I Am Woman: Screenwriter Emma Jensen shares how she landed job to write film on Helen Reddy

I AM Woman- it’s the anthem that inspired one of the world’s biggest women’s rights movement in the 70s and is still played on airwaves today. Now a Gold Coaster has bought it to life in a Hollywood film.

I AM Woman - it’s the anthem that inspired one of the world’s biggest women’s rights movement in the 70s and is still played on airwaves today.

Now, Kingscliff-based screenwriter Emma Jensen has brought Australian singer Helen Reddy’s hit to life in a new biological-drama film.

“The project came from (director) Unjoo Moon and (producer) Rosemary Blight. We met at a film function in Los Angeles called G’day LA.” Jensen said.

“They asked me if I would like to write it and I said ‘yes please!’

Screenwriter Emma Jensen at HOTA ahead of the 2020 Gold Coast Film Festival. Picture: Jerad Williams

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“The song was iconic. For what (Reddy) achieved in the 1960s for a woman, to go over to New York as a single mother. Her determination had paved the way for so many women in the industry.”

It took Jensen, who has two decades of experience in the industry, two years of researching and surrounding herself in Reddy’s life to write the script.

“When you have such a big life, you have to decide what you should leave in and leave out in the story,” she said.

Screenwriter Emma Jensen and Gold Coast Film Festival director Lucy Fisher. Picture: Jerad Williams

The film features a calibre of some of Hollywood’s best actors - including Peter Evans of American Horror Story, Danielle Macdonald of Dumplin’, and Tilda Cobham-Hervey who plays Reddy - This is Jensen’s second film she has written. Her first feature was Mary Shelley - a film based on the life and facts on Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who wrote the book Frankenstein.

I Am Woman will premiere at the opening night of the Gold Coast Film Festival on April 15.

The festival is held from April 15 to 26 and will premiere a total of 24 premieres.