lprovatas

Hi: 

This year, after ten years of history with the Cannes Film Festival I have renamed my company, Pro/Mac Productions, Aphra Behn Productions because it is time for the subject of my longest and best obsession to be made into a feature film based on the life and work of a woman 350 years ahead of her time. I have done a lot of serious reading and historical research in order to make this the best and most historically accurate film I can. Working title: The Life and Times of Aphra Behn, is copyrighted and registered in the United States of America. This is a history changing true story, a cover-up story of sorts that now needs to be revealed as it is of great importance and relevance to all women of the 21st century. Men did then and will now simply fall in love with her. Aphra lived a most unusual life.  She was the first professional British woman writer. She lived from 1640 to 1689 and according to history and literary historians, what she has left behind for us, a tremendous amount of work: plays, novels, poetry, and even political propaganda written all as she put it, "for her bread," and what she did for the court of Charles II, working for him as a spy during the Dutch Wars, taking part in a slave rebellion in Surinam in the West Indies in 1663, that makes her such an original and courageous human being. She is the mother of the philosophical and abolitionist novel.  It has been said that her life was politics.   What is to be found out about Aphra Behn in existing British historical documentation of her period, The Restoration, tells us what a valuable legacy she created. One of her most popular plays, "The Rover" is currently playing on Broadway in New York City.  Virginia Woolfe said of her: "All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn for it was she who gave them the right to speak their minds." And all of this, she accomplished in a time when women had no rights whatsoever and women's education did not exist. She stood up for herself and for all of us women and decided to become independent, something unheard of during her lifetime.  She was considered immoral for doing so and was systematically obscured by history as a result. Aphra Behn is buried in Westminster Abbey not too far from her great friend the dramatist, John Dryden who loved her work, admired her spirit and encouraged her throughout her professional life.