52 Films by Women Vol 2. 52. WOMAN WALKS AHEAD (Director: Susanna White)
When making films about inspiring real life people, filmmakers aren’t obliged to be truthful. What they offer is a distillation of the story, ignoring elements that form unwanted subplots or bumps in the narrative. I should therefore forgive the liberties taken by writer Steven Knight and director Susanna White in telling the extraordinary story of Catherine Weldon, the socialite and Native American rights campaigner who travelled in 1890 to South Dakota to paint a portrait of Sitting Bull, proud leader of the Lakota Sioux Indians and retired member of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show – he and sharp shooter Annie Oakley (of Annie Get Your Gun fame) had a thing. Catherine and Sitting Bull formed an unlikely partnership as Bull’s people refused to sign up to the Dawes Expropriation Act, which was designed to take land away from Native Americans as a whole and grant small plots to individuals, with those conniving American negotiators intending to exploit the left-over land for themse...