BY Women and Hollywood
Infographic: Women Directors at Cannes 2017 #SeeHerNow
The 2017 Cannes Film Festival kicks off this Wednesday, May 17. While the high-profile fest is still nowhere near overall gender parity, the number of women directors has increased slightly from the...
Infographic: What You Need to Know About Women in Hollywood in 2017
“Arrival” Sometimes when you’re having a conversation — let’s say about how women are treated in Hollywood — it can be hard to come up with anything but generalizations. Even...
Tony Awards Stats Special: We Counted, So You Don’t Have To
Written by The Interval. The Tony Award nominations were announced this morning and, for the third year in a row, we did some counting to see how women fared at getting nominated for theater’s...
Guest Post: Producing Partners Discuss How Men Can Support Female Filmmakers
Guest Post by Ela Thier My new film, “Tomorrow Ever After,” got made because in addition to relying on women, I rely on the men I work with to act as my allies. I do it by offering information...
Hot Docs 2017 Preview: A Flamenco Legend, Female Inmates, and Domestic Violence
“A Better Man” Hot Docs kicks off today. Given that the Toronto fest is among the world’s biggest documentary festivals, it’s unsurprising that this year’s expansive program has something...
Book Excerpt: “Hot Pants in Hollywood: Sex, Secrets & Sitcoms”
The following is excerpted from Susan Silver’s “Hot Pants in Hollywood: Sex, Secrets & Sitcoms,” which will be released April 27. (Author’s Note: Iris Rainer Dart, my then writing...
Tribeca 2017 Preview: Arranged Marriages, Endangered Animals, the Justice System, & More
“A Suitable Girl” Women directed nearly 40 percent of the films screening in Competition at this year’s edition of the Tribeca Film Festival, and there are plenty of women-centric projects in...
Cross-Post: #WomenDirectorWeek: The Challenge of Watching Only Female-Directed Films for One Week
The following has been reposted from Film Inquiry with the author’s permission. If you pay much attention to events in the film industry, you’ll already know about the incredible dearth of...
Guest Post: How I Made a Movie Based on My Experience as an Egg Donor
Guest Post by Sonja O’Hara “Submit for the Role of a Lifetime. Become an Egg Donor!” I remember how those words stood out next to listings for non-union commercials and Off-Off-Broadway...
Guest Post: Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Step Out of Your Lane
Guest Post by Rebecca Serle Since I was a child, the only thing I ever wanted to do was to be a writer. When I sold my first book in 2010, a re-telling of “Romeo and Juliet” from Rosaline’s...
Guest Post: A Summary of the Inaugural Women’s Media Summit
Guest Post by Maria Giese On March 31, 2017, 114 women gathered in Provincetown, Massachusetts for the inaugural Women’s Media Summit, a three-day think-tank forum designed to solve gender...
Cannes 2017: Women-Directed Films We’re Tracking for This Year’s Festival
“The Beguiled” While many other high-profile festivals have made strides towards closing the gender gap in their programming, Cannes is infamous for lagging behind the times. Last year, just...
Guest Post: What Inspired Me to Make a Film About Retirees
Guest Post by Rosemary Rodriguez There’s an abundance of turmoil, fear, anger, and hatred expressed through images that come at us 24/7 through social media, TV, and movies. As a society, we are...
Guest Post: How One Non-Profit Changed The Game For Parents At SXSW
Guest Post By Christy Lamb and Mathilde Dratwa INT. BEDROOM — VERY EARLY MORNING Actress and director Foster Wilson has just found out that a film she worked on, “The Archer,” will be...
Guest Post: Supporting Women’s Voices in Independent Film
Guest Post by Jere Rae-Mansfield As a distributor of independent feature films for over 30 years, I have enjoyed watching women unite and rise to prominence in the film industry. Not only the titans...
What Happened to the Women Directors in Hollywood? Part 5: 2000–2017
Mira Nair and Ava DuVernay: Wikimedia Commons/IndiaFM/Bollywoodhungama/usbotschaftberlin by Carrie Rickey This five-part Truthdig series by Carrie Rickey is published in partnership with Women and...
What Happened to the Women Directors in Hollywood? Part 4: 1984–1999
by Carrie Rickey This five-part Truthdig series by Carrie Rickey is published in partnership with Women and Hollywood. The series considers the historic accomplishments of women behind the camera,...
Guest Post: When a Woman Called the Shots at the Screen Writers Guild
Guest Post by J.E. Smyth Current debates in the media about women’s employment, representation, and visibility in Hollywood focus — perhaps predictably — on stars’ pay and the...
What Happened to the Women Directors in Hollywood?
What Happened to the Women Directors in Hollywood? Part 3: A New Generation of Women Behind the Camera, 1966–1983 by Carrie Rickey This five-part Truthdig series by Carrie Rickey is published in...
Guest Post: Candice Thompson on Frizzy Hair, Big Lips, and Navigating a Career in Comedy as a…
Guest Post: Candice Thompson on Frizzy Hair, Big Lips, and Navigating a Career in Comedy as a Biracial Woman Guest Post by Candice Thompson Three things happened when I was eight years old. I...
Guest Post: Five Tips to Break into a Career in Music Supervision
Guest Post by Laura Katz When I was a child, I met a woman sitting in a wheelchair in a hospital elevator with a nurse. The woman thought I looked a little sad (and I was, because I was a child...
We Are on Strike: A Day Without A Woman
Women and Hollywood is a woman-owned business. It is an initiative that supports women. Today we will be striking in solidarity with our sisters across the country and the world. We will not be...
What Happened to the Women Directors in Hollywood?
What Happened to the Women Directors in Hollywood? Part 2: The First Females to Crack the Directors Guild by Carrie Rickey This five-part Truthdig series by Carrie Rickey is published in...
Highlights from Oscar Weekend 2017: Viola Davis, Maren Ade, and More
Now that we’ve caught our breath, we can all agree that the 2017 Oscars are going to go down in history. Wow. And yikes. We’re thrilled with “Moonlight’s” well-deserved win, but are...
What Happened to the Women Directors in Hollywood? Part 1: The Founding Mothers of Film
Print advertisement for Lois Weber’s “Too Wise Wives”: The Duluth Herald (Aug. 1921)/Wikimedia Commons by Carrie Rickey This five-part Truthdig series by Carrie Rickey is published in...
Cross-Post: Why Melissa McCarthy Is a Better Return on Investment Than Tom Cruise
Melissa McCarthy in “Spy” The following has been reposted from Wealthsimple with permission of the author. What are the economics of being a woman in Hollywood? We dug into the data and found...
Guest Post: The Production Designer Gender Gap
Guest Post by Molly Hughes The Land of Oz. Wayne Manor. The Overlook Hotel. The Bates Motel. Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. These iconic sets have imprinted themselves on our...
Major Studios in Settlement Talks with EEOC for Systemically Discriminating Against Women Directors
Shit is about to hit the fan, and we couldn’t be any happier about it. Hollywood may finally be held accountable for their sexist treatment of female filmmakers. The Equal Employment Opportunity...
Guest Post: The Case for Gender-Balanced Crews
Guest Post by Tema L. Staig I run Women In Media, a networking group for above and below the line women — and the men who love making movies with them. We host regular networking events and...
Guest Post: How a Radical Idea from 1994 Finds Itself Right on Time in 2017
Guest Post by Audrey Evans They say timing is everything, but I never dreamed the timing of my lesbian sci-fi dramedy “Genesis: The Future of Mankind is Women” could be so dead-on and accurate...
Guest Post: Hollywood’s Changing Attitudes Towards Latina Actresses
Guest Post by Marlene Forte Not sure when I became the old broad on set, but here I am, in 2017, recurring on four TV shows as the mama to female leads who all happen to be Latinas! Twenty-five...
Guest Post: Striving for Inclusivity as a Producer One Choice at a Time
Guest Post by Jennica Schwartzman The theater goes black. I’m watching the credits at the end of my latest film. It’s a private debut screening, and my first time watching “Parker’s...
César Nominations Recognize Existence of Women Directors
Nominations for the 2017 César Awards, France’s national film awards, have been announced. The Césars are considered France’s equivalent to the Oscars. This Academy actually recognized the...
Guest Post: What I Learned from Documenting the Aftermath of Sandy Hook
Guest Post by Kim A. Snyder Chronicling the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was without a doubt the most daunting endeavor I’ve ever undertaken in my twenty years as a...
Guest Post: Capturing History As It Happens in the Obama White House
Guest Post by Amy Entelis Shortly after Election Day 2016, CNN began filming inside the Obama White House to tell a story we thought had never previously been told: What is it like to work for the...
Why the Abortion Story Line on “Degrassi: Next Class” is So Groundbreaking
Guest post by Kelly Martinez “Yesterday, I was pregnant and now I’m not. And I’d like to talk about it. There’s so many things I wanna do in high school and being a mom is not one of them....
2016 Marks Record-Breaking Year at the Box Office, But Where Are the Women Directors?
2016 was a history-making year at the North American box office. Variety reports that ticket sales last year amounted to $11.4 billion — a new record for the industry, surpassing 2015’s...
Women Made Up 23% of the Protagonists in 2016’s Top 250 Grossing Films
Female-led films scored the top two spots at the domestic box office in 2016. A blue tang fish and a heroic rebel proved to be the most lucrative characters of the year. “Finding Dory,” whose...
How I Went from Assistant to On-Set Writer-Producer in a Year and Rocked It
Jennifer Coté on location in Muskoka Lakes, Ontario, during filming of USA Network’s “Eyewitness.” Guest Post by Jennifer Coté Juxtaposing snapshots of my life from one year ago with where I...
The Best Documentaries By and About Women in 2016
“13th” So many standout documentaries by and about women have been released this year. The films that follow are just some of our many favorites. These award-winning docs explore political...
Women-Directed Films in the Running for Best Picture at the Oscars
Oscar nominations won’t be announced until January 24, but we’re one step closer to knowing which films may score nods. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released a list of...
The Best-Reviewed Women-Directed Films of 2016 According to Rotten Tomatoes
As 2016 winds down, critics associations and outlets are furiously compiling “Best of” lists. This was a really strong year for cinema — so strong, that a record-breaking amount of...
The Best Women-Centric Films of 2016
“Arrival” We’re huge fans of many female-led films this year, and were especially pleased to see some real-life heroines have their stories depicted on the big screen. The women behind...
2016’s Need for Female Film Critics
“Lemonade” by Kiva Reardon, cross post from TIFF Here are the positions people assume I hold when I meet them at film festivals: personal assistant, girlfriend, publicist. Sometimes, if I’m...
The Most Feminist Moments and Exciting Developments of 2016
Viola Davis in “How to Get Away with Murder” In many ways, 2016 was a terrible year, and with President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence en route to the White House, the...
The Best Women-Directed Films of 2016: “American Honey,” “The Fits,” & More
“American Honey” Women directors may not have made a major impact at the box office this year, but they absolutely helmed some of the year’s finest films. With subjects as varied as a traveling...
Male Privilege Strikes Again: Director with Zero Screen Experience Lands “Cruella”
If it’s a day that ends in Y, it must be a day where a male director has gotten a job he’s not qualified for. As THR reports, first-time film director Alex Timbers is in negotiations to direct...
Why Isn’t Casey Affleck Being Asked About Sexual Harassment Accusations?
Casey Affleck in “Manchester by the Sea” The Golden Globe nominations were announced yesterday and just as expected, Casey Affleck scored a nod for his role in “Manchester by the Sea.”...
Emmy Rossum Demands Equal Pay on “Shameless”
Emmy Rossum wants a well-deserved raise. The “Shameless” star “is locked in a pay standoff that is holding up a possible eighth season of the popular Showtime dramedy,” The Hollywood...
Help Us Roast the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards
Guest Post By Megan Riakos On December 7, Australian organization WIFT (Women in Film) NSW staged a protest where members dressed as sausages stormed the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television...
Independent Spirit Award Nominations: “American Honey” Dominates
The nominees for the 32nd annual Independent Spirit Awards have been announced. Taking a look at the nominees, it’s seems that the indie world is feeling appreciative of female-driven and directed...