Midge MacKenzie was a Dublin-born writer and filmmaker who first become notable with her multimedia production
AstarteAstarte was the first live, multi-media ballet. It was performed by the Joffrey Ballet in New York and directed by Midge Mackenzie and made the cover Time Magazine....
, with the
Joffrey BalletThe Joffrey Ballet is a dance company in Chicago, Illinois, founded in 1956. From 1995 to 2004, the company was known as The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. The company regularly performs classical ballets including Romeo & Juliet and The Nutcracker, while balancing those classics with pioneering modern...
, and with Women Talking, a documentary with interviews of
Kate MillettKate Millett is an American lesbian feminist writer and activist. A seminal influence on second-wave feminism, Millet is best known for her 1970 book Sexual Politics.-Career:...
,
Betty FriedanBetty Friedan was an American writer, activist, and feminist.A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the twentieth century...
and other leading figures in the US women’s liberation movement.
After reading the work of psychoanalyst Ellis Miller, MacKenzie started exploring the meaning of her own childhood and from this came Prisoners of Childhood (1991) in which actors brought out themes of pain and damage from early years. She made the wonderful I Stand Here Ironing (1980) based on the Tilly Olsen stories, and later a trilogy of films looking at remote communities in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Saving Faces documented the patients whose faces had been reconstructed by surgeon Ian Hutchison, who is the chief executive of the charity Saving Faces. He recalls, ‘She followed us around absolutely silently and made a film that said so much.’
After many years refusing her request to interview him about his World-War Two documentaries, Hollywood film director John HustonJohn Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
finally agreed to MacKenzie interviewing him at his home in Mexico, which became John Huston War Stories, released in 1999, more than a decade after his death.
But perhaps MacKenzie's most notable work was the 6-part documentary-drama series for the BBC in 1974 called Shoulder to Shoulder"Shoulder to Shoulder" was a book and 1974 BBC TV miniseries of the women's suffrage movement both by Midge Mackenzie.The book documents the lives and works of some of Britain's leading "suffragettes." It includes many excerpts from their speeches, diaries, letters, memoirs, other writings and...
, telling the story of the suffragettes’ struggle.
MacKenzie had a son who died in childhood.
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