SOME OF THE STORIES on my current (very long) list are: the frontier nursing service, the woman who created the first soap opera, the Grimke sisters (two southerners who were ardent abolitionists), and Madame CJ Walker (the black woman who made millions selling hair care products). The list of potential topics is huge.

THIS NEW SERIES WILL CONTINUE the work I’ve begun in the two films I have already made as an independent filmmaker. The first is the film I completed six years ago, A Midwife’s Tale, an adaptation of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s groundbreaking work. The film wove together the stories of two women, two hundred years apart, linked by the diary one of them left behind. As present-day historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich slowly pieced together the life and world of 18th century midwife Martha Ballard, Martha’s world gradually took form; the film was a documentary that evolved into a drama. The reaction to the film has been very positive, and at packed screenings of the film, I realized that there is a strong desire out there for the stories of ordinary, non-elite people (especially women) in the past.

THE FILM I have just completed, though very different from A Midwife’s Tale, also tells a story of extraordinary ordinary women in American history. It is about the creation of Tupperware (the plastic product, the company, the marketing phenomenon, and the enduring icon), and it will be broadcast on the PBS series The AMERICAN EXPERIENCE in 2004.