Tag Archive for 'Amreeka'

Festival Spotlight: Bird’s Eye View in London Begins March 4

Published
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Melissa Silverstein
on February 9, 2010
in Feminism and Festivals
. 0 Comments

Just wanted to remind you all that the 6th Annual Bird’s Eye View Film Festival kicks off in London next month.

This is one of the most prestigious festivals that highlights films directed by women.

Here’s festival director Rachel Millward talking about why the festival is important:

Birds Eye View is the UK’s only festival celebrating international women filmmakers, founded as a positive response to the still startling fact that women make up only 7% film directors and 12% screenwriters. We passionately believe that a healthy culture requires a balanced perspective and we want to see that on screen. So, we celebrate the talented women making great work today, inspire, encourage and equip more women to make more films, and show the industry and our audiences that without a female perspective in cinema, they’re really missing out!

Birds Eye View keeps working all year round, with a First Weekenders Club, promoting the opening weekend of cinema releases written or directed by women, and bespoke training labs which hothouse exceptional female writers in order to get more commercial features from women into production.

They have a wide variety of films including: Amreeka directed by Cherien Dabis; and Lourdes by Jessica Hauser.

Director Susanne Bier (who directed Brothers which was remade into a horrible Hollywood version) will hold a masterclass, and the festival will close with the London premiere of Whip-It, directed by Drew Barrymore.

More from Rachel Millward:

This is the 6th Birds Eye View Film Festival and it’s a hum-dinger of a programme, celebrating such amazing women filmmakers as Drew Barrymore (Whip It), Jessica Hausner (Lourdes), Isabel Coixet (Map of the Sounds of Tokyo), Kim Longinotto (Rough Aunties), Wanuri Kahiu (From a Whisper) and Susanne Bier (with a retrospective and masterclass).

Plus Blonde Crazy: a celebration of dazzling iconic blondes from the silent era to the present day, and special live music commissions from female artists to silent film, including the first ever animated feature film The Adventures of Prince Achmed from pioneering artist Lotte Reineger. All this with BEV’s usual sprinkling of celeb presence… It looks set to be one to remember.

Support women directed films by attending this festival.

PS- If anyone is planning on attending and wants to write a report for all of us, just get in touch with me. Thanks.

Bird’s Eye View Film Festival

Drew Barrymore debut at Birds Eye View Fest (Hollywood Reporter)

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Tags: Amreeka, Bird's Eye View, Cherien Dabis, Drew Barrymore, Isabel Coixet, Susanne Bier, Whip-It

Awards Watch: The Independent Spirit Award Nominations

Published
by
Melissa Silverstein
on December 2, 2009
in Awards
. 1 Comment

logoIsn’t the indie world supposed to be better for women?  Guess not that much better since women were virtually shut out of all the major awards categories for the Independent Spirit Awards which will be held in LA on Friday, March 5th.

Here are some of the things that stood out for me:

I guess this is really not the year for women directors because not a single woman was nominated for best director in either the feature category or the best first feature category.  Granted Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker was not eligible this year but last year when it was eligible, she didn’t get a nomination and neither did the film.  An Education and Bright Star were also ineligible for the major awards because they don’t fulfill the requirement of having a “citizen or permanent resident credited in two or more of the following categories of responsibility: writer, director, producer or the film is set in the United States and fully financed by a company whose principal office is in the U.S.”

But still – not a single woman?  Amreeka gets nominated for best feature (and award given to the producers and it does have one female producer) yet it is not nominated for best first feature which is given to the director and producer?  And how did they reconcile nominating the film for best feature and then nominating her for best first screenplay, but not best screenplay?  Bizarre.

Not a single woman was nominated for best screenplay, yet two women Sophie Barthes (Cold Souls) and Cherien Dabis (Amreeka) were nominated for best first screenplay.  I have no idea how these decisions are made.

And isn’t it supposed to be even better for women in documentaries?  Guess not.  Only one (out of five) of the best docs was made by a woman, Rebecca Cammisa who directed Which Way Home.

The good news:

Each of the best feature nominees has at least one female producer and several of the films are women-centric including: Amreeka and Precious.

Women did get noticed for the John Cassavetes award (which is for a film made for under $500,000)

“Humpday” Writer/Director/Producer: Lynn Shelton
“Treeless Mountain” Writer/Director: So Yong Kim

In the foreign film category, while there is only a single woman directed film nominated, Lone Scherfig for An Education, four out of the five films in that category are women-centric including: An Education; Everlasting Moments; Mother and The Maid.

A single woman, Anne Misawa was nominated for cinematography for Treeless Mountain.

Two women (out of three), Karin Chien (The Exploding Girl, Santa Mesa) and Dia Sokol Beeswax, Nights & Weekends were nominated for the Piaget Producers Award and two women (out of three) Natalia Almada for El General and Jessica Oreck for Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo were nominated for the Truer Than Fiction Award.

The acting noms included:

BEST FEMALE LEAD
Maria Bello — Downloading Nancy
Nisreen Faour — Amreeka
Helen Mirren — The Last Station
Gwyneth Paltrow — Two Lovers
Gabourey Sidibe — Precious

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE
Dina Korzun — Cold Souls
Mo’Nique — Precious
Samantha Morton — The Messenger
Natalie Press — Fifty Dead Men Walking
Mia Wasikowska — That Evening Sun

Spirit Awards (The Nominees) (IndieWIRE)

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Tags: Amreeka, Cherien Dabis, Lynn Shelton, So Yong Kim, Sophie Barthes

Interview with Katherine Dieckmann, Director of Motherhood – Part 2

Published
by
Melissa Silverstein
on November 2, 2009
in Women Directors
. 1 Comment

Here is part 2 of my interview with Katherine Dieckmann, director of Motherhood.

Women & Hollywood: The producers on this film are women.  Did you seek out female producers for this?

Katherine Dieckmann: I met with a lot of men that I really liked about producing this film but I felt at the end of the day Rachel Cohen in particular (she was the woman who financed this movie) who I have been friends with for a decade and feel intellectually, politically, and spirtitually incredibly aligned with. She took it and found the money and I trusted her and knew she would have my back and she did and was there for me every step of the way.  I felt the same about Pam Koffler from Killer Films who I had known for a long time socially and who I had talked to about the script before I had even started to write it.  I felt that these women really get me and get why I am doing this and I will be safe.

W&H: You talked a little about the current obsession with the Aptowian comedy films today.  How did it become such a fixation?

KD: I love those movies and I hate them at the same time.  Politically I hate them, but I love watching them.  I think there is a great confusion culturally about mens and womens roles and to me the Judd Apatow movies really reflect that confusion.  Women are for all the difficulties that we face are increasingly assured in the world.  I really do think that.  There is such anxiety in men about how they are supposed to be and so this is a hysterical reaction to it.  I think it will be interesting to see how it shakes out in the next few years.

W&H: What is the message you want people to come out of the film with?

KD: The message I am trying to say, and it’s not just a motherhood message, is to challenge yourself and also be accepting.  This character is doing neither in the the beginning of the movie.  She is neither challenging herself nor accepting the limitations of what her reality is and that has a lot to do with malcontent and nobody likes a malcontented person. Many mothers are malcontented because there are real limitation to the ways you can live your life as a mother, economic, practical.  So I think on the one hand some things can be changed, but like I said in the NY Times piece is think it’s really easy to hide behind motherhood and women have to challenge themselves not to do that because it’s kind of easy.  If they want to say something or do something to not use motherhood as an excuse to avoid trying to do it.

W&H: Do you think you will get some backlash from some moms?

KD: Maybe.  I don’t think I am saying don’t be a stay at home mom or don’t view mothering as a primary impetus in a certain phase of your life, but let’s face it, is a short phase of your life and as your children get older and they won’t need you in that way and they won’t if you’ve done your job right, who are you? Who are you at the end of the day?  Who are you apart from mom and I feel that’s the essential question of the movie.  This woman doesn’t know who she is apart from mom anymore and I think many women experience that weirdly dissociative state when they become mothers.

W&H: What advice do you have for women filmmakers?

KD: Tenacity and determination.  I teach screenwriting at Columbia and I had a wonderful student really succeed with her feature in the last year Cherin Dabis with Amreeka.  I taught Cherien (in maybe 2003) and she had such focus and she rewrote that script – I must have read 10 drafts of that script – she worked and worked and worked and was savvy and persistent in the loveliest way and made a really good first film.  I think it takes for anyone, but especially women, an unbelievable persistence and really believing I have to say this, I have to get it out there, I will find a way to do it and not giving up on that.

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Tags: Amreeka, Cherien Dabis, Killer Films, Motherhood, Uma Thurman

Awards Watch: Gotham Independent Film Nominations

Published
by
Melissa Silverstein
on October 20, 2009
in Awards
. 0 Comments

amreekaIt has begun. The crazy awards season. We’re going to keep track of the women creatives (and films about women) on the way to the Oscars.

The good news.  Two women directors are up for best feature.  The Hurt Locker was expected, but Amreeka is a big, good surprise.  So psyched that Cherien is getting noticed for this wonderful film debut.  Three of the film nominated for best ensemble have a woman director of co-director – The Hurt Locker, Cold Souls and Sugar.

Bad news.  No woman director included in the list of breakthrough director.

Best Feature

Amreeka – Cherien Dabis, director

The Hurt Locker – Kathryn Bigelow, director

Best Documentary

My Neighbor My Killer Anne Aghion, director/producer

Full list of noms from indiewire

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Tags: Amreeka, Cherien Dabis, Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker