Tickets
General Ticket: $25
Members: $22
Lights. Camera. Laughter! Come join us for a delightful screening of Women Laughing, a short film about the women cartoonists of The New Yorker, by directors Kathleen Hughes & Liza Donnelly. Following the screening, Judith Mizrachy, the film’s producer, and Emma Allen, The New Yorker’s first female cartoon editor, join the directors to discuss the film and host a Q&A with the audience. Lynn Sherr joins the ladies as moderator.
Inspired by Donnelly’s acclaimed book Very Funny Ladies and her own experience as a longtime New Yorker cartoonist, the film looks at how far women have come in a field historically dominated by men. This exploration includes speaking, laughing, and drawing with a diverse group of remarkable women cartoonists of the iconic magazine.
The film features intimate conversations with some of the most celebrated and groundbreaking cartoonists at The New Yorker: Roz Chast, Emily Flake, Sarah Akinterinwa, Liana Frank, Amy Hwang, Bishakh Som, and more. It also highlights the long tradition of cartoons and their critique of political systems, the way they address societal hypocrisies and absurdities, and how they express concerns and changing values of a culture.
While The New Yorker welcomed women artists in its first issue, the world has not always embraced what they had to say. Women Laughing looks at how women have had to struggle to make their voices heard, by examining the lived experience of women cartoonists and how their work is a valuable way to chart political and societal movements over time. It is a timely look at how women are using humor today to change the narrative.
This screening has been programmed in tandem with our exhibition A Thousand Words: Photography at the New Yorker. Stop by during our exhibition hours Thursday – Monday | 11 AM to 5 PM or visit our exhibition page to learn more.
WOMEN LAUGHING FILM CREDITS:
Directed by: Kathleen Hughes & Liza Donnelly
Produced by: Judith Mizrachy, Liza Donnelly, and Nathalie Seaver
Executive Producers: Katie Couric, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Melony Lewis, Lauren Lexton,
and Claire F. Newman
Cinematography: Marika Hacking and Francesco Saviano
Editor: Andrew Fredericks | Consulting Editor: Kate Amend
Music: Kathryn Bostic | Art Direction: Matt Eller/Afternoon Inc.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
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Emma Allen is The New Yorker’s cartoon editor and is the first woman cartoon editor in the magazine’s history.
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Liza Donnelly is a writer and cartoonist for The New Yorker Magazine, where she has been drawing cartoons and writing about culture for forty years. She has been a contributor to CBS News and CNN, as well as The New York Times and The Washington Post. Donnelly’s popular TED talk was translated into 42 languages and viewed over 1.5 million times. She has delivered talks at the United Nations and around the globe. Donnelly is the innovator of a new digital visual journalism called live-drawing. For CBS News, CNN and The New Yorker, she covered major news events, including presidential debates, major trials, The Academy Awards, and more. Donnelly is the author/editor of eighteen books, most notably Very Funny Ladies, a history of women cartoonists of The New Yorker. She has curated exhibits of international cartoonists, here and abroad. Her solo exhibition, Comic Relief, was held at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts in 2020. Donnelly is a Visiting Scholar at Vassar College and a Distinguished Athena Leadership Fellow at Barnard College. She is a recipient of an honorary PhD from University of Connecticut and has won multiple prizes for her work. Her cartoons are in the Library of Congress Prints Collection, The Museum of Illustration and in private collections, and her cartoons are collected in numerous books around the world. Donnelly is a member of PEN America, the Authors Guild, and The Society of Illustrators and she serves on the board of the Norman Rockwell Musuem.
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Director Kathleen Hughes is an award-winning director, producer, executive producer and writer of documentary film and other media. The New York Times called her latest work, TWO AMERICAN FAMILIES, 1991-2024 directed and produced with Tom Casciato for PBS Frontline, “a knockout” and “a master work.” The IDA named it the best television documentary feature in 2024, and it won the 2025 Emmy Award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary. Before that, she directed and produced The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales with Abigil Disney. It launched at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. In 2021, Kathleen was the EP of All Ears with Abigail Disney, Fork Films’ weekly podcast featuring innovative, change-makers. In 2016, Kathleen directed On Account of Sex, a short film for The New York Times. In 2015, she co-directed the feature documentary, The Armor of Light with Disney, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. It won an Emmy and was shortlisted for the Peabody. Over the years, her work has been seen on PBS, CBS, ABC, NETFLIX, and The New York Times. Along with the IDA Award, Kathleen’s films have garnered national Emmys, the duPont-Columbia Gold Baton, the Gracie Award, the Sidney Hillman Prize, the Dateline Club’s Society of Professional Journalists’ First Amendment Award, the Harry Chapin Media Award and the Christopher Award.
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Judith Mizrachy is a New York City-based independent producer. Her films include the Academy Award-nominated documentary The Martha Mitchell Effect (director Ann Alvergue), The Booksellers (director D.W. Young, Executive producer Parker Posey), Uncropped (director D.W. Young, executive producer Wes Anderson), Land with No Rider (director Tamar Lando) and Maintenance Artist (director Toby Perl Freilich). Judith’s films have been screened at festivals including Sundance, New York Film Festival, Tribeca, Hot Docs, Full Frame, True/False, SXSW and DOC NYC. Her work has been shown on big screens around the world including Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Bertha DocHouse London, and Tokyo Shinjuku Cinemas, and on small screens via Netflix, The Criterion Channel, The New Yorker, and more.