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Elfreda
A film by Rhonda Buckley
Elfreda feature film By Rhonda Buckley
Nora, a professor at Emerson University in Boston, teaches gender media studies, emphasizing the volatile times in North America for women’s rights under the present governments. The milestones women have made over centuries are being obliterated.
Nora returns to Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, where she was born, and research leads her to write a book on the horrific murder of Elfreda Pike, a sixteen-year-old girl, based on a true story in 1870 she was found with her throat cut from ear to ear and her body positioned so that it would drain out on the wooden path near a cliff. Constable Furey, who headed the investigation, confessed on his deathbed 50 years later, that he was the man who killed and mutilated Elfreda Pike.
Vivian, Nora’s assistant, gives Nora support to write her novel. Nora meets a street person Zoe, and she buys her dinner and finds her a shelter. Nora convinces Zoe to audit her course, not realizing her assistant Vivian has lived in a shelter with Zoe, and they have been girlfriends. At Nora’s book launch Vivian is surprised to see Zoe and is forced to share her past life on the streets before becoming a professor. Zoe declares, people always want something in return, but Vivian says it’s just Nora’s way to make sure that all women are safe. She wants nothing.
Nora continues to attend university classes and now Vivian sits by her side in the classroom. Zoe continues with her education and becomes a professor. It brings a smile to Nora’s face to see Zoe teaching. Hopes of women’s equality are becoming realized by the time Zoe is a professor in the future. Students look at archival footage and are confused to why women’s rights were ever compromised.
Based on a true story of the murder of Elfreda Pike in 1870. The film is interwoven with narration from the original Express newspaper article of 1870 depicting Elfreda’s death. Film footage shot on super 8 of the murder of Elfreda will play over the narration and depict that time.
In addition to being a university professor, Nora is writing a novel based on a true story of the murder of Elfreda Pike in1870 in Harbour Grace, where Elfreda was horrifically murdered.
The main characters, Nora, and Vivian, look at the epidemic of women violence today. Elfreda’s main character Nora is a university lecturer that speaks to the trauma women are faced with today. The film and dialogue references American politics, and a North American climate of women who are often targeted and harmed in a culture where women violence is epidemic in society.
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