What will it take to put a woman in the White House?
Women and Girls Foundation CEO Heather Arnet posed this questioned a year ago. She traveled to Brazil where she worked with the ELAS Women’s Social Investment Fund in Rio de Janeiro, exploring the changing political and economic roles women in Brazil are playing on the global stage.
Arnet says our country has much to learn from new democracies like Brazil , says Arnet. Women play a leading role in shaping the country’s future and in 2010, Dilma Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla and cabinet leader, was sworn in as Brazil’s 36th president.
With Brazil poised to take the world stage as hosts of the World Cup in 2014, the timing for a documentary seemed right. Several Pittsburgh partners came together to film and create “Madame Presidenta: Why Not U.S.?”
The documentary makes its international premiere in Pittsburgh and Brazil on Saturday March 8th. Here it will be held at the Carnegie Museum of Art, followed by a dessert reception and Q & A with Heather Arnet. The documentary will air later on PBS stations in both countries.
For Arnet, the project was a labor of love on behalf of her grandmother Vivian who harbored a secret dream—passed down from her mother—to someday help elect the first woman president of the United States.
Partners on the project included: Nathan Golan, award-winning director of photography; Veronica Marques, executive director of ELAS; and the production teams of Pittsburgh-based Mind Over Media and WQED Multimedia.
