Tudor Women in Film

Organised by : Chichester Cinema

This talk, by Professor Maggie Andrews, celebrates Womens History month by examining films enduring fascination with Tudor women, from The Execution of Mary Stewart (1895) to Firebrand (2023). 

Audiences have continually relished the politics, tragedy and intrigue of lavishly costumed, queens and princesses disrupting and destabilising the Tudor court. 

During the 118 years of the Tudor monarchy, four women ruled as queens in their own right, yet there is a selectivity in their portrayal in film; a focus on Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots and Anne Boleyn, and, until the rise of the womens movement in the 1960s, on tragedy and powerlessness in Tudor womens private lives. 

Furthermore, it will draw attention to how the portrayal of Tudor women in heritage films such as Mary of Scotland (1936), Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) (which we are screening this season) and Elizabeth (1998) owes more to the concerns of the societies producing them, than it does to Tudor history.

100m inc Q&A
Tickets £7.50