In 2026, I’m celebrating International Women’s Day by honouring the two most important women in my life: my mother and my daughter.
It’s in the nature of teenage girls – it’s almost their job description – to disrespect their mothers; to assert their independence as part of the necessary task of growing up and cutting that adult umbilical cord.
That said, I may have been one of the most critical teens ever to stalk the streets of New York City’s bohemian Greenwich Village in the late 1950s. My beautiful, Nebraska-born mother worked by day as a hugely over-qualified secretary for an ever-changing cast of unsatisfactory, leering bosses. By night and on the weekends, she wrote story treatments for independent films.
My mother the dreamer
Money was always short. Did I sympathise with her plight as a single parent who laboured to keep her creative juices flowing and maybe one day have her proverbial ship come in? I did not. I wanted better clothes, better food, a larger allowance. Most of all, I wanted to live in a real apartment, not our usual suite-with-kitchenette at a series of fleabag hotels.
Thus, when she excitedly informed me in 1958 that one of the pioneer indie movie director Morris Engel’s films (Weddings and Babies), on which she had collaborated as a writer, had shared a Critic’s Choice Award with Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries at the Venice Film Festival, my reaction was a big yawn. It wasn’t Cannes; it wasn’t the Oscars. Who cared? Not me.
Fast forward to 2001
I am sitting in the audience with my daughter at the Museum of Modern Art for a retrospective of three films directed by Morris Engel, all of which are now in the museum’s archives. The films – Little Fugitive, Lovers and Lollipops, and Weddings and Babies – are considered early classics of American independent cinema.
Director Francois Truffaut credits Engel’s handheld camera and naturalistic style with inspiring the beginning of the French New Wave cinema movement. My mother would never live to see her name, Mary-Madeleine Lanphier, listed as a writer on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). She would also never know that two of the films she co-wrote can be ordered in boxed DVD sets or streamed on Netflix. Her efforts, eked out in furnished rooms all over the Village, her packet of Pall Malls right beside her, are part of the history of film forever.
My mother’s creative life and opportunities were terribly constricted by the male-oriented world of New York in the 1950’s, not to mention the lack of reliable birth control. She had five children by three different men, including a set of twins in her forties.
How I wish I could apologise to her for being that snobby 14-year-old. The greatest tribute I can give her now – and the only meaningful one – is to carry on her work ethic. Thanks for giving me that, mom. And, sorry.
So very sorry.
My daughter the dynamo
You can imagine how happy I was to raise my daughter (born in 1973) in what seemed to be the ever-widening circle of feminist awareness and reproductive freedom of choice. My daughter could become and do whatever she set her sights on! After a dual major in English and Theater in college, she initially chose to be an off-off Broadway theatre director in New York City and then went on to graduate training in filmmaking.
She recently wrote and directed her first indie feature film, which is winning awards at festivals. Am I proud? How much time do you have?
My mother and my daughter (Laramie Dennis) are both listed in IMDb! With incredible discipline and focus, she has managed to find her way in the still very male-centric world of film. Her life is a work-in-progress, with no guarantees and many roadblocks ahead. Who knows how the explosion of AI will impact the employment of flesh-and-blood writers and filmmakers worldwide?
Women need reproductive freedom to be creative
And what of women’s cherished, hard-won personal freedoms? The Supreme Court recently overturned Roe vs Wade, and now in many states it’s a criminal offense to seek or administer an abortion, even to save the mother’s life.
The Republicans are pushing a ‘trad wife’ lifestyle; quality childcare is still not affordable for many working women. The clock is ticking backwards on women’s rights in America. We still haven’t had a female president. Recent efforts to spin a narrative about voter fraud may disenfranchise millions of women whose married names don’t match their birth certificates. There is no concerted official effort in the US to analyse the Epstein files and prosecute the abusers.
There’s a cliché saying, “a woman’s work is never done.”
It’s still true. But there’s no stopping us. Just try.
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