The life of trailblazing Australian singer Helen Reddy is headed for the big screen in a film called I Am Woman.
Producer Rosemary Blight, best known for The Sapphires, Lockie Leonard and the coming TV series Cleverman, is planning a musical bio-pic centring on Reddy's success in America.
After arriving in New York as a single mother in 1966, Reddy had such hits as the feminist anthem I Am Woman, Delta Dawn and Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress), becoming the first Australian-born artist to have a number one hit and selling more than 25 million albums around the world.
Unjoo Moon (The Zen of Bennett) will direct, with her Oscar-winning husband Dion Beebe (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha) as cinematographer.
With a script by Emma Jensen (A Storm In The Stars), casting is under way.
Inspired by Australian rock critic and feminist Lillian Roxon, Reddy wrote I Am Woman with Ray Burton, with its powerful lyrics becoming an anthem for the women's movement in the 1970s: "I am woman, hear me roar/In numbers too big to ignore/And I know too much to go back an' pretend/'Cause I've heard it all before/And I've been down there on the floor/No one's ever gonna keep me down again."
Blight tells Short Cuts that Reddy's achievements were extraordinary.
"The way she conquered America, Australians - and even the world - don't recognise what she actually did, having four Billboard number one hits," she says. "We're fascinated by the woman who wrote a song that resonates still today."
Blight says the film has been in development before calls for more films centring on women.
"There's a large female audience out there who want to see themselves on screen, who want to be able to identify. This is a very, very powerful celebratory story with great music about a great woman so it ticks all those boxes.
"And it's not just a period film. What she spoke to, what she struggled through and why she wrote that song are really, really relevant today."
(source: smh.com.au)
Producer Rosemary Blight, best known for The Sapphires, Lockie Leonard and the coming TV series Cleverman, is planning a musical bio-pic centring on Reddy's success in America.
After arriving in New York as a single mother in 1966, Reddy had such hits as the feminist anthem I Am Woman, Delta Dawn and Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress), becoming the first Australian-born artist to have a number one hit and selling more than 25 million albums around the world.
Unjoo Moon (The Zen of Bennett) will direct, with her Oscar-winning husband Dion Beebe (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha) as cinematographer.
With a script by Emma Jensen (A Storm In The Stars), casting is under way.
Inspired by Australian rock critic and feminist Lillian Roxon, Reddy wrote I Am Woman with Ray Burton, with its powerful lyrics becoming an anthem for the women's movement in the 1970s: "I am woman, hear me roar/In numbers too big to ignore/And I know too much to go back an' pretend/'Cause I've heard it all before/And I've been down there on the floor/No one's ever gonna keep me down again."
Blight tells Short Cuts that Reddy's achievements were extraordinary.
"The way she conquered America, Australians - and even the world - don't recognise what she actually did, having four Billboard number one hits," she says. "We're fascinated by the woman who wrote a song that resonates still today."
Blight says the film has been in development before calls for more films centring on women.
"There's a large female audience out there who want to see themselves on screen, who want to be able to identify. This is a very, very powerful celebratory story with great music about a great woman so it ticks all those boxes.
"And it's not just a period film. What she spoke to, what she struggled through and why she wrote that song are really, really relevant today."
(source: smh.com.au)