Maiden – Thame Cinema 4 All

SHOWING this Saturday – November 9, 2019 – MAIDEN
UK, 2019, 95 minutes, 12 certificate – Director Alex Holmes
IN order to sail around the world, apparently, “you have to be different from the normal bloke.” Or perhaps you don’t have to be a bloke at all. Now, this might not seem like a revolutionary idea in 2019. But it was in 1989.

It was then that 24 year old British woman Tracy Edwards, hitherto a deck hand and on-board chef, decided to put together a crew of women to comprehensively challenge the received wisdom that women were just not cut out for this sort of thing. They would enter a serious race. And not just any race: they would take part in the Whitbread Round the World yacht race, a gruelling 33,000 nautical mile sprint from Southampton, around the globe via Uraguay and Australia, and back again, a race that until then no female skipper was permitted to enter. They would compete aboard a vessel appropriately christened The Maiden, a boat that had, to say the least, seen better days.

Needless to say they were insulted and jeered at, the breathtaking sexism of the media dubbing the Maiden ‘a tin full of tarts,’ and their every set back subject to ridicule. But gradually, Edwards’ crew began to look like real contenders, and the pundits were forced to eat their words, fundamentally changing the sport from thence forward. Holmes’ rousing documentary, a huge success with audiences and critics (scoring a rare 98% ‘fresh’ rating on the review aggregator, Rotten Tomatoes) is a thrilling ride that will enthrall even those of us who don’t know our port from our starboard, a crowd pleasing and uplifting yarn about putting sexism in its place, but also a white knuckle account of treacherous and potentially overwhelming combat with an ocean ‘that is always trying to kill you’ – awesome challenges regardless of your gender
View trailer here.

Doors open 7.30pm for 8pm start. Thame Players Theatre, Nelson Street, Thame – Film tickets are available on the door or online- Click here