Lewis Gilbert film versions of Willy Russell's plays "Educating Rita" (1983) and "Shirley Valentine" (1989). Gilbert also directed the film "Stepping Out" (1991). Gilbert was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1997 Birthday Honours for services to the film industry. In 2001, Gilbert was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute, the highest accolade in the British film industry. In June 2010 he appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme "Desert Island Discs". In it he said that his 1970 film "The Adventurers" was a disaster, and that he should never have made it. On
Woman's film film is the motif of escape. Woman's films allow their respective female protagonists to escape their everyday lives and their socially and sexually prescribed roles. The escape can take the form of a journey to another place such as the USSR in "Letter to Brezhnev" (1985) and Greece in "Shirley Valentine" (1989) or education as in "Educating Rita" (1983) and sexual initiation as in "Wish You Were Here" (1987). The beginnings of the genre can be traced back to D. W. Griffith, whose one- and two-reelers "A Flash of Light" (1910) and "Her Awakening" (1911) feature the trademark narratives of