Documentary Film: The Day Iceland Stood Still with director Pamela Hogan

When 90% of Iceland’s women walked off the job and out of their homes one morning in 1975 the country came to a standstill. Unexpectedly funny and told for the first time, this is the true story of one day that changed everything, a day that catapulted Iceland to the world’s superpower of gender equality.

Told for the first time by the women themselves and timed for release in the lead-up to the strike’s 50th anniversary, the story is subversive and unexpectedly funny. The Day Iceland Stood Still is a collaboration between U.S. director Pamela Hogan, who campaigned as a high school student in the 1970s with her activist mother to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, and Icelandic producer Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdóttir, who at the age of 7 accompanied her mother to that very strike in 1975 and thought that when she woke up the next morning “everything would be perfect.” The E.R.A. never passed in the U.S., and Iceland still isn’t perfect – but it’s the only country to have closed over 90% of its gender gap, and committed to reaching full equality in the near future. There’s a famous saying: “The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.” This story will inspire viewers all over the world to re-imagine the possible.

After premiering at Toronto’s Hot Docs film festival, the film has screened at numerous festivals around the world, and honored with Audience Awards at the Mill Valley Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, and Canada’s Gimli International Film Festival, as well as Best Documentary at Canada’s Victoria Film Festival, the Documentary Prize at Germany’s Nordische Filmtage Lübeck, and Special Mention for Best Film on Politics at the Czech Republic’s Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival.  

Cheryl Heller will introduce the film and its director, Emmy award-winning filmmaker, journalist, and media executive Pamela Hogan. Formerly Executive Producer of PBS’s acclaimed international affairs series Wide Angle and Executive Producer of the groundbreaking PBS series Women War & Peace, Pamela Hogan is an adjunct professor in the Master’s Documentary Program at Columbia University. Dr. Heller is the Founding Chair of the first MFA program in Design for Social Innovation at the School of Visual Arts and President of the design lab CommonWise. Following the film there will be Q&A. 

Please register for this event below.

Prior to the film screening, Rachel Roth has graciously offered to host an open house with light refreshments from 4:00 to 4:45 p.m. for anyone in town who wants to come and meet Pamela.