Here's some genuinely surprising news this morning out of Variety: ski-jumping is the only Olympic sport exclusively for men, despite the fact that female ski jumpers have fought for a decade to be included in the games. It's one of those strange-but-true facts that takes a celebrity to get attention, and Virginia Madsen is using her status to do just that. She's joining Empire 8 Productions and Screen Siren to produce Fighting Gravity, a documentary about the 15 athletes struggling to be included in the 2010 Winter Olympics.
As Madsen told Variety, "To think that in 2009, in a celebrated, international event like the Olympics, women are still dealing with discrimination is pretty shocking. We knew instantly we wanted to throw our support behind this project and get the word out there."
Madsen actually has a track record of fighting for women's rights through film-- in March 2008 she founded the Title IX production studio, named for the federal law that provides equal funding for activities for women. None of the movies she's produced through that banner have been released yet, but now that she's tackling a hot topic like the Olympics, we'll probably get to see some of her work very soon.
