By Andrew Breazeale, Staff Writer
[Photo courtesy of The Athena Cinema/Ohio University]

The Athena Cinema will show a limited screening of Mankiller on February 25 to continue the theater’s latest movie series, Women Pioneers: Celebrates 100. 

Read more: ACRN’s Top 10 Movies of 2019

To celebrate 100 years of women’s suffrage, The Athena Cinema, in tandem with several Ohio University departments, including the Women’s Center and the Multicultural Center, will show four films in its Women Pioneers series this semester. Each film represents a major milestone in women’s rights and equal rights movements in the past century.

Mankiller, the next segment of the movie series, tells the story of Wilma Mankiller, the first woman to be elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. The movie follows Mankiller as she becomes involved with the Black Panthers and the Alcatraz occupation movement, later using her experience in these circles to lead her tribe to grow economically and culturally. Included in the showing is an exclusive discussion with director Valerie Red-Horse Mohl. 

The Athena Cinema has already shown the first movie in the series this semester, Selma, the story of Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaign to ensure equal voting rights and his final march from Selma to Montgomery that helped change the president’s mind. 

The Athena Cinema plans to continue the Women Pioneers series with showings of Suffragette on March 24 and Iron Jawed Angels on April 14. 

Each of the showings is free to attend and includes an introduction and a post-movie discussion. The series is sponsored by Ohio University Libraries, the Ohio University School of Film, the Multicultural Center, Black Student Cultural Programming Board, the Margaret Boyd Scholars, the Ohio University English Department, the Ohio University History Department, the Women’s Center and Arts for Ohio.