BY Women and Hollywood
‘Beyond the Lights’ Director Gina Prince-Bythewood on Being Inspired by Alicia Keyes and the Search for Her Birth Mother
Given the central role that overt sexuality plays in female pop and hip-hop stardom, I’m sure we’ve all wondered what the performers are thinking as they parade down the red carpet, on stage, or...
Is ‘State of Affairs’ Katherine Heigl’s Big Comeback?
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Abby Ginzberg — ‘Soft Vengeance’
Filmmaker Abby Ginzberg has been producing and directing award-winning documentary films for nearly three decades. Her most recent feature-length documentary, Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Mary Dore — ‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’
Mary Dore is an award-winning documentary producer who brings an activist perspective to her films. Dore grew up in Auburn, Maine, and began her career working with a Boston film collective that...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Geeta V. Patel — ‘Meet the Patels’
Geeta V. Patel is writer/director of the upcoming feature film Mouse. Patel made her directorial debut with the documentary war thriller Project Kashmir, which led to directing fellowships at...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Rachel Lears — ‘The Hand That Feeds’
RachelLears’ most recent feature documentary, TheHand That Feeds, co-directed with Robin Blotnick, won the audience awardfor best feature at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2014, Best of...
Trailer Watch: Shailene Woodley is a Bona Fide Action Heroine in ‘Insurgent’
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Wanda Sykes, Dawn Ostroff Among 2014 Women in Film and Television Awardees
For its 34th year, the New York Women in Film and Television’s Muse Awards will honor Maggie Gyllenhaal, Wanda Sykes, Conde Nast Entertainment president (and former CW head) Dawn Ostroff, and...
The Big O: Oscar Needs to Honor More Women With the “Write” Stuff
As the Academy Awards prepares for its 87th edition, a nagging fact continues to rear its gender-biased head: the astonishing fact that only four women have ever been nominated for Best Director and...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Natasha Verma — ‘Hardy’
Natasha Vermawas born in New York City and raised in South Texas. She is a 20-year oldtelevision journalist, producer, and filmmaker. Her work has been featured onABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox News. Verma...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Yuki Kokubo — ‘Kasamayaki’
Yuki Kokubo is a documentary filmmaker and photographer based in NewYork City. Raised in an artists’ community in rural Japan, Kokubo and her familyrelocated to New York City in 1986. She began...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Jessica Solce — ‘No Control’
Hollywood Feminist of the Day: Keira Knightley (Again)
In the past few months, Keira Knightley has proven herself a thoughtful and engaged actress by using her press tours for Lynn Shelton’s Laggies and the Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game to...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Sara Newens & Mina T. Son — ‘Top Spin’
Amazon Announces Only One Female-Created Series for Its Next Pilot Season
After getting on the TV map with Jill Soloway’s Transparent, Amazon’s nascent media empire remains a male-dominated enterprise. Six new scripted projects were announced for its next pilot...
Kristen Stewart, Kate Winslet, ‘Frozen’ Director Jennifer Lee Among Mentors for ‘Twilight’ Short Film Contest
As anyone with a glancing familiarity with Bella and Edward knows, the Twilight fandom is powerful, passionate, and legion. A new short film contest called “The Storytellers — New Voices of...
Nia Vardalos’ ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2’ Finds Studio Distribution
My Big Fat Greek Wedding is one of the biggest success stories to ever emerge from the independent film world, having grossed $368 million worldwide on a $5 million production budget (and a...
Lone Scherfig is First Woman Director to Deliver David Lean Lecture at BAFTA
To quote Geena Davis, “It’s ridiculous that we would have the first woman anything in the 21st century.” But here we are with another feminist milestone, albeit a small one: Lone Scherfig...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Pamela Yates — ‘Disruption’
Pamela Yates is the co-founder of Skylight Pictures, a company dedicated to making films and advanced digital media abouthuman rights and the quest for justice. Her previous film Granito: How to...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Ursula Liang — ‘9-Man’
Ursula Liang is a journalist who has worked in a wide range of media, including posts at ESPN The Magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The New York Times Op-Docs, and StirTV. She is the...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Linda Hoaglund — ‘The Wound and The Gift’
Linda Hoaglund was born in Japan as the daughter of American missionaryparents and raised in rural Japan, where she attended Japanese public schools.A graduate of Yale University, she subtitled 200...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Stephanie Wang-Breal — ‘Tough Love’
Stephanie Wang-Breal has been producing and directing commercials, television shows, anddocumentaries for the past 10 years. Tough Love is Wang-Breal’s second feature-length documentary. The film...
How Not to Do Gender or Racial Diversity: A Lesson from David Letterman
When David Letterman retires next year after 22 years on the air, one of the legacies he’ll leave behind is his contribution to the maintenance of late-night TV as one of the last bastions of...
Caitlin Moran’s Autobiographical Novel ‘How to Build a Girl’ Headed for Big Screen
How to Build a Girl, Caitlin Moran’s semi-autobiographical novel of a teenage girl’s self-invention from an impoverished nobody to a plucky and enterprising somebody, is getting the big-screen...
Trailer Watch: ‘Testament of Youth’ Witnesses World War I From Female Writer’s POV
DOC NYC Directors: Meet Andrea B. Scott — ‘Florence, Arizona’
Andrea B. Scott is a Brooklyn-based documentary filmmaker, editor, and writer. She was an editor and an associate producer on A Place at the Table, directed by Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush,...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Sarah Teale & Lisa F. Jackson — ‘Grazers: A Cooperative Story’
Sarah Teale hasproduced a number of films for HBO, including the recent four-part series TheWeight of the Nation, which was nominated for a Primetime Emmy; Dealing Dogs(Emmy-nominated for Best...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Victoria Campbell — ‘Monsieur Le Président’
I am a visual artist, performer, and filmmaker. My first film, House of Bones, is a personal memoir and meditation on family, past and present, and the way a house/space defines a person.The film...
Shonda Rhimes to Receive the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award
We hope Shonda Rhimes has a dozen fireplaces in her home, because the awards to place on her mantelpiece just keep coming. The latest is The Hollywood Reporter’s 2014 Sherry Lansing Award,...
‘Inside Amy Schumer’: Freeing the Pussy on Comedy Central
Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer is one of the most incisive and brutally honest feminist commentaries in mainstream media today. The skit “Compliments” (about the inability of women,...
Guest Post: Preserving the Excitement of 1990s’ Independent Filmmaking
From 1991–2002, I wrote regularly about American independentand foreign films for Tower Records’ Pulse! magazine. I did interviews with filmmakers when their movies were releasedtheatrically and...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Brenda Goodman — ‘Sex(Ed)’
Weekly Update for November 7: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Actress (Docudrama) Brandy Burre had a recurring role on HBO’s The Wire when she gave up her career to start a family. When she decides to reclaim her life as an actor,...
Trailer Watch: ‘Girls’ Season 4: “Taking the Next Step in a Series of Random Steps”
The Season 3 finale of Girls marked the biggest shakeup in the show’s history: Hannah (Lena Dunham) is off to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Adam (Adam Driver) is about to make his Broadway debut,...
‘First Wives Club’ Musical Assembles Tony-Winning Cast
Faith Prince (A Catered Affair), Christine Sherrill (Mamma Mia), and Carmen Cusack (Wicked) have been announced as the women getting vengeance on their cheating ex-husbands in the new musical...
ABC to Air Modern-Day ‘Little Women’ Miniseries Starring Natascha McElhone
Twenty years after the big-screen adaptation starring Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, and Kirsten Dunst, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women will be translated for the screen again, this...
Trailer Watch: Martin Luther King, Jr. is a Man, Not a Monument, in Ava DuVernay’s ‘Selma’
“I always knew that MLK was badass, but he’s been homogenized to a speech and a statue,” said director Ava DuVernay at an Urbanworld Film Festival sneak-peek event for Selma a few months ago....
Cindy Chupack’s Directorial Debut to Star Allison Janney and Susan Sarandon
Cindy Chupack, the two-time Emmy-winning writer for Sex and the City and Modern Family, will make her feature directorial debut with the mom com Whatever Makes You Happy. Susan Sarandon and Allison...
AFI Fest Women Directors: Meet Sarah Adina Smith — ‘The Midnight Swim’
‘The Mindy Project’ Finds Its Footing (By Occasionally Slipping)
Four Women-Directed Animated Features Land on Oscar Shortlist
Next year’s February 22 ceremony is still far away, but here’s one thing that’s already crystallized about the Oscars’ animation race: There are no female frontrunners this year (like most...
Women and Hollywood Launches Podcast
Women and Hollywood is joining the podcast universe. This is just another way for us to engage with a wider audience with our work and the terrific women who are a part of the entertainment...
Fox Announces Its Women Directors Initiative Fellows
Our sincerest congrats to the 20 accomplished female filmmakers who have been chosen to participate in the Fox Global Directors Initiative, a new multi-year program by the studio to develop the...
Hollywood Feminist of the Day: Eva Longoria
The ever-busy Eva Longoria used the stage at a Web Summit conference in Dublin yesterday to speak out against sexism in the media and tech industries. “There is definitely under-representation of...
Trailer Watch: Final Spot for ‘Annie’ Highlights Quvenzhané Wallis and Jamie Foxx’s Comedic Chops
The Big O: Can Hilary Swank stake a third claim on an Oscar?
You can have your SAGs and Golden Globes. But the ultimate acting prize in the movie biz has been and remains an Oscar for a lead performance. And if owning one is impressive, having two on your...
Laura Dern Creates Comedy About Obsessive Female Football Fans, Will Team With Judd Apatow to Produce it
It was bad enough when HBO canceled Enlightened, one of TV’s most brilliant series in the past decade. But it’s been hell seeing Laura Dern on the big screen since, stuck in unchallenging,...
Guest Post: Finding the Perfect Animal Doc Subject As She’s Being “Arrested” on the Golden Gate Bridge
Ilike to film relationships, especially those between urban people and wildanimals. Pelicans have intrigued me since I was a child — they remind me offlying dinosaurs: so graceful in the air,...
EXCLUSIVE: ShortsHD Celebrates Women Filmmakers with ‘100 Films By Her’ Month
ShortsHD, a high-definition cable network dedicated to short movies, will celebrate women directors this month with a 100 Films By Her special. Programming will consist of works from established and...
Crosspost: Broadway Actress Erin Davie on Being Called “Weird” and Avoiding the Typical Ingenue Roles
Crossposted from The Interval with permission of the author. We took Erin Davie to Coney Island to talk to her about starring in the Broadway revival of Side Show, and it was an adventure. There...
Trailer Watch: Niki Caro’s ‘McFarland, USA’: “There Ain’t Nothing ‘American Dream’ About This Place”
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