News

A special screening of The Ballad of Little Jo will be presented by Portland State University’s Department of Theater Arts at 7 p.m., Monday, April 10 at the Guild Theater, 829 SW Ninth Avenue. Filmmaker Maggie Greenwald will speak and take questions from the audience about the film and her work as an independent filmmaker.

Based on a true story, Ballad follows a young nineteenth century woman when she is forced to leave her proper eastern home and head west. Faced with the prospect of becoming a wife or a prostitute, Josephine makes another choice. In the course of the film, Josephine becomes Jo and experiences the western life usually reserved for white men, but the audience sees the Old West from a female sensibility.

One in a cycle of westerns released in the early 1990s, Ballad’s modest production and promotion budgets assured its relative obscurity at the time, though it received two Independent Spirit Award nominations for Suzy Amis (best female lead) and David Chung (best supporting male). Others in the cast include Heather Graham, Rene Auberjonois, Carrie Snodgrass, and Ian McKellen as a member of the mining community who initially befriends young Jo.

The Ballad of Little Jo was the third feature film written and directed by Greenwald, who has since written and directed the award-winning Songcatcher. She has directed a variety of TV movies and series as well, most for Nickelodeon.
Admission for Ballad of Little Jo and Greenwald’s appearance is $6 for the general public, available at the Guild box office after 6:30 p.m., April 10.

When: Monday, April 10, 2006

Where: Guild Theater, 829 SW Ninth Avenue

Tickets: Available at the door for $6.00