The activism of Jane Fonda, Lola Kirke and Jean-Luc Godard's A Woman is A Woman
Also: discover the winners of our short film competition
The fighting spirit of Jane Fonda
“Woke just means you give a damn about other people.” Accepting a Life Achievement Award at the 31st Annual SAG Awards on Sunday, the actor and icon Jane Fonda delivered an impassioned—now viral—speech, expousing the value of community and the empathy of actors, putting up a bejeweled middle-finger to Trump and his policies. Yet this is nothing new for Fonda. We revisit an essay by Natasha A. Fraser on the actor’s lifetime commitment to activism and supporting the little guy. “Admire or dismiss Ms. Fonda but for half-a-century, she has fought for the underdog and loomed on the frontline of American culture as a Hollywood star, anti-Vietnam protestor, fitness guru, early feminist, bulimic survivor, bestselling authoress and twice-Oscar winner.”
Long distance with Lola Kirke
Growing up, people would often tell Lola Kirke how different she was from her sisters (among them Girls star Jemima Kirke). “It made me happy and sad at the same time,” she admits. “I didn’t want to share in a lot of the chaos, but I also loved them and wanted to be a part of them. I’m writing about them from the perspective of, yes, it was crazy. But also, like, people are crazy! People are loveable in spite of their craziness…” For A Rabbit’s Foot, writer Emma Firth speaks to the actress and musician about writing her uninhibited new collection of essays Wild West Village: Not a Memoir (Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1), a meditation on the blurry lens of beauty, a paean to the surrealism of sisterhood and her bohemian upbringing in noughties New York City.
60 years later, ‘A Woman is a Woman’ still feels fresh
Jean Luc-Godard's 1961 A Woman is A Woman has lingered in our cultural memory for its sexy set pieces. Yet whilst it’s easy to dismiss A Woman is A Woman as one of Godard’s fluffier efforts, to do so would be to miss the point. Anna Karina’s Angela emerges as one of the New Wave’s more fascinating female leads, catalysing emotional complexity as seamlessly as she fries an egg. For all her proto-Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl posturing, Angela’s is more fully-fleshed than she might seem. For A Rabbit’s Foot, Madeleine Wulfahrt examines the feminist legacy of A Woman is a Woman, arguing that its messages about femininity and in particular motherhood, still feel fresh, making comparisons with contemporary musicians and writers who, like Angela, are questioning their desires and agency around having children, from Clairo and Charli XCX to Sheila Heti.
The winners of our short film competition—revealed
Launched last year, our short film competition—themed The Senses—was initiated in collaboration with our sister company Rabbit’s Foot Films to discover new filmmaking talent from across the globe and champion their work. As well as our Editor-in-Chief Charles Finch, the judges included filmmaker and actor Isabel Sandoval, Bruce Robinson and filmmaker Anurag Kashyap. After receiving hundreds of entries, we are now excited to reveal our winner, runners-up as well as the recipient of our Editor’s Prize.
