Montreal: From Sappho to the Suffragettes, from Simone de Beauvoir to Benazir Bhutto, a new primetime documentary series called Women: This Wave An Ocean chronicles the story of female emancipation from the perspective of reformers, renegades, warriors and witnesses.

To shoot the six-hour series, three documentary crews headed by women directors Lea Pool, Paule Baillargeon and Anne Henderson have embarked on a 16mm voyage of discovery, spanning five continents, numerous nations and many cultures.

The crews are crisscrossing the planet this summer, filming in England, the Caribbean, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, Africa, Mexico, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, Turkey and the u.s.

Women: This Wave An Ocean is being produced by Montreal’s Productions Point de Mire and was commissioned by the CTV Television Network, Radio-Canada and TV5 on a budget of $3.7 million.

American actress Susan Sarandon (Thelma and Louise, Bull Durham) has agreed to host the program, and according to Point de Mire executive vp Huguette Marcotte, Sarandon intends to donate her performance fees to charity.

‘It’s a great coup for the series. Susan is an active feminist and she really liked the idea,’ says Marcotte.

Marcotte says the feedback on early rushes from Amazonia and Mexico screened for Radio-Canada, Arthur Weinthal, ctv’s entertainment vp, and Jacques Camerlain, TV5’s new program director, has been entirely positive.

In the opening episode, ‘From Female to Feminine: Nature by Design,’ the series examines what it has meant to be a woman in western society, from Helen of Troy to singer k.d. lang.

In episode two, ‘Storming the Temples,’ the female heritage in religion and education is profiled. The third episode, ‘The Body Politic: Nature, Women and Man,’ traces women’s struggles to regain both literal and metaphoric possession of their bodies.

The fourth installment, ‘A Woman’s Worth,’ looks at women in the workforce and their role in modern economies and the contradictions and ironies of uneven progress.

In the fifth episode, ‘The Personal is Political,’ women of influence are interviewed, while the closing segment, ‘A Far Cry from Home,’ looks to the future and asks what the international women’s movement has to offer the world of the 21st century.

While film segments shot in Canada tend to be more issue-oriented – a visit to an anorexia center, a lady’s boxing match, a midwife session – Marcotte says foreign segments include interviews with prominent personalities such as Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, Time magazine writer Brabara Ehrenreich, u.s. author Phyllis Chesler, who addresses the issue of women and madness, and historians Rosalind Miles and Lady Antonia Fraser.

The series was written by Lise Payette, 1994 Canadian Women in Communications Woman of the Year and president of Point de Mire, and former National Film Board executive producer Rina Fraticelli. Raymond Gauthier is producing and Mary Armstrong is the series’ line producer.

The series will be the basis of a major exhibition to be held in spring ’96 at the Musee de la Civilization in Quebec City. Talks are underway with the Royal Ontario Museum, the Glenboe Museum in Calgary and the University of British Columbia for a possible tour of the exhibition, says Marcotte.

The Multimedia Group of Canada is the international exporter.

Funding comes from Telefilm Canada, the Quebec tax credit program administered by sodec, the Cable Production Fund and the nfb (English Program).