Tag: Women

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Mythologium 2020 welcomes Heather Taylor and Odette Springer

A special panel featuring two mythologist-filmmakers

Joining us at this year’s Mythologium are two documentary filmmakers who are also mythologists: Heather Taylor and Odette Springer. Heather is the writer, director, and producer of the award-winning documentary, Breaking Through the Clouds: The First Women’s National Air Derby. Odette wrote, directed, and produced the critically acclaimed film about the B-movie industry, Some Nudity Required.

The Mythologium is delighted to host an interview and conversation with these visionary members of our community. We will hear about their creative process, their mythological perspectives on film, and their experiences as women in the film industry. We’ll make sure to leave time for audience discussion, so join us and bring your questions.

Breaking Through the Clouds: The First Women’s National Air Derby

Breaking Through the Clouds is the inspiring true story of twenty female pilots — including Amelia Earhart — who defied convention by racing across America in propellor airplanes for nine grueling days in the summer of 1929. With little navigational aide and plenty of public scrutiny, these aviators succeeded as pilots in an era when women rarely drove cars. Facing cultural stereotypes, mechanical failures, threats of sabotage, navigational challenges, and endless chicken dinners, the women persevered. Whether fighting a fire in the cockpit, landing in a pasture full of cows, or facing criticism and demands for the derby to stop after the death of a colleague, the women captured the world’s attention as they rallied to prove this was more than just a race. Despite several heartbreaks and setbacks, there were many moments of joy, laughter, and pure wonder. Wearing breeches and goggles during the day and ballgowns in the evening, the women shared a genuine camaraderie while making a statement in a new era with new technology and new dreams. They became ambassadors of flight in the golden age of aviation, proving women could be independent, competitive, self-sufficient, intelligent, competent, graceful, and above all, really good pilots.

About Heather

Heather Taylor is the producer, director, writer, and researcher of the award-winning documentary Breaking Through the Clouds: The First Women’s National Air Derby. Currently airing on PBS stations across the country, Breaking Through the Clouds has received top honors from more than a dozen film festivals as well as a prestigious award from the National Aviation Hall of Fame, presented by Harrison Ford, Eugene Cernan, and six additional aviation legends of today. 

Heather formed her production company Archetypal Images, LLC to capture and harness the light that comes alive in people’s eyes when they find inspiration and purpose in life. Before starting her own company, Heather worked at Discovery Communications. Heather has a Masters Degree in Producing Film and Video and is currently in her second year of the Mythology Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Heather’s attraction to myth is especially strong regarding finding one’s voice and stepping into stories that promote healing while helping a person find their own genius. Learn more at http://breakingthroughtheclouds.com. 

Some Nudity Required

About Odette

Odette Springer, Ph.D is a writer, independent film producer and classically trained musician. She has been a singer/songwriter and composer for over 25 films for such companies as HBO, Showtime, Paramount Studios and the Disney Channel, as well as numerous international television networks. Her first feature documentary about Hollywood’s B-Movie industry premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. She shot 48 hours of footage and obtained the rights to use clips from over 30 erotic/slasher/action adventure feature films. Her film eventually evolved into 90 hours of footage that became a harrowing personal journey and resulted in the critically acclaimed Some Nudity Required, which immediately secured worldwide distribution.

Currently, Odette teaches writing as part of the Joseph Campbell Writers Room at Studio School in Los Angeles. In addition to publishing her poetry, she has published academic essays in several anthologies and lectures on trauma and the creative process. Her most recent article, “Renaissance,” can be found on the Joseph Campbell foundation website. She holds a B.A. in Piano from Manhattan School of Music and a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her dissertation focuses on trauma and the creative process and is entitled Changing Woman: Calling The Feminine Home. She is fluent in French, Spanish, and Dutch, has traveled extensively around the world, and has a quirky sense of humor.

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The Mythologium welcomes Dr. Stacey Simmons

Stacey’s presentation is called, “Not a Heroine’s Journey”

For years we have been told about the Hero’s Journey. In 1988 when Bill Moyers interviewed Jospeh Campbell for The Power of Myth, Moyers asked him about a monomyth for women. Campbell replied that he was sure that there was one, but he had dedicated his life to the Hero’s Journey, so had not found it. The Hero’s Journey has been adapted for women, but it is not a woman’s story. There IS a monomyth for women, that has been discovered in every story with a female protagonist from the descent of Inanna to Wonder Woman. The core of this monomyth tells the story of a divided woman who traverses a path of difficulty, the way markers of this path depend on her separation. She is divided into one of two groups, and treated by family and culture dependent on this lane. As she faces the challenges ahead of her she is offered the end of the journey through symbolic death, either through a “Happily Ever After” life of marriage and children, or through the abjection and isolation of wielding power. If she doesn’t choose one of those terminal points, she has the option of becoming a “Queen” where she must overcome the divide, heal the disparate parts of herself rendered piecemeal in the divide, and then re-emerge, reunited with full self-sovereignty.  Put your ruby or glass slipper on the Path of the Queen.

View Stacey’s PresentationDownload

About Stacey:

Stacey Simmons, MA, PhD, LMFT is a writer, psychotherapist, and former entertainment executive. She studies social psychological phenomena through a mediated lens, and is particularly passionate about women’s stories and animation. Her current research focuses on the discovery of a monomyth for women that is an analog to the Hero’s Journey.  Stacey holds a PhD in Urban Studies with a focus in media psychology, from the University of New Orleans, and an MA in Counseling Psychology with a focus in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. 

You can connect with Stacey through Facebook or her website, www.writewomen.com.

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The Mythologium welcomes Andrea Slominski

Andrea’s presentation is called, “The Goddess and Women’s Embodiment in Four”

Representation of Goddess has transformed throughout human history. From the early forms of the Great Goddess unearthed at Catal Huyuk and decoded by Marija Gimbutas, through the work of Jane Ellen Harrison who explored the archaic Greek development of dual and triple female deities, to the poetic interpretations of Robert Graves with his adoption and popularization of the triple goddess as Maiden, Mother, Crone, we can see the development of the expression, interpretation, and experience of the goddess throughout history. In the last century the life span of women has expanded statistically from 45-50 years to nearly 90 years. Running parallel to the increase in life expectancy, women’s lives have also expanded from three stages to four, psychologically and spiritually. If women are the metaphoric embodiments of the goddess in the flesh, if we are living metaphors of the goddess’ creative power as womb and tomb, and if we are living metaphors of the cycle of the seasons, as personified in the seasons of a life, then it is fundamental that the metaphors of the goddess have expanded right along with us. We are the goddess and she is us. Women cannot separate themselves from the goddess anymore than the goddess can separate herself from women. The goddess’ metaphors have transformed in the past, have done so again and will always continue to reflect the lives of women. I maintain that we are now squarely in four, Maiden, Mother, Regent, Crone. The four-fold goddess is one expression of the new emerging mythos that may, hopefully, find its full expression in the balancing of the masculine and feminine attributes within the psyche and in the external world.

Andrea holds an M.A degree in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Depth Psychology and is a Ph.D. candidate in the same field. She has created a coaching/counseling program that guides women during midlife and menopause to rediscover their authentic selves, so often back-burnered during the hectic householder years. In her creative and supportive workshops and one-on-one coaching/counseling, she incorporates the work of personal story and depth psychology, honoring the changes women’s psyches and bodies must navigate through the profound transformations of midlife and menopause. A writer, speaker, coach, and workshop facilitator, Andrea’s leadership in creative expression and group dynamics was honed for over 25 years as a producer and a director for the stage, in TV and video projects, and as a college adjunct instructor.

You can connect with Andrea through her website, Facebook, Instagram, and email.