BY Women and Hollywood
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Vivian Qu
Vivian Qu was born in China. She has produced the features Night Train (07), Knitting (08), which screened at the Festival, and Longing for the Rain (13). Trap Street (13) is her directorial...
J.K. Rowling to Write Harry Potter Inspired Film Series
J.K. Rowling has teamed up with Warner Bros. to write a film series inspired by Rowling’s Harry Potter series. This will be her screenwriting debut. She will be adapting Fantastic Beasts and...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Alanis Obomsawin
Alanis Obomsawin was born in New Hampshire and was raised near the Odanak Reserve at Trois-Rivieres, Quebec. She has produced over thirty documentaries on Aboriginal rights issues for the...
TIFF 13 Departure Thoughts
As I get ready to make my departure from Toronto after a whirlwind week there are a couple of things to mention as the festival winds down. First, even though there were a great many women directed...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Iram Haq
Iram Haq studied art direction at Westerdals School of Communication in Oslo. She has acted in the features Import-Export (05), Fallen Angels (08), and Tomme tonner (10). She wrote and directed...
Guest Post: The Pregnant Director
During the filming of my second feature film And While We Were Here, which hits theaters on September 13th, I was eight months pregnant with my second child. Despite my girth, my collapsed...
Women Make Up Over Half of the Nominees for the 2013 Man Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize, Britain’s most prestigious literary award, announced their shortlist earlier this week. Of the 6 nominated, 4 women and 2 men make up the list. Judges for the award have...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Dana Rotberg
Dana Rotberg was born in Mexico City and graduated from Mexico’s Centro de Capacitacion Cinematografica. She has won numerous awards for her films, including Best Documentary from the...
Trailer Watch: Second Trailer for August: Osage County
August: Osage County premiered at TIFF garnering a ton of Oscar buzz. The film, based on Tracy Lett’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, follows the Weston daughters (Julia Roberts, Juliette Lewis...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Lara Zizic
Lara Zizic received her master’s degree in filmmaking at Columbia University. She directed the short film The Isabel Fish (06) and co-directed the feature Mission Congo (13). ...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Allison Berg
Allison Berg was born in New York City. She received the Special Jury Award at SXSW for her debut feature documentary Witches in Exile (04). The Dog (13) is her latest film. The Dog is playing...
The Big O: Assessing the Actress Races Coming Out of Venice, Telluride and Toronto
Telluride and Venice are fini. Toronto wraps this weekend. Time for some serious girl talk about how the lead and supporting actress categories have somewhat shifted now that the festival Oscar...
Ellen Page in Talks to Star in Queen and Country
Ellen Page is in talks to star in Queen and Country based on the comic by Greg Rucka. Page would play Tara Chace, a British SOS operative, whose missions take her all over the world to protect the...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Dyana Gaye
Dyana Gaye is a Franco-Senegalese filmmaker who graduated with a master’s degree in film studies from the University of Paris 8. She directed the short films Une femme pour Souleymane...
Batwoman Writers Quit After DC Won’t Approve Lesbian Wedding
Even though Batwoman has proposed to long-time partner Maggie Sawyer twice, DC refused to allow the pair to finally marry in the comic in an upcoming issue. The writers behind Batwoman J.H. Williams...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Claire Blanchet
Claire Blanchet studied animation at Concordia University. She has co-directed Trash and No Star! (08) and The Wobble Incident (09). The End of Pinky (13) is her latest short film. The End...
Salon Pictures Announces Slate of Women Directed Films
Just months after they opened their doors for business, Salon Pictures has announced a slate of films including three features to be directed by women: Eva Sorhaug (90 Minutes) helms Lenny,...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Marion Vernoux
Marion Vernoux was born in Montreuil-sous-Bois, France. She wrote the screenplay for Bernard Schmitt’s Pacific Palisades (90). Her directorial credits include Personne ne m’aime...
Emma Watson to Star in Francesca Gregorini’s Your Voice in My Head
Emma Watson is set to star in Francesca Gregorini’s Your Voice in My Head adapted from Emma Forrest’s memoir of the same title. The film, adapted by Forrest, follows a young woman who is...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Gita Pullapilly
Gita Pullapilly was born in South Bend, Indiana. She studied finance at University of Notre Dame and journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School. She produced all of Aron...
TIFF Trailer Watch: Under the Skin – Starring Scarlett Johansson
Under the Skin, starring Scarlett Johansson, premiered last night at TIFF. The film follows an alien seductress who preys on men while drifting around Scotland. A24 acquired the U.S. rights to...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Sarah Spillane
Sarah Spillane has been writing and directing film and television for the past decade. Among her work is the documentary short The Apology (08) and the fiction short This Life (09). Around...
Chicken & Egg Pictures Appoints Jenni Wolfson as Executive Director
Chicken & Egg Pictures has recently appointed Jenni Wolfson as their first executive director. Wolfson joins Chicken & Egg from WITNESS, an international human rights video advocacy...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Anne Weil
Anne Weil has worked as an editor on such films as Seaside (02), Toi et moi (06), Actrices (07), and A Castle in Italy (12). She has directed the short film Une cuilleree pour papa (92) and...
Carol Burnett to Receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
On October 20th, Carol Burnett will receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, an award given to comedians and satirists who have had an “impact on American society in ways similar to...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Megan Griffiths
Megan Griffiths was born in Athens, Ohio and received her MFA in film from Ohio University. She has written and directed the short films Moving (08), and Eros (09), and the features First...
TIFF 13- Dispatch 1: Mid-Life Women in Crisis
Ed. Note: There are spoilers for some of the films reviewed. This is my third Toronto Film Festival and I am starting to understand how to manage it. It is an endurance test. You need...
Trailer Watch: Ass Backwards – Written by and Starring Casey Wilson and June Diane Raphael
Ass Backwards, written by and starring Casey Wilson and June Diane Raphael, premiered earlier this year at Sundance. The first trailer for the film shows Kate (Wilson) and Chloe (Raphael) who are...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Pirjo Honkasalo
Pirjo Honkasalo was born in Helsinki, Finland. She co-directed several features with Pekka Lehto, including Flame Top (80). Her documentary directorial credits include Mysterion (91),...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Beeban Kidron
Beeban Kidron was born in London. She studied at the National Film and Television School and co-founded the educational charity FILMCLUB. Her directing credits include the fiction features Used...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Judy Kibinge
Judy Kibinge was born in Nairobi and studied at Manchester Polytechnic. She is the founder of DOCUBOX, a documentary film fund for East Africa. She has directed the features Dangerous...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Liza Johnson
Liza Johnson holds a Masters in visual art from the University of California, San Diego and has had her artwork exhibited in such galleries as MoMA and the National Gallery of Art. Her...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Caroline Link
Caroline Link was born in Bad Nauheim, Germany. She studied at the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF). Her films include Beyond Silence (96), Punktchen und Anton (99), Nowhere in...
Women Make Small Incremental Gains Onscreen and Behind the Scenes
As the new TV season starts, we get the annual look Boxed In: Employment of Behind-the-Scenes and OnScreen Women in 2012-13 Prime-time Television from Dr. Martha Lauzen at San Diego...
Weekly Update for September 6: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Weekend Touchy Feely – Lynn Shelton Touchy Feely is about about a brother a sister, one who touches for a living and one who makes a point of...
Interview with Anne Fontaine – Director of Adore
Women and Hollywood got the chance to interview Anne Fontaine about her new film, Adore, which she directed. Adore hits theaters today. Women and Hollywood: You say in the press notes...
Trailer Watch: Gravity – Starring Sandra Bullock
As we previously reported, Alfonso Cuaron got flack from having a female lead in the upcoming Gravity. However with the great reviews of the film coming out of Venice and TIFF, it looks like those...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Leanne Pooley
Leanne Pooley was born and raised in Canada, and now lives in New Zealand. She has directed over twenty features, including the documentaries Haunting Douglas (03), The Promise (05), Try...
Angelina Jolie, Angela Lansbury to Receive Academy’s Governors Awards
Angelina Jolie and Angela Lansbury will be receiving awards at the Academy’s 5th Annual Governors Awards. Lansbury will receive an Honorary award. The Honorary Award is given to honor those...
SXSW Rerun: Interview with Hannah Fidell, Lindsay Burdge and Kim Sherman of A Teacher
Originally published on April 9. A Teacher is in theaters in New York and Los Angeles today and is available on VOD. A Teacher is a tense, unflinching piece of film that gets under your...
Trailer Watch: Second Trailer for Kimberly Peirce’s Carrie
The second trailer for Kimberly Peirce’s upcoming remake of the horror classic, Carrie, gives a larger glimpse at how Peirce will interpret the classic scenes from the original. Based on...
TIFF Women Directors and Producers: Meet Sabine Emiliani and Stephanie Levy
Sabine Emiliani’s documentary editing has garnered accolades from Sundance to Cannes to the Academy Awards. Ms. Emiliani’s 2006 Oscar-winning documentary, March of the Penguins...
Sundance Rerun: Interview with Lynn Shelton – Director of Touchy Feely
Originally published on on February 5. Touchy Feely is open in limited release today. It is also available on VOD. I had never met Lynn Shelton before last month but I already felt like I knew...
Pondering Roseanne On Its 25th Anniversary
As we stare down the beginning of another grim new crop of fall television shows, the prospects this year seem even worse in part because of a looming anniversary: twenty-five years ago this...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Lisa Langseth
Lisa Langseth was born in Stockholm, Sweden and studied at the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts. She is a playwright and director of theatre. Her film directing credits include the short...
September Film Preview
As we head out of a strong August for women directed and centric films, we go straight into a September filled with varied and interesting projects from new and veteran women filmmakers. Films this...
Guest Post: Filming the Unimaginable
I remember feeling scared of entering the room Neil was in, of approaching him. Maybe part of this was fear of seeing his suffering, but it was also disquiet about the ethics of filming...
Variety Announces Recipients of 5th Annual Power of Women
Variety has announced the group of women they will be honoring at their 5th annual Power of Women event, which celebrates leaders in the industry and their philanthropic work. This year the...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Agnieszka Holland
Agnieszka Holland was born in Warsaw, Poland. Her first feature film, Provincial Actors (79), won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes. Her last film, In Darkness, was nominated for an Academy Award for...
Trailer Watch: Palo Alto – Directed by Gia Coppola
There’s another Coppola getting into directing. Gia Coppola’s feature debut (which she wrote and directed) Palo Alto, premiered at Telluride and will screen at Toronto the next...
Women in Film Announces 28th Annual Film Finishing Fund Recipients
Women in Film announced the winners of their 28th annual Film Finishing Fund. The Film Finishing Fund provides cash grants and in-kind production services to complete films that are by or about...