About the Documentary

Twenty thousand people from across the U.S. gathered in Houston, Texas on a historic weekend in November 1977 for the first federally funded National Women’s Conference, aiming to end discrimination against women and promote their equal rights. In the crowd were former first ladies Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson, current first lady Rosalyn Carter and women of all ages, ethnicities and political backgrounds. Combining footage of the conference with interviews—both then and now—with influential women’s leaders such as Barbara Jordan, Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Eleanor Smeal, Ann Richards and Coretta Scott King, Sisters of ’77 is a fascinating look at that pivotal weekend in 1977, an event that not only changed the lives of the women who attended, but the lives of Americans everywhere.

Filmmakers Cynthia Salzman Mondell and Allen Mondell began researching Sisters of ’77 as an opportunity to capture an historic event that was also part of their personal history: Salzman Mondell, who attended the conference, was also one of the many relay runners that helped carry a torch to Houston from Seneca Falls, New York—the site of the first U.S. women’s rights convention in 1848. On the table at the 1977 conference were countless hot-button issues that ran the gamut of American women’s concerns: equal pay, day care, healthcare, minority rights, abortion, lesbian rights and workplace discrimination. After four days of feverish arguments, all-night caucuses, and with the attention of both protesters and the world’s media upon them, the women hammered out a plan of action, ending the weekend ready to take on the world.

Women in America have come a long way, and Sisters of ’77 reveals how. Told through actual footage of the conference as well as modern-day interviews with many who attended, the film offers a window into not only U.S. history, but also the nation’s future, as movement leaders talk about the advances made by women in the intervening decades and why the Equal Rights Amendment never passed. As Betty Friedan notes in the film, “I have this fantasy that someone at some day of judgment asks me ‘What have you done with your life?’ So I say, ‘Three kids, nine great-grandchildren, nine grandchildren, six books and a revolution.’ And I think that revolution is pretty clear, in this country at least, and that women really can’t be pushed back from where they are now.”

The Filmmakers

Cynthia Salzman Mondell
Salzman Mondell is an independent filmmaker committed to making films and videos that she feels have something to say about the world she lives in. Her first documentary on housing and the lack of it, Promise and Practice, aired on public television in 1977. She then teamed up with Allen Mondell to form Media Projects, a non-profit production and distribution organization.

Salzman Mondell is past president of the board of New Day Films, a nationally known independent film cooperative based in New York City. She regularly travels to colleges and universities to show and discuss her film The Ladies Room, a documentary about the raucous and ribald world inside women’s restrooms. She was recently honored with the Topaz Achievement Award by Women In Film of Dallas.

Allen Mondell
Mondell has worked in films and television as a writer, producer and director for 30 years. He began his career as a newspaper reporter in Baltimore in the mid-1960s and then went to work for Westinghouse Broadcasting in Baltimore (WJZ-TV) as a writer/director of documentary films. He spent five years at KERA-TV in Dallas as a writer, producer and director of documentaries and special programs. He taught in the Peace Corps in West Africa after graduating from Williams College with a B.A. in American history and literature.

Salzman Mondell and Mondell have been making award-winning docudramas and documentary films and videos together for 25 years. Their work explores a wide range of subjects but always with the goal of personalizing often-complex social problems. Many of their films have aired nationwide on public television, cable and at festivals worldwide. They were artists-in-residence at the University of Texas, Dallas, and have lectured around the country.

Their work includes Funny Women, a film celebrating women comedians; Make Me A Match, about Jewish singles looking for their soulmates; West of Hester Street, a docudrama about Jewish immigration through Galveston, Texas, in the early 1900s; Films From the Sixth Floor, six films about the life, death and legacy of President John F. Kennedy for the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas; and Dreams of Equality, produced for the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York. They have also produced many educational videos about drug abuse, handgun violence, sexuality, parenting, literacy and environmental issues. Salzman Mondell is completing a personal documentary about her father’s 33-year struggle with Parkinson’s disease and how the family coped with his daily care giving. Together, the Mondells are now working on a documentary about the alarming rise of anti-Semitism in Europe today.

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