Awards
Authors Anne Tyler, Sara Waters, Ali Smith Make Baileys Women’s Prize Shortlist
Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Tyler and frequent Booker Prize finalists Sara Waters and Ali Smith are among the authors shortlisted for the 2015 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Tyler’s “A...
2015 Full Frame Doc Film Fest Announces Winners: Lyric R. Cabral, Alexandra Shiva, Phie Ambo
Female documentarians made up 8 of the 11 award winners at the 2015 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina. Betzabé Garcia’s “Kings of Nowhere” and Lyric R. Cabral...
Lily Tomlin’s ‘Grandma’ to Open LA Film Fest; Tomlin and Gale Anne Hurd to Receive LAFF Honors
Nicole Kidman, Ava DuVernay, Jill Soloway Among Women in Film’s 2015 Crystal + Lucy Awardees
Actresses Nicole Kidman and Kate Mara, writer-directors Ava DuVernay and Jill Soloway, Warner Bros. marketing chief Sue Kroll, and ICM partner Toni Howard have been named the honorees of this...
Angelina Jolie at Kids’ Choice Awards: “Different is Good”
In her first public appearance since penning an op-ed for the New York Times about her medical decision to remove her ovaries, Angelina Jolie revealed more of her struggles while accepting the award...
Elizabeth Banks Chosen as CinemaCon’s Breakthrough Filmmaker of the Year
Elizabeth Banks, who will make her feature directorial debut with “Pitch Perfect 2,” has been named CinemaCon’s Breakthrough Filmmaker of the Year. CinemaCon is the official convention for...
Ann Hui Wins Multiple Hong Kong Directors’ Guild Awards for ‘The Golden Era’
The Hong Kong Directors’ Guild named Ann Hui Best Director in an awards ceremony Thursday night for her war biopic “The Golden Era.” The picture also won the Best Film and Best Actress...
Amy Schumer to Receive CinemaCon’s Breakthrough Performer Award
Amy Schumer, star and screenwriter of “Trainwreck,” has been selected as CinemaCon’s Breakthrough Performer of the Year. Schumer is set to receive the award at Caesars Palace on April 23....
Novelist Louise Erdrich to be Honored by Library of Congress
Louise Erdrich will be awarded this year’s Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. The renowned author is perhaps best known for her novels “Love Medicine” and “The Round House,”...
Mia Hansen-Løve, Jasmila Žbanić Among Finalists for German Women’s Film Festival Competition
The International Women’s Film Festival in Dortmund/Cologne has announced the eight finalists vying for the €15,000 RWE Film Award. The filmmakers in competition — all women directors...
33% of Contenders for San Francisco Festival’s Golden Gate Awards Directed by Women
Six women-directed films — three narrative, three nonfiction — will compete for the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Golden Gate Awards this year. The total of 18 films...
Director Rose Troche Honored with the 2015 Outfest Fusion Achievement Award
Writer-director-producer Rose Troche was recognized with the 2015 Outfest Achievement Award at an event for the LGBT film festival on Saturday, March 14, at the Egyptian Theater. Troche’s...
2015 Longlist for Baileys Women’s Prize Includes Sarah Waters, Anne Tyler, Ali Smith
Sarah Waters’ “The Paying Guests,” Anne Tyler’s “A Spool of Blue Thread,” Ali Smith’s “How to be Both,” and Xiaolu Guo’s “I Am China” are among the twenty books longlisted...
Playwright Tena Stivicic Wins Blackburn Prize for Family Saga ‘3 Winters’
Tena Stivicic’s “3 Winters,” a family saga that traces the lives of women across four generations, has received this year’s Blackburn Prize. Set in Zagreb, Croatia, the play explores how...
A List of All of Women and Hollywood’s 2015 Oscars Coverage
The road to the 2015 Oscars was rocky indeed. While we were disappointed by the fact that white males accounted for the overwhelming majority of nominees — so much so that we commissioned a...
Suzan-Lori Parks’ Historical Play ‘Father Comes Home From the Wars’ Wins Kennedy Prize
Pulitzer-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks has received the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for her American epic “Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, & 3).” The Kennedy Prize, which...
Patricia Arquette Elaborates on Her Call for Equal Pay
We were thrilled to see this year’s Best Supporting Actress winner Patricia Arquette use her time at the podium to call for equal rights and equal pay for women. But Arquette’s call for change...
The Big O: The Cry for Equal Pay, the Need for Equal Screen Time, & the Death of the Mani-Cam
To quote Meryl Streep as she shouted from her primo Dolby Theatre seat in support of “Boyhood’s” newly minted Oscar winner Patricia Arquette after she turned her supporting-actress acceptance...
Arquette Calls for Equality, But ‘Ida’ and ‘Still Alice’ Are Oscars 2015’s Only Female-Centric Winners
http://video.vulture.com/video/Oscars-2015-Patricia-Arquette-s/player?layout=compact&read_more=1 DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: “Citizenfour” COSTUME DESIGN: “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Milena...
A Season of Oscar Discontent
From my latest Forbes post on this weekend’s dispiriting Oscars: “For the first time in my adult life, I really don’t care about the Oscars. I’ve been watching the Oscars for as long as I...
The Big O: When Actresses Are Given Their Just Rewards — And It Feels So Good
Ten screenwriting contenders, all men. Eight best-picture nominees, each revolving around male characters. Five directing slots, and no women allowed. Oscar, you have done the ladies wrong. It’s...
Watch: ‘Hey Academy, I’m a Woman’ Mocks Male-Dominated Oscars
A new video directed by Leslie Korein and written by Kim Kalish offers a comic takedown of this year’s Oscars. As the video’s description notes, of 26 individual Academy Award nominees for...
Oscar 2015 Spotlight: 6 Nominees You Should Know About
When this year’s Oscar nominees were announced, we noted that Academy voters had given us the whitest, malest, most deflating awards season in recent history. As an infographic from the Women’s...
Marielle Heller and Best Director Awardee Małgorzata Szumowska Among Berlinale 2015 Winners
Female filmmakers from around the globe were recognized for their work at the 2015 Berlinale, including Best Director co-winner Małgorzata Szumowska (“Body”), who tied with Radu Jude...
The Big O: Oscar-Nominated ‘Dragon 2’ Producer Arnold Aims to Make DreamWorks Soar Again
Bonnie Arnold has plenty of reasons to be animated of late. Not only was she named co-president of DreamWorks feature animation last month with fellow producer Mireille Soria, but the industry...
Women Directors Sweep TV Categories at the 2015 DGA Awards
Television once again proved that it’s a female-friendlier medium than film via the 2015 DGA Awards, where women directors took home the three major small-screen categories. Lesli Linka Glatter...
Guest Post: Should There Be a Best Female Director Category at the Oscars?
If wewant greater gender equality in Hollywood, should the Academy Awards still besplitting its acting awards along gender lines? This wasa question posed to me by a friend a few weeks ago as we...
The Big O: Look to the Past for Solutions to Hollywood’s Current Female Troubles
When did featuring a woman as the driving force in a movie become a liability instead of a strength? This question came to mind when the films in the running for the best-picture Oscar were revealed...
‘The Babadook’ Director Jennifer Kent Wins Best Film, Best Director at Australian Oscars
The Australian Academy Awards demonstrated a refreshing willingness to think outside genre boxes when it named the horror indie The Babadook this year’s Best Film and honored first-time...
The Big O: How Nora Grossman of ‘The Imitation Game’ Broke the Code of Becoming a Woman Producer
Of the top 250 movies that were released last year, women made up only 23% of the producers involved with those titles — down 1% from 1998 — according to the Center for the Study of...
SAG Award Winners: Viola Davis & Uzo Aduba Make History
While all 20 acting nominees competing for an Oscar thisyear are white — for the first time in nearly 20 years — twowomen of color made history at the SAG Awards last night for their...
The Big O: Ava DuVernay’s Sisterhood of Un-Nominated Women Directors — and How They’ve Fared Since
As the country celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this week, it was difficult not to think about what could have been when the nominations for the 87th Academy Awards were announced last...
Margaret Nagle to Receive WGA Award for ‘The Good Lie’ Script
Margaret Nagle (Boardwalk Empire, The Red Band Society) will receive the Writers Guild of America’s 2015 Paul Selvin Award for her The Good Lie screenplay. Named after the WGA’s late general...
Chart: The Higher You Go in Hollywood, the Harder Women Directors Are to Find
We all know the woeful statistics about women directors, but a new graphic from FiveThirtyEight illustrates just how the deck is stacked against female filmmakers, especially at the studio and...
Guest Post: #OscarSoWhite Includes the Documentary Category, Too
The 2015 Oscarnominations upset many people. When the Academy nominated the highlyregarded film Selma for Best Picture but snubbed its African-American femaledirector, Ava DuVernay, publications as...
Academy Awards President Cheryl Boone Isaacs Responds to ‘Selma’ Snub; Ava DuVernay Sends MLK Day Message
Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) once again disabused the notion that the Oscars have anything to do with merit by nominating Selma in just two categories, Best...
Watch: Jessica Chastain Calls for More Diversity in Hollywood
The Oscars have always been dominated by white men, but its demographic lopsidedness became a flashpoint of anger yesterday when this year’s nominations failed to include Selma director Ava...
Thoughts on the Oscar Noms from Female Film Writers and Experts
Here are some thoughts from some people I reached out to earlier today about the Oscar nominations, in alphabetical order. Thelma Adams, Film Editor at ZEALnyc: First of all, I welcome more voices...
The Big O: In Directing, a Sin of Omission — But At Least ‘Selma’ Makes the Final 8
We had a dream last fall: that two female directors, Ava DuVernay for Selma and Angelina Jolie for Unbroken, would compete in the Best Director category at the 87th Academy Awards. Considering that...
2015 Oscar Nominations: A Dark Day for Women in Hollywood
I couldn’t sleep at all last night because I knew in the pit of my stomach exactly what was going to happen this morning. Based onthe wind and on the hatchet job against Selma, I knew that Ava...
Jodie Foster, Lisa Cholodenko, Jill Soloway, Laura Poitras Nominated by DGA
Yesterday’s Directors Guild of America Awards coverage was dominated by one major (and painful) snub: that of Ava DuVernay for the entirely deserving Selma. But we should also talk about some of...
2015 Golden Globes: Fey, Poehler, Fonda, Tomlin, Moore, Adams, Arquette, and Gyllenhaal Speak Out for Women
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler set the theme for the 2015 Golden Globes in more ways than one last night. Perhaps it was Fey or Poehler’s gender-conscious jokes the two years before — or maybe it...
The Big O: The State of the Race — and Where the Women Are
I had a sinking feeling when the Producers Guild announced their ten nominees for Best Picture on Monday. Take a gander at what was selected: American Sniper, Birdman, Boyhood, Foxcatcher, Gone...
Jodie Foster to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award at 5th Athena Film Festival
In honor of Jodie Foster’s five decades behind and in front of the camera, the 5th annual Athena Film Festival (Feb. 5–8) will salute the Oscar-winning actress and director with its Laura Ziskin...
The Big O: 2014 Delivers, From Ellen’s Pizza to DuVernay’s Historic Milestone
Thanks to a guy named Oscar, 2014 began on a cinematic high note for women. And not just because Idina Menzel composed herself enough to soar through the night’s eventual best-song winner,...
Shonda Rhimes to Receive WGA’s Lifetime Achievement Award
Just fifteen years after the premiere of HBO movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, Shonda Rhimes’ first credited feature screenplay, the Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal creator will receive the...
The Big O: Want to Win Oscar’s Heart? Put Down the Mascara and Hide the Comb
Yep, they are falling for it again. Call it glamming down, uglifying, or letting yourself go, but more actresses than usual are forgoing makeup and regular shampoos in order to impress those...
Liv Ullmann Awarded Coolest-Sounding Honor Ever for ‘Miss Julie’
Liv Ullmann will receive the Nordic Honorary Dragon Award from the Goteborg Film Festival (Jan. 23 — Feb. 2, 2015) in Sweden. The Norwegian actress and director will attend the festival,...
Only 5% of Oscar-Qualifying Scores Composed by Women
The statistics for women directors in the film industry are abysmal, but the statics for women composers are even worse. A recent study found that, of the 250 top-grossing films last year, only 2%...
Golden Globes Justifies Its Existence With Nods for ‘Transparent,’ ‘Jane the Virgin,’ Julianne Moore in ‘Maps to the Stars’
The Golden Globes proved its bona fides as a worthy alternative to the Oscars and the Emmys with this year’s nods. Nominees include small-screen dark horses unlikely to be recognized by the Emmys...
Ava DuVernay Becomes First African American Woman Nominated for Best Director Golden Globe
From my latest Forbes post on the importance of Ava DuVernay’s historic nomination: One of the most important parts of seeing Ava DuVernay’s nomination is the visibility that she will get on a...