A Single Woman is a 2009 film made by Nevada Shakespeare Company

Nevada Shakespeare Company

The Nevada Shakespeare Company is an activist theatre based in Reno, Nevada, near Nevada's border with California. It defines its mission to be to "meeting the needs of our uniquely challenging and diverse community...

 and Heroica Films. It was directed by Kamala Lopez

Kamala Lopez

Kamala Lopez is an actress, director, and political activist. Lopez has appeared in movies including I Heart Huckabees and Born in East L.A., and in television shows such as Lie To Me, Alias, and others.-Acting:...

 and produced by Cameron Crain, Richard Shelgren and Kamala Lopez. The screenplay

Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 was by Jeanmarie Simpson

Jeanmarie Simpson

Jeanmarie Simpson is an American peace activist and theatre/film artist.- Early life :Simpson was born in Ray, Arizona. Her parents are Maria Luisa Jugo, a Venezuelan immigrant, and Donald Leroy Simpson, an American mining engineer. Jeanmarie Simpson was raised in rural Arizona...

 based on her play with the same title.

Artists

The film stars Jeanmarie Simpson as first US Congresswoman, Jeannette Rankin

Jeannette Rankin

Jeannette Pickering Rankin was the first woman in the US Congress. A Republican, she was elected statewide in Montana in 1916 and again in 1940. A lifelong pacifist, she voted against the entry of the United States into both World War I in 1917 and World War II in 1941, the only member of Congress...

. Actor Judd Nelson

Judd Nelson

Judd Asher Nelson is an American actor. He is best known for being a member of the "Brat Pack" in the mid-1980s; and for his roles as John Bender in The Breakfast Club, Alec Newbary in St...

 appears, along with a cast of 16 others, many of whom play multiple roles.

Additional artists including Martin Sheen

Martin Sheen

Ramón Gerardo Antonio Estévez , better known by his stage name Martin Sheen, is an American film actor best known for his performances in the films Badlands and Apocalypse Now , and in the television series The West Wing from 1999 to 2006.He is considered one of the best actors never to be...

, Frances Fisher

Frances Fisher

Frances Fisher is a British actress. She is known for her work on television, in theater and in films, including roles as Strawberry Alice, the madame prostitute in Unforgiven , and Ruth DeWitt Bukater, the mother of Kate Winslet's character in Titanic .- Early life and education :Fisher was born...

, Chandra Wilson

Chandra Wilson

Chandra Danette Wilson is an American actress and director, best known as Dr. Miranda Bailey in the ABC television drama, Grey's Anatomy.-Early life:...

, Peter Coyote

Peter Coyote

Peter Coyote is an American actor, author, director, screenwriter and narrator of films, theatre, television and audio books. His voice work includes narrating the opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics and Apple's iPad campaign. He has also served as on-camera co-host of the 2000 Oscar...

, Patricia Arquette

Patricia Arquette

Patricia T. Arquette is an American actress and director. She played the lead character in the supernatural drama series Medium for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series....

, Karen Black

Karen Black

Karen Black is an American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter. She is noted for appearing in such films as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby, Rhinoceros, The Day of the Locust, Nashville, Airport 1975, and Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot...

, Margot Kidder

Margot Kidder

Margaret Ruth "Margot" Kidder is a Canadian-born American actress. She is perhaps best known for playing Lois Lane in the four Superman movies opposite Christopher Reeve, a role that brought her to widespread recognition....

, Elizabeth Peña

Elizabeth Peña

Elizabeth Peña is an American actress and the daughter of a theater-company co-founder, who has also compiled experience as a television director in her own right.-Early life:...

, and Mimi Kennedy

Mimi Kennedy

Mimi Kennedy is an American actress, author and activist.-Early life:Kennedy was born Mary Claire Kennedy in Rochester, New York, the daughter of Nancy Helen and Daniel Gerald Kennedy. She got her start in theater with the Rochester Community Players, appearing in Agatha Christie's "Spider Web"...

 contributed their voices to the film. The music is by Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...

.

Production

The film was shot at Quixote Studios, Los Angeles

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

.

Synopsis

In A Single Woman, Jeanmarie Simpson portrays the character of Jeannette Rankin, beginning in 1972 and moving backwards in time to Rankin's childhood in 1880s Montana.

Experiencing the slaughter of American Indians

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

 in Montana and at Wounded Knee

Wounded Knee Massacre

The Wounded Knee Massacre happened on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, USA. On the day before, a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment commanded by Major Samuel M...

, Rankin was a lifelong pacifist, suffragist and human rights advocate. The film chronicles her activism including her association with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom was established in the United States in January 1915 as the Woman's Peace Party...

, as well as her co-founding the American Civil Liberties Union

American Civil Liberties Union

The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...

. Judd Nelson

Judd Nelson

Judd Asher Nelson is an American actor. He is best known for being a member of the "Brat Pack" in the mid-1980s; and for his roles as John Bender in The Breakfast Club, Alec Newbary in St...

appears as a Jewish newspaper reporter in 1948.

Reception

The film has been generally panned, though it has won a few political awards for director Lopez. Simpson has many times denounced the film as "terrible," and said that it is the biggest disappointment of her life.