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Weekly Update for March 14: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Veronica Mars — Co-Written by Dianne Ruggiero A new case draws Veronica Mars back to her hometown of Neptune, CA, just in time for her ten-year high school reunion....
Trailer Watch: Kristen Wiig in Hateship Loveship
Kristen Wiig helped launch the female buddy comedy with Bridesmaids, but the former SNL star has been skewing toward dramatic roles since her breakout hit. Wiig has already received great notices...
Trailer Watch: Mia Wasikowska in New Tracks Video
The Aussie travel-by-camel adventure Tracks still hasn’t found a U.S. release date, but it does have going for it a newly cut trailer. Everyting we previously wrote about the film still holds...
Trailer Watch: Nicole Kidman as Grace of Monaco
If there’s one thing Game of Thrones has taught us, it’s that being a princess really, really sucks. Grace of Monaco makes the same point with a drama set in an era closer to our own time. The...
Guest Post: Pass the Bechdel Test — A Grassroots Campaign Aimed at the Film Industry
The marginalization of women at the movies hasn’t changed since the 1940s. That’s what Dr. Martha Lauzen’s latest research paper, “It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World” for the Center for...
Why Shailene Woodley is Wrong to Blast Twilight
Shailene Woodley’s Divergent opens next week, which means the Descendants and Spectacular Now actress has been making the media rounds. Woodley certainly gave bloggers a lot to talk about on...
Trailer Watch: Juliette Binoche in A Thousand Times Goodnight
Emotional detachment is a career advantage for journalists and photographers, but less welcome within the demanding confines of domestic life. That’s what war photographer Rebecca (Juliette...
New York Indian Film Festival to Salute Gurinder Chadha
On the 20th anniversary of Bhaji on the Beach, her BAFTA-nominated dramedy about a group of South Asian women who take a day trip to the British seashore, Indian-British director Gurinder Chadha...
Reinventing A Life: Lies I Told My Little Sister
I’ve been a nonfiction writerall my life. I write books and humor essays. I never envisioned becoming ascreenwriter. But at age 60, I seem to have rewritten my obituary. I am ascreenwriter now,...
A Woman Astronaut: Life as a Woman Composer in Hollywood
When I first arrived in Hollywood, I had a Ph.D. in music composition, a keyboard, and one connection. While that might not seem like much, it was more than I had when I moved to the United States...
TV: Trailer Watch: Tatiana Maslany in Orphan Black Season 2
The clone drama Orphan Black, starring Golden Globe nominee Tatiana Maslany as seven different women (and counting!), helped put BBC America on the must-see map. Maslany plays seven...
Trailer Watch: Catherine Deneuve in On My Way
After opening the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema film festival (March 6–16), the Catherine Deneuve vehicle On My Way will be released on March 14. Directed by Emmanuelle Bercot, On My Way is a...
Women-Directed Films Win Top Prizes at SXSW
Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers’ hipster comedy Fort Tilden and Margaret Brown’s Gulf-spill documentary The Great Invisible took home the top prizes at SXSW this year. In an interview...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Sarah-Violet Bliss
Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers are filmmakers based in Brooklyn who met at NYU Graduate Film school. They have each written and directed award-winning short films that have screened at...
Anne Sweeney: Leaning in by Leaning Out
Yesterday, Anne Sweeney — the Co-Chair of Disney Media Networks, President of Disney/ABC Television Group, Bob Iger’s Number Two, and the most powerful woman in Hollywood according to The...
Should We Have Higher Expectations of Mindy Kaling and Other Women in Charge?
Mindy Kaling has every right to be mad that she’s reminded of her gender and race pretty much every time she’s asked a question in public. “One of the things that has been helpful to me is...
Lena Dunham’s Feminist Week: From SNL to SXSW
Girls’ fictional protagonist Hannah Horvath proclaimed she was “the voice of my generation” in a fit of self-delusion and opium tea, but her creator Lena Dunham is proving she has a lot of...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Doris Dorrie
Doris Dorrie has made more than 30 feature films since 1976 to become one of the most famous filmmakers in her native Germany. Her films include Bliss, How to Cook Your Life, Naked, and Am I...
Lynne Ramsay and Jane Got a Gun Producers Settle Lawsuit
Screen Daily reports that director Lynne Ramsay and the producers of Jane Got a Gun have reached a settlement. Ramsay signed on to helm the 2011 Black List action western in March 2012, but...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Iva Radivojevic
Iva Radivojevic is a NYC-based filmmaker who explores themes of identity, migration and immigrants. Her films have screened at various venues, including Rotterdam, HotDocs, PBS, Documentary Channel...
26% of SFIFF Films in Competition Directed by Women
Though the 2014 San Francisco International Film Festival’s (April 24-May 8) full lineup won’t be announced until April 1, SFIFF organizers have announced the films competing in the narrative...
Female Protagonists Underrepresented Onscreen Five to One
Remember last week when we were all so happy about what Cate Blanchett said at the Oscars? Well, no matter how much money women make, there was almost five male protagonists for every female one...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Sandy McLeod
Sandy McLeod is an acclaimed independent filmmaker, having directed numerous music videos and short films in her 25-year career. Her short documentary “Asylum” was nominated for an Academy Award...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Leah Meyerhoff
In making her feature debut, director Leah Meyerhoff went back home — literally. I Believe in Unicorns was partly filmed in the house Meyerhoff grew up and where her mother still lives, since...
Hunger Games Producer Nina Jacobson to Adapt Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch
Nina Jacobson, producer of The Hunger Games and Diary of a Wimpy Kid film series, has picked up another hit book — Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. Praised for its “Dickensian” scope,...
Special Report: Women Directors at the Box Office in February 2014
Opening onValentine’s Day, the teen romance EndlessLove was the first wide release (2,872 theaters) from a female director in2014. The original, starring teen queen Brooke Shields, was released in...
War Zone/ Comfort Zone: Confronting the Issue of Homeless Women Veterans
Making a movie is like walking across a tightrope. It requires balance, will and muscles you never even knew you had. I’ve spent the last few years making a documentary about homeless women...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Diana Whitten
Dutch physician Rebecca Gomperts made waves in 1999 when she announced that she would provide abortions on international waters to women living in countries like Ireland and Poland. When her...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Catherine Gund
Elizabeth Streb is not just a choreographer; she is an extreme action architect. Documentarian Catherine Gund’s Born to Fly traces the evolution of Streb’s movement philosophy — she pushes...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Kitty Green
Kitty Green’s short films have screened at film festivals internationally. After graduating film school, Green worked for ABC in Australia producing content for national broadcast. Green spent the...
In Honor of International Women’s Day: Here Are the Things You Can Do to Support Female Filmmakers and Female Films
This has been a big week for people paying attention to women and the film business. From Ellen DeGeneres pulling in great ratings for the Oscar show to Cate Blanchett using her Oscar win as a bully...
Weekly Update for March 7 Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Honey — Directed by Valeria Golino; Written by Valeria Golina, Francesca Marciano, Valia Santella Irene lives alone on the coastline outside Rome. To her father and...
TV: The “Golden Age of Television” is Really White and Really Male
“’Crazy’ mistresses, nameless strippers, randy hookups, disgruntled daughters, dismayed wives.” That’s how TV critic Maureen Ryan sums up most of the female characters we see on True...
Tribeca FF Announces 10 More Women-Directed Films
The Tribeca Film Festival (April 16–27) announced the second half of its 2014 line-up yesterday, and there are some big names among the ten female-helmed selections. Kelly Reichardt’s fifth film...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Amy C. Elliott
Documentary filmmaker Amy C. Elliott is drawn to America’s weirdness. Her 2010 feature debut, World’s Largest, profiled small towns that built grandiose roadside attractions. Her newest work,...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Margaret Brown
Alabama native Margaret Brown is a Peabody Award-winning director whose last documentary feature, The Order of Myths, received the Truer Than Fiction Award at the 2009 Independent Spirit Awards and...
TV: Mary-Louise Parker to Star in NBC Sitcom Feed Me
Before winning over potheads everywhere as drug-dealing suburbanite Nancy Botwin on Jenji Kohan’s Weeds, Mary-Louise Parker first gained notice playing feminist lobbyist Amy Gardner on NBC’s The...
Trailer Watch: Quvenzhane Wallis in Annie
I (Melissa) grew up in the era of Annie. For my generation, it was our Wicked. It was the first Broadway show I saw and it helped spark my love of theatre. I carried around that red album to and...
Producer Gigi Pritzker Lands $50 Mil in Financing
Prolific producer Gigi Pritzker (Drive, The Way Way Back, Ender’s Game) has just secured $50 million to finance future film projects. As the founder of OddLot Entertainment, Pritzker has in the...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Liz Tuccillo
You may not have heard of Liz Tuccillo, but you’ve definitely heard of her work. Tuccillo’s first credited script was “The Post-It Always Sticks Twice” episode of Sex and the City, a...
BBC, Directors UK Launch Workshops to Help Women Directors Find Work
Remember the “cast-iron ceiling” for women directors in the British film industry that Sally Potter mentioned last week? The BBC and Directors UK (Britain’s version of the DGA) are taking a...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Leigh Janiak
Director Leigh Janiak’s first feature, Honeymoon, came out of the NYU grad’s desire to tell “an intimate, grounded genre story.” Shot in North Carolina, the thriller owes its existence to...
First Half of 2014 Tribeca Line-Up Announced; Women-Directed Films Make Up 25%
The Tribeca Film Festival (April 16–27) announced the first half of its 2014 line-up earlier this week, and women’s representation at the festival could both be better and worse. Among the...
TV: How House of Cards’ Claire Underwood Stacks Against Other Anti-Heroines
House of Cards, Netflix’s buzzy political drama, started life as a remake of a British miniseries. Starring Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood, an amoral, ambitious member of Congress, it also felt...
Unifrance Exec Spotlights French and American Women Directors
If you see any French films this year, you’ll have Isabelle Giordano to thank for that. Since June 2013, Giordano has been the General Director of Unifrance Films, the government agency that...
NYU’s Fusion FF: Celebrating Women in Film, Television, & New Media
Women behind the camera are rarelyacknowledged in the film industry. As a reader of Women and Hollywood, you already know this. In fact, weall know the sad statistics generated by the recent...
SXSW Women Directors: Meet Sandrine Orabona
Sandrine Orabona has worked professionally for over two decades as a director, producer, editor and shooter to enhance her storytelling skills in the non-fiction genre. She is the co-director of the...
Gemma Arterton Headed to London Stage in Made in Dagenham Musical
Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace, Byzantium) is headed to London’s West End to star in a musical adaptation of Made in Dagenham, the 2010 British drama about 1960s seamstresses fighting for equal...
Oscar Winner Lupita Nyong’o Poignantly Discusses “Black Beauty” at Essence Event
Since Thanksgiving last year, Lupita Nyong’o has run a stealth but undeniably successful campaign. No, not for her richly deserved Best Supporting Actress trophy for 12 Years a Slave, but it has...
Suck It, Haters: Female-Led Films Make More Money
“Sorry, Cate Blanchett: ‘Films with women at the center’ don’t make money,” proclaims an embarrassing editorial by Marcus James Dixon at the Gold Derby today. Dixon was referring, of...
Frozen is First Woman-Directed Movie to Make $1 Billion
Women want to see movies about women. And since women buy the majority of movie tickets (and boys and men will buy tickets to watch the adventures of female protagonists), movies about women...