It was one day after an estimated million protesters had gathered in cities around the world for Women’s March first-anniversary events, including a crowd of hundreds in below-freezing Park City, Utah, where the Sundance Film Festival is in full swing.
Combined with constant talk of a growing Time’s Up movement and a deluge of women-in-film panels, the call for female empowerment was strong.A crowd clamored around the Supreme Court justice when she arrived Sunday afternoon, holding up phones in futile attempts to grab a photo of the 5-foot-1 Ginsburg as she walked inside the Filmmakers Lodge on Main Street for a chat with NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg.
Ginsburg was at Sundance for the premiere of “RBG” — a documentary from CNN Films and Storyville Films about the 84-year-old’s life from early childhood, her justiceship, her rise to cultural icon status (and “Notorious RBG” nickname), as well as her unprecedented critique of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Inside the theater, the packed audience stole glances and whispered, “She’s here.”
The film opens with a barrage of sound bites from several men criticizing her.
“She’s an absolute disgrace to the Supreme Court,” then-presidential candidate Donald Trump is heard saying.
Several women then consecutively appear on screen to say otherwise.
“She’s the closest thing to a superhero I know,” Gloria Steinem asserts.
“RBG” directors and film creators Betsy West and Julie Cohen used footage from Ginsburg’s 1993 Supreme Court confirmation hearing as the film’s narrative spine. Also included are home movies and interviews with Ginsburg, her family, Steinem, Bill Clinton, Sen. Orrin Hatch, Totenberg and others to create a picture of her professional and personal life.
In person though, she showed the audience why she’s such an important voice for women of all ages. Asked by Totenberg about the “me too” movement. Ginsburg didn’t hesitate.
“I think it’s about time,” she said, before sharing her own experience.
As an undergraduate student at Cornell University, she told the Sundance audience, an instructor gave her the answers to a test. Ginsburg knew that a sexual favor was the implied payment.
“I walked into his office and said, ‘How dare you? How dare you?’”
It was the early 1950s. At the time, “sexual harassment” wasn’t a phrase….
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