Features
Weekly Update for March 4: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Week Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Tina Fey takes on the female midlife crisis and blows up her life by heading to Afghanistan to cover the war. She has no idea what she is...
Fantasy, Horror and Super-Heroines: March 2016’s Crowdfunding Picks
This week’s women-centric crowdfunding picks deliver impressive female characters and subjects who take on the world with fighting spirit. Whether they are stoically facing up to their own...
Listen: Women and Hollywood Podcast #24: ‘Trapped’ Director Dawn Porter
Women and Hollywood talked to director Dawn Porter about her timely, high-profile new documentary “Trapped.” The film takes its name from the hundreds of “TRAP” (targeted regulation of...
Oscar-Winning Doc ‘A Girl in the River’ Shines a Light on Honor Killing
When Louis C.K. flawlessly introduced the Best Documentary, Short Subject category at the Oscars, he said it’s his favorite because “this is the one Academy Award that has the opportunity to...
Ellen Page’s ‘Gaycation’ Is a Fascinating, Moving Look at Gay Culture Around the Globe
Do not be fooled by its glib title, “Gaycation” is no mere gay travelogue. The new TV project from out star Ellen Page and her gay best friend Ian Daniel takes them on a journey to visit LGBT...
March 2016 Film Preview
March’s female-centric and/or women-directed films spread wide across all genres, ranging from comedies and the return of a cult favorite to suspenseful action flicks by and about women. First to...
Quote of the Day: Amy Pascal Says The System is “Geared for Women to Fail in Films”
In a new interview with Britain’s The Sunday Times Magazine, former Sony co-chairperson Amy Pascal described the lack of opportunities for female directors as “a travesty, a real travesty.”...
Guest Post: What I Learned Shadowing on ‘Homeland’
A year ago, I went to a “diversity” lunch at Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles. I was hesitant to attend, because the overwhelming majority of those who currently fill this position are...
Weekly Update for February 26: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Week Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (select IMAX theaters and streaming on Netflix) In this sequel to “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” four...
What You See Isn’t What You Get: February 2016’s VOD and Web Series Picks
February’s picks for VOD features and web series showcase new sides of seemingly familiar protagonists. In “The Skinny,” actress Jessie Kahnweiler plays a fictionalized version of herself to...
The 15 Best Quotes About Working in Hollywood as a Non-Straight White Male
Mindy Kaling, America Ferrera, Eva Longoria, directors Kimberly Peirce and Karyn Kusama and many, many others contributed to a fantastic NY Times feature published yesterday called “What It’s...
‘Girls’ is Back, and Trolling the Trolls
HBO’s “Girls” returned for its fifth and penultimate season on Sunday, and there is a telling moment between Jessa (Jemima Kirke) and Hannah (creator Lena Dunham) in one of the early, upcoming...
Zoe Cassavetes On What Inspired Her to Tell the Story of an Aging Actress in ‘Day Out of Days’
Towards the beginning of Zoe Cassavetes’ “Day Out of Days,” we witness an awkward phone conversation between a former ingenue and her agent: the actress asks, “Don’t you think I’m a...
Berlinale 2016 Women Directors: Meet Chloé Leriche — ‘Before the Streets’
Self-taught, Chloé Leriche has written, directed, edited and produced a number of short films since 2001, working with fiction and video art. Her work has been screened on TV, in museums and at...
Weekly Update for February 19: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Week The Witch In this exquisitely made and terrifying new horror film, the age-old concepts of witchcraft, black magic and possession are innovatively brought...
4 Women-Directed Gothenburg Film Fest Features to Put on Your Radar
This is the third of three dispatches from the 2016 Gothenburg International Film Festival. As the largest film festival in Scandinavia, the world’s leader in gender equality, the Gothenburg...
WMC Study: Women Get Fewer Than 1 in 5 Oscar Nominations in Non-Acting Categories
When the Oscars take place on Sunday, February 28, just 22% of the non-acting award hopefuls at Dolby Theatre will be female. Depressingly, that’s actually an above-average rate for women...
Desolate Towns and Sacred Spaces: February 2016’s Crowdfunding Picks
This week’s crowdfunding picks are tied together by a strong sense of place, conjuring images of faraway landscapes or fleshing out the complexities of America’s marginalized communities....
We’ve Missed You, ‘Broad City’!
The effervescent, whip-smart “Broad City,” still the best rendering of best-friendship on TV, returned last night with an eye on one of New York (and women’s) most essential and least...
How the Swedish Film Institute Achieved 50–50 Funding Distribution Between Male and Female Directors
This is the second of three dispatches from the 2016 Gothenburg International Film Festival. Last year, we praised Anna Serner, the head of the Swedish Film Institute, who achieved her...
Guest Post: How I Met the Subject of My Doc (Which Was Nominated for an Oscar 8 Years Later)
What Happened After Swedish Theaters Introduced a Bechdel Rating for Its Movies?
This is the first of three dispatches from the 2016 Gothenburg International Film Festival. The Bechdel Test is a vastly imperfect tool for gauging a film’s feminism and gender progressivism. And...
Study: Only 21% of European Films Directed by Women
A new study has found that only one in five European films is directed by a woman, while 84% of public-funding resources go to male-directed films. Those are two of thedire statistics that emerge...
Weekly Update for February 12: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Week How To Be Single — Co-Written by Dana Fox and Abby Kohn Single ladies Alice (Dakota Johnson) and Robin (Rebel Wilson) try to find the right way to be single...
Berlinale 2016 Women Directors: Meet Livia Ungur — ‘Hotel Dallas’
Livia Ungur was born in Communist Romania. She immigrated to America to study art, graduating from the Yale School of Art in 2015. She make films, sculptures, installations and performances. Since...
Can Nikki Glaser Make Sexpert Comedy a Thing?
Back in the ’90s, “sex-positive” was a really big deal. Anka Radakovich held court over at Details magazine with her pioneering sexpert column; vibrators like “The Rabbit” made it into the...
Crosspost: What Launching The Bechdel Test Fest Taught Me
The following has been reposted from The Huffington Post with permission of the author. Our version below includes minor edits. This February, The Bechdel Test Fest celebrates its first birthday....
Guest Post: Hollywood Is Not Solely To Blame For Lack Of Diversity — Critics Are, Too
Lately, due to the #OscarsSoWhite,#OscarsSoMale and #AltOscarParty campaigns, a lot of attention is being paid to how The Academy, and Hollywood in a more general sense, fails to reward women and...
Weekly Update for February 5: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Week Pride and Prejudice and Zombies A zombie outbreak has fallen upon the land in this reimagining of Jane Austen’s classic tale of the tangled relationships...
Samantha Bee Is Poised To Change The World of Late-Night TV with ‘Full Frontal’
When Jon Stewart announced he was stepping down from “The Daily Show,” many prospective successor names were thrown around — one of the most obvious being Samantha Bee, the show’s most...
Punk-Rock Horror and Women Who Just Rock: February 2016’s Crowdfunding Picks
This roundup of women-centric crowdfunding projects has a little something for every kind of movie fan. The horrors of motherhood, grief and repeating the mistakes of the past are explored in...
Listen: Women & Hollywood Podcast #22: ‘What Happened, Miss Simone?’ Director Liz Garbus
Liz Garbus’s “What Happened, Miss Simone?” is the sole woman-helmed documentary in the running for this year’s Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards. The Netflix doc, which features...
Quote of the Day: America Ferrera Says “The Playing Field Isn’t Level and Equal”
America Ferrera is weighing in on Hollywood’s diversity problem(s), and not for the first time. The former “Ugly Betty” star’s bit with Eva Longoria at this year’s Golden Globes was easily...
Guest Post: The Screenwriter of ‘Tumbledown’ on The Challenges of Making Women-Centric Movies
My cinematic coming of age happened in Paris on a post-collegiate Rotary fellowship. In the 6th arrondissement, where there are almost as many cinemas as there are impeccably-dressed women wearing...
Marty, Bobby and Me: An Excerpt from ‘KooKooLand,’ a New Memoir by Gloria Norris
This excerpt from my new book, “KooKooLand,” describes a time, in the fall of 1978, when I was an aspiring filmmaker in New York City. I’d spent the previous year working for no pay on a...
Weekly Update for January 29: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Week Jane Got a Gun A woman (Natalie Portman) asks her ex-lover (Joel Edgerton) for help in order to save her outlaw husband (Noel Emmerich) from a gang out to kill...
The Trials of Marcia Clark: Sarah Paulson in ‘American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson’
February 2016 Film Preview
February’s slate of female-centric and/or women-directed films begins with “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” — a fun spin on the Jane Austen classic that takes the Elizabeth Bennett’s...
Spring 2016 Women on Broadway Preview: Milestones and Misses
Broadway will hit two important milestones this spring. Themusical “Waitress” is the first Broadway musical to have an all-female creativeteam, which includes the composer-lyricist, bookwriter,...
Sundance 2016 Women Directors: Meet Jessie Kahnweiler — ‘The Skinny’
Jessie Kahnweiler can’t afford therapy, so she makes films. Her work has been featured on CNN, TMZ, People, The Hollywood Reporter, New York Magazine, Mashable, Buzzfeed, Elle, The Daily Beast,...
Sundance 2016 Women Directors: Meet Anne Fontaine — ‘Agnus Dei’
Sundance 2016 Women Directors: Meet Anne Fontaine — “The Innocents” Anne Fontaine is an actress, screenwriter and director born in Luxembourg. Her film “Dry Cleaning” won Best...
Sundance 2016 Women Directors: Meet Rita Coburn Whack — ‘Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise’
Rita Coburn Whack is an award-winning writer, producer and director for television, magazines, series, news, talk shows, documentary programming and social media. Coburn Whack is the owner of RCW...
Sundance 2016 Women Directors: Meet Sara Jordenö — ‘Kiki’
Sara Jordenö is a New York- and Gothenburg-based Swedish visual artist and documentary filmmaker. Her stories often concern communities facing different types of marginalization and how they...
Finding Inspiration at Sundance 2016
So I’ve been a bit logistically challenged here at Sundance, meaning that I have missed a films and been shut out of others. That’s the way it goes here. You have to surrender to it. But the one...
Sundance 2016 Women Directors: Meet Meera Meenon — ‘Equity’
Meera Menon was recently selected to be a fellow at 20th Century Fox’s Global Directors initiative. Her directorial debut, “Farrah Goes Bang.” premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, where she...
Sundance 2016 Women Directors: Meet Bonni Cohen — ‘Audrie & Daisy’
Since co-founding Actual Films in 1998, Bonni Cohen has produced and directed an array of award-winning films, including “The Island President,” “Inside Guantanamo,” “The Rape of Europa”...
Sundance 2016 Women Directors: Meet Maya Goded — ‘Plaza de la Soledad’
Through her photographs and now on film, Maya Goded explores the subjects of female sexuality, prostitution and gender violence in a society in which the role of women is narrowly defined and...
Sundance 2016 Women Directors: Meet Stephanie Soechtig — ‘Under the Gun’
Stephanie Soechtig is an award-winning writer, producer and documentary-film director. Her most recent film, “Fed Up,” premiered at Sundance and was acquired by Radius-TWC. It also received a...
Sundance 2016 Women Directors: Meet Chris Hegedus — ‘Unlocking the Cage’
Chris Hegedus has been making films as a director, cinematographer and editor for 40 years. She received the 2001 DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement for “Startup.com.” With her...
Weekly Update for January 22: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This WeekThe 5th Wave — Co-Written by Susannah Grant In the new film “The 5th Wave,” four waves of increasingly deadly attacks have left most of Earth decimated....
Sundance 2016 Women Directors: Meet Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami — ‘Sonita’
Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami studied filmmaking and animation at Tehran Art University. Ghaemmaghami is the author of “Animated Documentary, a New Way to Express,” which is a product of her research on...