This talk on 22 March 2025 at Chichester Cinema celebrates Women’s History month by examining film’s 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 women’s movement in the 1960s, on tragedy and powerlessness in Tudor women’s private lives. It will explore 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.
For details and booking see https://chichestercinema.org/film/tudor-women-in-film/
