In terms of female filmmakers, Denmark is a particularly interesting country, certainly one of the very few in the world where women from early on were able to establish a modest though continuous presence in the industry as directors. So can one argue that the fights Knudsen and others started in the late 1960s and 1970s were also of a different kind than elsewhere? What then is progressive, what is Feminism in the Danish context?
With The Long Road, Knudsen embarks on a journey into the history of Women’s Movements, revisiting the Suffragettes’ legacy, Second Wave Feminism and imagining the farther shores of Feminism’s futures – all in a style that is playful, imaginative, quizzical, inventive and incisive. Similar to her classic Take It Like a Man, Madame! (1975), made in tandem with her Røde Søster-cooperative siblings Elisabeth Rygård & Li Vilstrup, this film incarnates the hopes and promises of the 1970s Feminist awakening and decampment.