enthusiasm over proposed human missions to the red planet, to highlight past accomplishments and future opportunities for women in the aerospace arena, and to ask what more we can do to inspire and prepare girls for careers in space science and tech.
Madame Mars is populated by accomplished, intelligent and curious women who not only share the dream of finding one’s own place in space, but also a commitment to the ensuring that humanity will represent itself accurately and completely as we take our next big step out into the universe.