AWFJ Debuts “Wonder Women” List

Numbers 55-44 as voted by the AWFJ membership are Olivia Evans from “Boyhood,” Elle Reid from “Grandma,” Katniss Everdeen from “The Hunger Games” series, Mammy from “Gone with the Wind,” Jean Harrington/Lady Eve Sidwich from “The Lady Eve,” Laine Hanson from “The Contender,” Ada McGrath from “The Piano,” Tess McGill from “Working Girl,” Jane Craig from “Broadcast News,” Lucy Honeychurch from “A Room with a View,” Sally Bowles from “I Am a Camera/Cabaret” and The Bride from “Kill Bill: Vols. 1 & 2.”

The Wonder Women list appends AWFJ’s Top 100 Films list, published in June 2007, in response to AFI’s 100 Years. 100 Films list, which included just 4.5 films directed by women among 400 nominated titles.

“The AWFJ Wonder Women list is a timely reminder to Hollywood studio executives and independent film producers – as well as to movie audiences — that strong, complex, fully realized women characters with their own stories to tell have lasting impact, in our culture and at the box office,” says Jennifer Merin, AWFJ co-founder and president, and co-organizer of the Wonder Women project. “AWFJ members delighted in focusing on women characters whose stories that have impacted our own lives. We recommend them as essential viewing for women and girls and anyone who is interested in film.”

The project’s title pays homage to Wonder Woman, the comic book heroine who debuted more than 70 years ago to offer young readers, then and now, a female character of substance. Like Wonder Woman, the characters on the AWFJ list are headstrong, loving, fierce, willful, confident,  good-hearted champions of justice, equality and peace, and they are not afraid to mix it up.

“The staying power of Wonder Woman is proof that audiences need and welcome robust female characters in popular culture. Since our beat is cinema, we decided it was time we remind the public and the movie industry about other ‘wonder women’ that audiences have embraced over the years,” says AWFJ member and project co-organizer Marilyn Ferdinand.

AWFJ members nominated more than 500 characters from as early as 1915 to as recent as today. Real women, such as Queen Elizabeth II and Erin Brockovich, were eliminated to better showcase the writers who understood and created authentic fictional female characters with depth. The final group comprises 55 filmic wonder women who range from professionals to single mothers pursuing higher educationand con artists. There are also warriors, divas, flirts and gals who love to kick up their heels.

All of the characters on the Wonder Women list are annotated by AWFJ members Thelma Adams, Marina Antunes, Linda Barnard, Liz Braun, Anne Brodie, Carol Cling, Laura Emerick, Marilyn Ferdinand, Candice Frederick, Susan Granger, MaryAnn Johanson, Cate Marquis, Jennifer Merin, Nell Minow, Rebecca Murray, Betsy Pickle, Lynn Venhaus, Liz Whittemore and Susan Wloszczyna.

The countdown from 55 to 1 began August 1 at awfj.org. Groups of names will appear every Monday through August 29.