Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women will screen at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
www.mfa.org or call 617-369-3306

Filmmakers Nancy Porter and Harriet Reisen will be present at the screenings along with other special guests. More guests to be announced.

Wed., Sept. 17th, at 8pm

Sat., Sept. 20th, at 12:30pm*
John Matteson, Professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the City University of New York, author of 2008 Pulitzer Prize for History, Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and her Father. Matteson also appears in the documentary.

Sun., Sept. 21, at 10:30am*

Fri., Sept. 26th, at 5pm*
co-sponsored by Filmmakers Collaborative, Center for Independent Documentary and Women in Film & Video/New England

Sat., Sept. 27th, at 10:30am
Jan Turnquist, Executive Director, Orchard House Museum, home of the Alcotts. Turnquist also appears in the documentary.
Maud Avson, Executive Director, Fruitlands Museum.
Scenes in the film were shot at Orchard House and Fruitlands.

Sat., Oct. 11th, at 10:30*

Sat, Oct. 18th, 4:00 pm

* reduced ticket price

Producer/Director: Nancy Porter
Producer/Writer: Harriet Reisen

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women is a 90-minute documentary about one of New England’s most notable literary figures, the author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott.

The film, a co-production with WNET’s American Masters, explores the surprisingly complex, dramatic and compelling life of Alcott, a world-renowned personality whose true story has never before been told on film. Best known as the author of wholesome stories for young people, Alcott was also the pseudonymous author of pulp fiction thrillers featuring exotic characters doing things no Victorian lady was supposed to know about – for instance, smoking opium and hashish. Alcott’s secret authorial identity was not discovered for more than a half-century after her death, and even now is little known beyond academia.

The documentary weaves a variety of elements — on-camera interviews with scholars, dramatizations shot in historic locations, feature film clips, archival illustrations, contemporary animations, photographs and footage — into a complex, dramatic portrait of this “gutsy, down-to-earth, powerfully driven” independent woman. The true story of Alcott is an eyewitness account of the Transcendentalist era, the Civil War, and the Gilded Age, that is full of startling discoveries and significance for our times.

Project Co-Directors Nancy Porter and Harriet Reisen received full production funding, beginning with a major grant from The National Endowment for the Humanities. Subsequent sources were WNET, PBS/CPB, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and The Simons Foundation.

The film is scheduled for national PBS broadcast on American Masters in 2009.