Note: I get lots of email from people who have scripts and films they want me to look at. While I can’t watch or read all requests, I believe it is vital that we get as many women’s voices heard so they can get the exposure needed to continue of their filmmaking journey. Women & Hollywood will try and feature these new voices on a regular basis.
All of the buzz around Kathryn Bigelow as best director is amazing—sure, she’s a woman, but more importantly, she made an incredible film, and had the guts to stick it out in a business that eats people alive and shatters dreams…
Yes, it’s been quite the long and arduous journey getting my first feature made.
It all began over six years ago, with a script called Raspberry Magic, a coming-of-age story about a young girl who believes that she can mend her broken family by proving to her dad that she can win the science fair.
Her project explores whether it’s nature or nurture that can make raspberries grow, something she measures through touch therapy. I was inspired to write this story to explore a young girls’ relationship to nature and how it helps her realize that she can’t solve every problem through quantifiable means.
I went through many, many drafts of this script and even work-shopped it at a couple of writer’s conferences. While I had written several screenplays before, Raspberry Magic was one I just kept working and working on over a period of many years. I got a lot of positive feedback on it, and tried for years to meet that perfect person who would want to help me bring it to the screen…
But ultimately, no one wanted to make a movie about a young Indian girl, science, raspberries or the likes…Until 2006, when I met Megha Kadakia, an aspiring producer who had raised some financing for a couple of other indie films and was looking to do an low budget indie film.
Continue reading ‘Guest Post: The Hustle to Make the First Film by Leena Pendharkar’
Tags: Kathryn Bigelow, Leena Pendharkar, Megha Kadakia, Raspberry Magic


The Closer started its fifth! season last week and Kyra Sedgwick is back as Brenda Lee Johnson the sweet talking, crime solving Deputy Chief of LAPD’s major crime squad. I very much enjoy the show. It is on TNT at 9pm on Monday nights. The show has pretty much been a boy’s club aside from Sedgwick so I was excited to read that Mary McDonnell would be joining the show for a couple of episodes.
To say that I am impressed with writer/director Emily Abt is an understatement. I’ve been a fan of hers since I first saw her documentary All of Us about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in African American women which was released in NY last fall and broadcast on Showtime on World AIDS Day on December 1st. 


Yentl is a film very close to my heart. I vividly remember when I was taken to see it by my parents when I was a teenager and being blown away by it. The thing that got me most was watching the credits and seeing how this woman Barbra Streisand who I really wasn’t familiar with at that time could have accomplished so many tasks on one film. My love for Barbra Streisand and probably my interest in films (especially women’s films) was probably born that day. The film in finally being released on a double disk DVD with commentary by Streisand and rehearsal footage. I can’t wait.
Mary Jane Skalski gave the keynote address at this year’s Sundance producers luncheon. She produced one of my favorite movies of 2008, The Visitor and recently
I remember her from the film Yanks and a variety of TV roles (The Practice, Law & Order among others) in the 1990s, but actress Lisa Eichorn now living in England has become a producer and writer of the filmDefender of Riga, the highest grossing movie in Latvia and that country’s submission for the best foreign film award. Here’s an 


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