BY Women and Hollywood
Berlinale Women Directors: Meet Anja Marquardt
Writer-director Anja Marquardt was born and raised in Berlin when the city was still divided in two. Her personal and national background have strongly shaped her artistic interests. “Having felt...
Athena Film Fest Starts February 6th
Please join the Women and Hollywood team this weekend at the fourth annual Athena Film Festival, a celebration of female leadership in film. Taking place over four days at Barnard College in New...
The Pretty One Director Jenee LaMarque on Her Twin Obsession and Her Inspiration to Make Her Debut Feature
Being a sister is hard, but being the sister of your dead twin is way harder. That’s the sad predicament socially awkward Laurel (Zoe Kazan) finds herself in, but she’s so fed up with being...
The Big O: What’s at Stake for Cate in the Woody Debate?
[Editor’s Note: The opinions in this piece belong solely to the author, a columnist hired to assess the Oscar race from the female perspective. Women and Hollywood also published a piece earlier...
New Fellowship for Women Playwrights Announced
New York City’s Drama League and Broadway director Michael Mayer have announced the creation of the Beatrice Terry Fellowship. The fellowship will support the development of an original work from...
Julie Delpy to Direct a Sixth Feature
Julie Delpy has announced plans to write and direct her sixth film, A Dazzling Display of Splendor. Variety reports that the film is set during “the early days of silent films and the automobile...
Trailer Watch: Divergent Finally Looks Amazing
Divergent, out March 21, doesn’t seem to be garnering as much interest or as excitement as it should. The film adaptation of the first installment of Veronica Roth’s best-selling YA trilogy is...
Vanity Fair’s Diverse 2014 Hollywood Issue: FINALLY
Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood Issue has always been a reliable barometer of the stardom industry’s fickle moods. In previous years, the magazine has reflected Hollywood’s preoccupations with...
Bryan Singer Blames Women for the Failure of Superman Returns
Bryan Singer is nobody’s favorite director. His last film, the fatally milquetoast Jack the Giant Slayer, was made for $195 million and earned just $65 million at the domestic box office. (Half of...
Nancy Buirski’s Afternoon of a Faun Explores a Dance Legend
Photographer-turned-film festival founder- turned-director Nancy Buirski’s first film was the documentary The Loving Story, a look at the 1967 Supreme Court case that made interracial marriage...
Sundance Sale: Sony Classics Nabs Maya Forbes’ Infinitely Polar Bear
After debuting at Sundance to great reviews, Maya Forbes’ feature debut, Infinitely Polar Bear, has been bought by Sony Picture Classics. Starring Mark Ruffalo and Zoe Saldana, the heart-tugging...
Sarah Polley, Breaking Bad’s Gennifer Hutchison Win Big at WGA Awards
Stories We Tell and Breaking Bad were feted as the 2014 Writers Guild favorites this weekend. After being mysteriously snubbed by the Academy this year, Sarah Polley’s family documentary Stories...
Frozen Wins Best Picture at Annie Awards
For the second time since the Annie Awards’ Best Animated Feature prize was established in 1992, a woman-directed film has received the top honor. The Annie Awards are the Oscars of the animation...
No Women Nominees in Top Categories for France’s Cesar Awards
Best Film. Best Director. Best Foreign (Language) Film. These are the categories where women filmmakers have been completely shut out by Oscar and Cesar this year. France’s answer to the Academy...
Kristin Scott Thomas Quits Film
After racking up nearly 80 credits to her name, Kristin Scott Thomas has declared she’s tired of making movies. “I just suddenly thought, I cannot cope with another film,” she told The...
I Believe Dylan Farrow
There are a few fundamental beliefs that I hold, and one of them is that I believe women. We live in a world that does everything to protect the powerful, and when the powerless speak up, against...
Study: Female Movie Stars’ Paychecks Decrease Rapidly After Age 34
On the hit show New Girl, Zooey Deschanel’s character Jess is finally embarking on responsible adulthood. In real life, though, the perpetually youthful Deschanel apparently stands at the...
Weekly Update for January 31: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Somewhere Slow “Overt femininity is sometimes just a wall to keep outsiders from peering in,” I wrote in my Los Angeles Times review. “That’s certainly the case...
SXSW Festival Lineup Features 20 Features from Women Directors
Of the 115 features that will play at the South by Southwest Festival in March 7–15, women filmmakers will be represented in 20, or about 17%, of them. Two of the eight films competing for the...
TV: Why Parenthood Is One of Television’s Best Shows About Marriage
As television’s revival hasreinvigorated the water-cooler discussion, many of the moments viewers have to talk about with someone have come fromcable. Hannah Horvath spends a sexy weekend with a...
The Monuments Men Erases Women from History
On Wednesday, the New York Times published a necessary correction to the upcoming movie The Monuments Men, a goofy historical caper about a team of actual art scholars and curators whose Sisyphean...
Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks Reunite — as Director and Producer
Few actresses are the target of as many comeback rumors as Meg Ryan. After 2003’s In the Cut, the Jane Campion thriller she had hoped would be her reinvention, Ryan disappeared into quickly...
Women and Hollywood February 2014 Film Preview
There’s only a smattering of films directed, written, and about women on offer this upcoming month, but there’s a few gems in the mix, as well as a great deal of variety in quality and...
TV: Tea Leoni Cast as Star of Madam Secretary
Earlier this week, we reported that Homeland writer Barbara Hall was developing a political drama for CBS called Madam Secretary that would center on an “maverick” Secretary of State. The...
TV: Ellen DeGeneres’ Lesbian Sitcom, Nahnatchka Khan’s Asian Am Series, & More Pilot News
Good news continues to trickle in about the networks’ fall pilot season. In addition to new shows from Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Casey Wilson and June Raphael, we can now look forward to four...
Trailer Watch: The Fault in Our Stars
Is there a way to tell a romance involving a teenage cancer patient that isn’t cheesy, exploitative, or politically regressive? Author John Green certainly tried to find a way with his...
The Big O: Which of the 3 Best-Picture Frontrunners Is Female-Friendliest?
Hear that “ouch”? It’s the sound of frustrated pundits pulling their hair as they attempt to divine the outcome of the Oscars’ best-picture race this year. Those of us who put our reps on...
Watch the Sundance Spotlight on Women Directors Panel
Indiewire’s Thompson on Hollywood founder, Anne Thompson moderated a women’s director panel at Sundance, and a video of the discussion was released earlier this week by SundanceNOW’s Doc Club....
Stephanie Soechtig’s Sundance Doc Fed Up Sold
Tracy Droz Tragos and Andrew Droz Palermo’s Rich Hill was the nonfiction jury favorite at this year’s Sundance, but the documentary that’s arguably received the most Park City attention is...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Kate Barker-Froyland
Kate Barker-Froyland is the writer and director of Song One, her first feature film. Her short film “Match” screened at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art’s New Directors/New...
TV: Margaret Cho Joins Tina Fey’s Women’s College Comedy
Tina Fey’s 30 Rock has only been off the air for a year, but it feels like a lot longer. TV has never been better, and yet nothing’s been able to replace the Lemon-sized hole 30 Rock’s...
Elizabeth Banks to Direct Pitch Perfect 2
Two weeks ago, we applauded Elizabeth Banks, Lead Comedic Actress. Now we celebrate Elizabeth Banks, Feature Filmmaker. The Hollywood Reporter revealed yesterday that Banks will make her...
TV: More Female Politicos to Run the Small Screen
Call it the Scandal effect. Or the Homeland effect. Or the Veep effect. Or the Parks and Recreation effect. There’s no denying that “women leaders in government” is a TV trend right now....
Donna Langley Becomes Second Most Powerful Woman in Hollywood
On Sunday, The New York Times published a great profile of Donna Langley, the Chairwoman of Universal Pictures. The article coincided with the announcement that Langley’s contract at NBCUniversal...
Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In to Become Movie
Three or four times a year (if that much), Hollywood seems to remember that women exist. Thus we get the occasional film that caters to female filmgoers, nearly always starring white actresses: the...
DC Theaters to Launch Festival Showcasing Women Playwrights
The New York Times reports that 44 theater companies in Washington, DC, have joined forces to launch the Women’s Voices Theater Festival. The inaugural event will take place over eight weeks...
Women Win Nearly a Third of Sundance Awards
The 2014 Sundance Film Festival came to a close yesterday, culminating in a two-hour awards ceremony hosted by Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally. Women directors, editors, cinematographers, and...
Shonda Rhimes “Honored” and “Pissed Off” at DGA Awards
Nary a week goes by at Women and Hollywood when we don’t devote a post to Shonda Rhimes. That’s because the Scandal showrunner is one of the few industry insiders with the courage and the...
Trailer Watch: Angelina Jolie in New Maleficent Spot
“There is evil in this world. Hatred. Revenge,” Maleficent declares in the new Maleficent trailer. Then she giggles — not girlishly or coquettishly, but with ironic bemusement, like...
Monday Morning Pick You Up: Carole King and Sara Bareilles Duet at the Grammys
To help get your work week off on the right foot, check out this inspirational performance from rock music legend (and recipient of the 2014 Music Cares honor) Carole King and the amazingly talented...
Hollywood Feminists Fire Back at Mike Huckabee’s “Gender Victim” Comments
Who the hell knows what Mike Huckabee meant when he claimed that Republicans want to “empower [women] to be something other than victims of their gender” at a Republican National Committee...
Lexi Alexander To Appear at Athena Film Festival to Talk About “That Blog Post”
For those of you who follow this issue and who read Women and Hollywood, a blog post from director Lexi Alexander caused a viral sensation last week. Her post An Oscar-Nominated Director Gets Real...
Weekly Update for January 24: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Run and Jump — Directed by Steph Green and Written by Ailbhe Keogan Oscar-nominated director Steph Green’s feature debut is the first great film of 2014....
Interview: Run and Jump Director Steph Green on Families in Flux and Discovering Will Forte’s Dramatic Side
The January doldrums are over. The first great movie of 2014 has arrived: Oscar-nominated director Steph Green’s Run and Jump, her feature debut. Run and Jump centers on an Irish woman named...
TV: The Staying Power of Veronica Mars
In the past year, Veronica Mars, Rob Thomas’ procedural about a high-school girl (Kristen Bell) who became a private investigator, has been back in the news cycle repeatedly. That’s not...
Producer Alix Madigan’s Sundance Keynote: Instability of Indie Film is Worth the Risk
Alix Madigan has produced some great (female-centric) films: the Anna Faris stoner vehicle Smiley Face, Debra Granik’s Jennifer Lawrence-launcher Winter’s Bone, and Lynn Shelton’s new comedy...
Slamdance Women Directors: Meet Nailah Jefferson
Born and raised in New Orleans, Nailah Jefferson created the production company Perspective Pictures in March 2010 to tell stories that shed light on little known issues. A month later, the BP oil...
Sundance Woman Directors: Meet Tracy Droz Tragos
Tracy Droz Tragos won an Emmy Award for her first documentary, Be Good, Smile Pretty, which aired on PBS’s Independent Lens and chronicled her journey to know her father, who was killed in...
Five More Women-Directed Films Sold at Sundance
Some deals for women directors coming out of Sundance. Sony Pictures Classics is the new home of Martha Stephens and Aaron Katz’s Land Ho! In her interview with Women and Hollywood, Stephens...
Disney Helps More Girls See Themselves Onscreen with Multilingual “Let It Go” Video
There’s a small but crucial scene in Frozen that’s merits some discussion. It occurs early in the film during Anna’s song “For the First Time in Forever,” when she imagines she might meet...
Mark Ruffalo Defends Abortion on Roe v. Wade Anniversary
In commemoration of yesterday’s 41st anniversary of the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion across the United States, Mark Ruffalo has released a video with the Center for Reproductive...