BY Women and Hollywood
The World Doesn’t See Lydia Diamond As a Female Playwright
The dearth of women in the theater world is well documented. While the three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama this year were all women, not a single female playwright appeared on the Tony...
Eva Longoria Producing Drama About Latino Texas Politician Brothers
Since the end of Desperate Housewives, Eva Longoria has reinvented herself as a producer, especially of projects with Latino leads. Longoria’s biggest producing hit is Lifetime’s...
Geena Davis Institute New Research Shows That Girls and Women Are Missing Onscreen and Behind the Scenes Worldwide
From my latest Forbes post on the Geena Davis Institute’s new findings on the state of film worldwide: Girls and women are missing. There are 2.24 male characters for every female character. Only...
Supergirl Coming to TV
Superheroes haven’t just taken over the multiplex, but the Huluplex too. Debuting this fall are Fox’s Gotham and NBC’s Constantine, which will join CW’s The Flash (in its first season) and...
Watch: Emma Watson Explains Why Feminism is the Opposite of Man-Hating in UN Speech
It’s no secret that the word “feminism” has a PR problem. Just this spring, Shailene Woodley echoed the (misinformed) sentiments of a lot of girls and women when she declared that she wasn’t...
Angelina Jolie Announces Her Fourth Directing Project
Three months ahead of the release of Unbroken, her second film as director, Angelina Jolie has signaled that she’s serious about her mid-career turn as a filmmaker by announcing her fourth...
Trailer Exclusive: Vessel Directed by Diana Whitten
One of the fundamental tenets that I hold true is that women’s rights are human rights, and included in those rights is the right to a safe and legal abortion should a woman want or need one. When...
Liz Heldens to Write New Show from Carol Mendelsohn
Few industries have been as utterly transformed in the past decade like those of journalism and the media. Former CSI showrunner Carol Mendelsohn is spinning that anxiety about the changing job...
Alessandra Stanley or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Marginalize Black Women
I thought about whether or not I wanted to dignify the verbal sludge that is Alessandra Stanley’s article about How To Get Away With Murder (and Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal) showrunner Shonda...
Weekly Update for September 19: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Tracks Based on a true story, Tracks is the first film (Wild will be the second) to come out this fall about a woman who takes a solitary journey for reflection and...
Barbra Streisand is About to Make History: Six Decades of Being #1
Barbra Streisand is about to make history. In all likelihood, her new album, Partners, will debut at №1 on the Billboard 200 chart next week. What is remarkable about this achievement is that, if...
Trailer Watch: Amy Adams Fights for Artistic Recognition in ‘Big Eyes’
The trailer has finally arrived for Tim Burton’s Big Eyes, starring Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz as Margaret and Walter Keane, the couple behind the paintings, postcards, and prints of big-eyed...
Toronto Deals: Anne Fontaine’s ‘Gemma Bovery’ and Lone Scherfig’s ‘Riot Club’ Find US Distribution
Two women-directed films that played at the Toronto International Film Festival have found US distributors. TIFF 2014 was host to two films that rhymed with “Emma Bovary” — Sophie...
The Stagnation of Opportunities for Women on TV
From my latest Forbes post on how the progress for women writers and especially directors on the small screen has stalled: Women are stuck, and that is even more clearly illustrated in the data...
Guest Post: Why I Couldn’t Turn Down Starz’s Filmmaking Experiment ‘The Chair’
When I was offered the role of filmmaker/guinea pig on Chris Moore’s The Chair, a filmmaking experiment-turned-docu-series currently airing on Starz, it was a no brainer. The premise of The Chair...
Trailer Watch: ‘E-Team’ Profiles Human-Rights Investigators in Action
In places like Syria and Libya, where human-rights abuses were/are rampant, someone has to compile, analyze, and collect evidence of crimes against humanity in the midst of chaos to tell the world...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Mami Sunada — ‘The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness’
Mami Sunada was born in Tokyoand studied documentary filmmaking at Keio University. She broke into film by assisting director Hirokazu Kore-eda on StillWalking and Air Doll. She also wrote and...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Boo Ji-Young — ‘Cart’
Boo Ji-Young attended the Korean Academy of Film Arts. She directed the feature film Sisters on the Road (2009), as well as four shorts: Spark (1997), His Humming (2000), A Drop of Clear Salty...
Roz Chast, Jane Smiley, Marilynne Robinson Among National Book Award Nominees
Roz Chast, a cartoonist for the New Yorker, has become the first graphic memoirst to be nominated for the National Book Award. Unfortunately, her account of her elderly parents’ difficult few...
‘Madam Secretary’ is Her Own Woman
When early news of the CBS series Madam Secretary came out, word was the title role was a fictionalized version of Hillary Clinton. (Meanwhile, NBC was said to be developing a Hillary-centric...
Katie Couric and Stephanie Soechtig to Take on Gun Violence in New Doc
After tackling America’s obesity epidemic in the “sugar is the new tobacco” documentary Fed Up, Katie Couric and director Stephanie Soechtig are reteaming to take a hard look at another...
Alison Bechdel Wins MacArthur “Genius” Prize, Working on Third Graphic Memoir
Already a household name in feminist, queer, and film circles, Alison Bechdel was named one of the 21 recipients of this year’s MacArthur “Genius Grant.” Bechdel was in an Italian castle at...
Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer Riff on Cereal in New ‘Broad City’ Teaser
We would never have pegged Broad City’s Abbi and Ilana as morning people, so this first teaser for the second season of the loose, loopy Comedy Central show is a bit of a surprise. The NYC...
Lesley Arfin and Judd Apatow to Create Netflix Show for Gillian Jacobs
When Judd Apatow announced earlier this year that he was collaborating with Amy Schumer on a big-screen vehicle for the brassy Comedy Central star, we celebrated his mid-career shift into mentoring...
Leslie Bennetts to Write Joan Rivers Biography
In the days since her death, Joan Rivers has been publicly eulogized by friends and protégés like Kathy Bates, Louis C.K., and Howard Stern. Now the trailblazing comedienne is set to receive a...
Book Excerpt: How Nicole Holofcener Got Her Debut Feature, ‘Walking and Talking,’ Made
The following is an excerpt from independent film producer Ted Hope’s new book Hope for Film, which was published August 5, 2014. Nicole Holofcener alwaysmade it clear to me that she would not...
Fort Bliss Director Claudia Myers on Women in the Military and the Difficulties of Balancing Motherhood and Film
There are many films about the harrowing experiences of war, but not nearly enough about women soldiers — especially women with families. Returning home after serving her tour in Afghanistan...
Women Created Only 20% of TV Shows Last Season
The current narrative in the media zeitgeist is that TV is so much better for women than film. Well, it might seem so on the surface, because you see more women on our TV screens, but when you drill...
Hong Kong and Latvia Submit Films by Women Directors for Foreign-Language Oscar Consideration
Two works from female filmmakers have been chosen as their countries’ selections for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Hong Kong has submitted Ann Hui’s The Golden Era as its pick. The...
Katniss Everdeen Tries to Save the World in Mockingjay Part 1 Trailer
There’s no denying that I am excited for the Mockingjay film. After this past summer where we saw so few females onscreen, and so few in strong roles, I am psyched for the next installment of the...
DGA Women’s Steering Committee to Celebrate 35th Anniversary on September 20
Since its founding in 1979, the DGA’s Women’s Steering Committee has called attention to the limited opportunities female filmmakers faced — and continue to face — in the film...
Guest Post: ‘Srugim’ Brings Orthodox Jewish Women’s Feminist Struggles to the Small Screen
The Israeli series Srugim, which ran from 2008 to 2011, was a watershed moment for how women areportrayed on Israeli television. The show raised the bar particularly with its sympathetic depiction...
Katie Holmes and Stacy Title to Direct First and Fourth Feature, Respectively
Two women have signed on to helm new projects in the past week. Actress Katie Holmes made the surprise announcement that she’ll be heading behind the camera to make her directorial debut. Holmes...
Angela Kinsey to Co-Write and Star in Female Buddy Comedy
The truly challenging thing after a breakup isn’t staying friends with your ex. It’s making friends with your ex’s new lover. But what if it wasn’t so hard? That’s the premise that Angela...
Trailer Watch: Julianne Moore and Mia Wasikowska Grasp at the Hollywood Dream in ‘Maps to the Stars’
One of the buzziest films to come out of Cannes, Maps to the Stars, has released a trailer. David Cronenberg’s showbiz satire stars Julianne Moore (who won the best actress award at Cannes) as...
Caitlin Moran’s Autobiographical Sitcom Gets Season Order
Fans of Caitlin Moran, stories about sisters, economic diversity on TV, and humor in general now have cause to rejoice. Raised by Wolves, written by the author of the best-selling laugh-out-loud...
Trailer Watch: Dakota Fanning is a Rebellious Victorian Teen Bride in ‘Effie Gray’
The annulment of the marriage between prominent art critic John Ruskin and his much younger wife Effie Gray was a scandal in Victorian England, not least because Gray contended that their five-year...
Rose McGowan Brings Female Film Heroines to LA Theater
Actress Rose McGowan has big plans for the next stage of her career as a filmmaker. Her first step? An Oscar. Back in January, McGowan’s directorial debut, the 17-minute short Dawn, played at...
The Big O: Post-Toronto, the Oscar Picture Clears — and It Isn’t a Pretty One for Actresses
We were so spoiled. Last year, there was a rich variety of performances to celebrate in the lead-actress Oscar category. The choices were so abundant, in fact, that admirable efforts like Emma...
Infographic: Women Directed 10% of Independent Features Between 2009–2013
Earlier this summer, we published an infographic highlighting the awful truth that less than 5% of studio movies in the past five years were directed by women. Now we’ve taken a look at the...
Elisabeth Moss to Star in Broadway Revival of Wendy Wasserstein’s ‘Heidi Chronicles’
It’s hard to think of another actress with a better career than Elisabeth Moss does today. She was utterly fantastic in Jane Campion’s Sundance miniseries Top of the Lake, steals every scene...
Guest Post: Honeymoon, Bloody Unicorns and Spumoni
If you’ve been in an intimate relationship, you’ve had that moment — that awful moment — where the person you’ve been sharing your bed with suddenly seems like a stranger. It was...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Megha Ramaswamy — ‘Newborns’
MeghaRamaswamy is a Mumbai-based screenwriter and director. She wrote the screenplayfor the feature film Shaitan, and wroteand directed the fictional short Bunny. (TIFF official site) Her 8-minute...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Shahad Ameen — ‘Eye & Mermaid’
Shahad Ameen was born and raised in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Realizing at an early age that she could not make her dream of becoing a professional soccer player come true in Saudi Arabia, she turned to...
Weekly Update for September 12: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening No Good Deed — Written by Aimee Lagos Don’t let the bad press about the last-minute canceled critics’ screenings discourage you from No Good Deed, an effective...
Trailer Watch: Jennifer Lawrence is No Ordinary Wife in Susanne Bier’s ‘Serena’
Jennifer Lawrence gets a different type of role in the long awaited Serena, directed by the Oscar-winning Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier. The depression era film follows the strong-willed wife...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Carolina Markowicz and Fernanda Salloum — ‘Tatuapé Mahal Tower’
Carolina Markowicz is a director and screenwriter from São Paulo, Brazil. She has directed the short film 69-Luz Square, which won several awards in many festivals around the world, including Bst...
Hilary Swank to Receive Award from Hamptons Film Festival
Hilary Swank will be presented with Variety‘s Creative Impact in Acting Award at the Hamptons Film Festival (October 9–13) this fall. The two-time Oscar winner will also participate in a master...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Nanna Kristín Magnúsdóttir — ‘Playing with Balls’
Nanna Kristín Magnúsdóttir is an Icelandic actress,producer, and VFS (Vancouver Film School) graduate who has receivednumerous nominations and awards for her work both in Iceland...
Viola Davis is Still Waiting to Be Seen
Despite doing work that’s won her two Tony Awards, two Academy Award nominations, two Screen Actor Guild Awards, a Golden Globe nod, and a spot on Time’s 100 Most Influential People list,...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Sarah Galea-Davis — ‘An Apartment’
Sarah Galea-Davis is an award-winning director, writerand producer. She works in both fiction and documentary filmmaking. Her last short film, Can You Wave Bye-Bye?, won Best Short Film at the...