BY Women and Hollywood
The Big O: The Truth Behind Emma Thompson and Oscar Isaac’s Oscar Snubs? Lack of Tragedy
When this year’s Oscar nominations were announced, there were a few surprising omissions on the ballot, especially in the acting categories. You wouldthink, for instance, that the 6,000 or so...
TV: Rashida Jones Leaves Pawnee for Tribeca
When Parks and Recreation star Rashida Jones announced last year that she’d be leaving America’s most civic-minded sitcom, she had her choice of projects to choose from. Deadline reports that,...
Infographic: Women in Filmmaking at Sundance
Though the 2014 lineup at the Sundance was disappointingly low on women directors, the festival remains committed to advancing the ranks of women directors in the industry. Two years ago, Sundance...
Capturing Truth through Fiction in South Africa
The story of how I found my way to film is a funny one. I was living in Paris, and I had no money. I was working as a waitress and a babysitter, pretty much doing everything I could to feed myself....
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Sydney Freeland
Drunktown’s Finest is Sydney Freeland’s feature film debut and her response to a news story that characterized her hometown of Gallup, New Mexico, as “Drunktown, USA.” She has worked for a...
TV: Six More Makers Docs to Air on PBS This Summer
PBS will air six documentaries about women’s progress in the divergent fields of war, space, comedy, business, Hollywood, and politics starting in June. Oscar-nominated filmmakers Rachel Grady...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Geetu Mohandas
Geetu Mohandas is a filmmaker based in India. In 2009, along with her director/cinematographer husband Rajeev Ravi, she formed Unplugged, which produced her first short fiction film, “Kelkkunnundo...
Trailer Watch: Freida Mock’s Anita
“Once I got subpoena’d, I knew what I had to do. I’m gonna tell what happened to me.” Directed by Oscar nominee Freida Mock, Anita focuses on the Clarence Thomas hearings, particularly the...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Rose McGowan
Actress-turned-director Rose McGowan (Grindhouse, TV’s Charmed) was born in Italy and raised on a steady diet of pasta, European cinema, and classic films. Along with her cinephile father, she...
Sundance Women Producers: Meet Mel Eslyn
The One I Love producer Mel Eslyn began working on films and music videos in the Midwest in her teens, working her way up through the set hierarchies. Years later, she relocated to Seattle,...
Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child Sold at Sundance
Just a couple of days after it acquired Lynn Shelton’s Laggies, A24 (which has a good track record for releasing women directed films- last year they released Sally Potter and Sofia Coppola) has...
TV: Amy Poehler Signs Three-Year NBC Deal and Hires Natasha Lyonne for Comedy Pilot
Amy Poehler is flexing her producer’s muscles. We announced earlier this year that the Parks and Rec star was producing Broad City, a Comedy Central vehicle for comediennes Ilana Glazer and Abbi...
Sundance Women Producers: Meet Katie Stern
Listen Up Philip producer Katie Stern grew up in New York City. At a young age, she started making movies with her older brother, many of which have appeared on public access television. She has...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Madeleine Olnek
Madeleine Olnek is a writer and director who honed her skills in New York venues with more than 20 produced plays, all comedies. Her Sundance Film Festival shorts “Countertransference” (2009)...
Pic of the Day: Emma Thompson Continues Her Campaign Against Heels
It hasn’t been Emma Thompson’s year. Despite being feted by Meryl Streep early this awards season for her performance in Saving Mr. Banks, Thompson was snubbed for an Oscar nomination and has...
Sundance’s Women in Film Event Calls Out Hollywood Sexism, Awards $32k in Grants
There was apparently one running theme at the eighth Women in Film panel hosted by the Sundance Film Festival: entrenched industry sexism. Six women directors and producers, representing five...
No Meaningful Change Over Time in Female Filmmaker Participation at the Sundance Film Festival Among New Research Released Today at Sundance
This morning, Women in Film and the Sundance Institute released the next stage of research on female filmmakers. Last year they released an unprecedented first phase in the work that began the...
Lynn Shelton’s Laggies Sold at Sundance
Two days after its Friday premiere at Sundance, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that director Lynn Shelton’s arrested-development dramedy Laggies had been bought by A24 for approximately...
To Sue Or Not to Sue: What History Teaches Us About Equality in Hollywood
When the Director Guild of America’s Women’s Steering Committee was officiallyestablished in 1979, women comprised just 0.5% of episodic TV directoremployment. One half of one percent! According...
Sundance Women Producers: Meet Mynette Louie
Producer Mynette Louie has worked on the films Children of Invention, Cold Comes the Night, and California Solo. Louie is also the current president of Gamechanger Films, which funds women-directed...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Martha Stephens
Raised in the hills of Appalachian Kentucky, Land Ho! co-director Martha Stephens longed to create films celebrating and investigating her native land and people. A graduate of the North Carolina...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia
Web Junkie co-directors Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia came to work together on a documentary about Internet addiction out of a shared curiosity and anxiety about the effects that our technological...
Sundance Women Producers: Meet Galt Niederhoffer
Film producer, director, and novelist Galt Niederhoffer is a Sundance veteran, with eight Park City selections or award winners to her name. She is a producer on Maya Forbes’ Infinitely Polar...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Maya Forbes
Maya Forbes was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She moved to Los Angeles in 1990 to write for film and television. She began her career on HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show and has since...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Jennifer M. Kroot
To Be Takei documentarian Jennifer M. Kroot previously directed the documentary feature It Came from Kuchar, about the legendary underground filmmaking twins George and Mike Kuchar, which screened...
More Women Directors Announced for Berlinale
Sadly, not a whole lot of them. Of the 36 films screening at the Berlin International Film Festival’s Panorama event, “an overview of current international fictional-feature production,” only...
Weekly Update for January 17: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Band of Sisters (doc) — Written and Directed by Mary Fishman “I did exactly what the church asked me — and now, the church is looking at me like, where have...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Chelsea McMullan
Chelsea McMullan is a Canadian filmmaker and artist whose films have screened on the international festival circuit and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. McMullan is a member of...
Sundance Women Directors: Lynn Shelton on the Question that Shapes Her Work and the Beauty of Sundance
Laggies director Lynn Shelton is best known as the writer-director of the acclaimed comedy Your Sister’s Sister, starring Emily Blunt, which screened at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Her 2009...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Gillian Robespierre
Gillian Robespierre has written and directed several short films, including “Chunk” in 2006, which follows an overweight teen forced to attend fat camp, and “Obvious Child” in 2009. Her...
What Happened to the Women Directed Films from the Sundance Class of 2013?
The 2013Sundance Film Festival was notable for the number of women directors,particularly in the U.S. Dramatic and Documentary Competitions — where halfwere female filmmakers. As Sundance 2014...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Valerie Veatch
Love Child director Valerie Veatch made her directorial debut at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival with the hit Me @ The Zoo (co-directed by Chris Moukarbel). Her highly anticipated follow-up, Love...
Female Filmmakers Launch Middle Eastern Film Fund
Director Jessica Habie and journalist Deema Dabis have announced a new film fund in support of Middle Eastern cinema. The Fajr Falestine Film Fund is devoted to the “production of groundbreaking...
Trailer Watch: Walk of Shame
On TV’s 30 Rock, Elizabeth Banks was a revelation as Avery Jessup, a Megyn Kelly-like conservative news anchor. Now the movies are finally giving Banks a chance to prove her comedic chops after...
Women Directors Comprise 33% of Berlinale Forum
“There is no lack of female directors.” That’s one of the main take-aways from Oscar-nominated director Lexi Alexander’s recent post on the institutional sexism plaguing the movie industry....
The Big O: And the Oscars’ Winning (and Losing) Female Nominees Are…
And so it begins. The 86th Academy Award nominations did the hustle big time for American Hustle, with 10 nominations. From our female perspective, it’s terrific that both Amy Adams, with her...
The Good and the Bad Among the 2014 Oscar Nominees
2013 was an even-worse-than-usual year for non-acting women in Hollywood — only 6% of the 250 top-grossing films were directed by female filmmakers and just 10% written by female...
Four Women Directors Will Compete for 2014 Berlinale’s Golden Bear
Austrian Feo Aladag, Peruvian Claudia Llosa, Iranian-Austrian Sudabeh Mortezai, and Argentine Celina Murga will compete for the top prize at the 64th Berlin International Film...
Frozen: Let It Go… to Broadway!
Disney animated features don’t have the strongest track record on Broadway. While The Lion King remains a monster hit and the Beauty and the Beast stage production, which folded in 2007, boasts...
Women Comprise Majority of National Book Critics Circle Nominees
In the filmmaking world, fiction is dominated by men and nonfiction shared by both genders. Not so in literature. If the National Book Critics Circle is any indicator, the reverse is true. Women...
Female Directors and the Cannes Film Festival – 2014
Hollywood Feminist of the Day: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Thanks to Emma Thompson’s biggest fan Meryl Streep, we now know that the Saving Mr. Banks star cares about what she’s contributing to pop culture at large, both as an actress and a writer. In...
Interview: Callie Khouri on Female Likability and Nashville’s Upcoming Guest Stars
Nashville creator Callie Khouri first came into prominence as the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Thelma and Louise. She is also the director of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Mad Money....
Celluloid Ceiling Report: No Progress in 16 Years for Women in Hollywood
Every January for the past 16 years, people who care about women’s progress behind the scenes in the film industry have restlessly anticipated Dr. Martha Lauzen’s Celluloid Ceiling analysis of...
An Oscar-Nominated Director Gets Real About How Women Are Treated in Hollywood
The following is cross-posted from Lexi Alexander’s blog with permission from the author. Editor’s Note: The post below is very important. This is a woman director standing up for herself and...
Sarah Polley, Lucy Walker, Jehane Noujaim are DGA Doc Nominees
Jehane Noujaim’s The Square, Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell, and Lucy Walker’s The Crash Reel are three among the five nonfiction films to receive a Best Documentary nod from the Directors...
TV: Rashida Jones, Casey Wilson, and June Diane Raphael Sell Pilots to NBC
On the heels of Amy Poehler’s Best Actress win for Parks and Rec at the Golden Globes comes more Pawnee news. P&R co-star Rashida Jones, whose last episode on the show will air in February,...
NAACP Awards: 2013 Was a Good Year for Black Men in Hollywood, Abysmal for Black Women
2013 was a good year for black men in Hollywood. 12 Years a Slave, Lee Daniels’ The Butler, Fruitvale Station, and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom gave stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Forest Whitaker,...
Amma Asante, Rebecca Miller Announce New Projects
Great news: two female filmmakers have announced new projects. Buoyed by positive reviews of her upcoming film Belle, British director Amma Asante has signed on to direct the studio thriller...
Why Amy Poehler and Tina Fey Should Host the Golden Globes Forever
I really like the Golden Globes. I know the Oscar pundits don’t take it seriously as a predictor of what’s to come for the Golden Derby, but the rest of us who don’t think that way could care...
Women Directors Nominated in Nearly Every Narrative Category at DGA-TV Awards
Television is much kinder to women. The opportunities are greater, the stories richer, riskier, and more varied. TV isn’t a haven for women by any means, but they do get more chances to prove...