An action spectacle built around true story of female warriors who saved their people from the mighty Chinese Empire is taking shape in downtown Los Angeles.
The series of performances for The Last Stand at the Hammerstein Ballroom, presented by the Hammerstein Performing Arts Center and brought together three of the women’s groups in Los Angeles, opens on Friday as the first major project from the Los Angeles Alliance of Women’s Services and the Los Angeles Women’s Center, along with the Los Angeles Asian Pacific American Film Festival.
The series, made possible through a partnership with L.A. Live, features the stories of the women who lived through the era when the world’s great powers came to California — and then fought over the territory.
“It’s an opportunity for us to get an opportunity to tell the stories of women who led their people and won, while in the process changing the world,” said Sharon Ching of the Los Angeles Alliance of Women’s Services. “We do that in the context of our community and we are not an entertainment company anymore. We are a service agency. We care for the women that are being left behind.”
The series builds on the theme of “Ladies in the Land of War” created by the Alliance and the film’s executive producers, who include the Alliance’s executive director, T.J. Smith, and his wife, actress Kelly Hu, and the L.A. Women’s Center’s executive director, Karen Brickel.
“We’ve been doing this for 40 years, but we’ve never connected the themes that we created with the stories that women in the U.S. have fought for since the beginning of time,” said Brickel.
The films, shot over decades in the 1940s to 1990s, show the stories of three women whose lives were shaped by the conflicts the film seeks to explore.
“I’m fascinated by the war and how the women fought the battle,” said Smith. “The women who were fighting were
