Marshall’s Women’s Center is celebrating Women’s History Month by hosting film screenings all month long. Several films and events will be spread out during the month of March for students.

The film screenings are offered in Freshman South. The movie “Spy” will be played at 7 p.m. March 14 and “Mona Lisa Smile” will be played at 7 p.m. March 28. The 2016 film “Ghostbusters” and “Iron Jawed Angels” were shown earlier this month.

Accompanying the film screenings, the annual “Body Shots” project was promoted, along with the upcoming “Pillow Talk” monologues project. The “Pillow Talk” monologues project will be March 31 at 7:30 p.m. in the Joan C. Edwards Playhouse. This event is also sponsored by Marshall’s Women’s Center.

“To celebrate Women’s History Month, the Women’s Center really wanted to provide the Marshall community with a way to engage in discourse about women and the strides they have made throughout history,” Karson Boyce, graduate assistant for the Women’s Center, said.

Boyce said the Women’s Center decided they wanted to offer a series of film screenings that address women’s issues in both direct and subtle ways.

“It’s important to me that we are broadcasting films with strong and diverse female personalities, so that we can in turn empower our students to be confident in themselves and continue to change history,” Boyce said.

“I genuinely believe our university does everything they can to include everyone,” Meg Keller, junior exercise science major, said. “That is one of my favorite things about our university, and I’m really proud of our university for that. They try their best to include all types of people, and we are very diverse as a university. It’s especially great that they are empowering women, because of the media we are consuming right now often doesn’t. It’s important to encourage women to be who they are and who they want.”

Boyce said before each film starts, they give audience members a Bechdel Test to fill out during the movie, which addresses gender portrayal in popular fiction.

“It’s a relatively short test that asks questions about the female characters and their role within the film, and they fill it out during the film each week to determine if the film passes/fails,” Boyce said. “Only about 50 percent of all films pass the Bechdel Test.”

Professor Hilary Brewster of the English Department offers free popcorn, candy and drinks for audience members while watching the films.

The film screenings are sponsored by Marshall’s Women’s Center, Women’s Studies, the College of Liberal Arts, the Department of History, Department of Anthropology, Sexuality Studies and CONTACT Rape Crisis Center.

Alexia Lilly can be contacted at [email protected].