Features
France vs. US – What Do Movie Stars Looks Like?
As the Cannes Film Festival kicks off here is an infographic from French TV (and in French) that breaks down the difference between the US and French film industries. Here’s what the article...
Guest Post: Invisible Women Who Rock
We are both filmmakers launching documentaries featuring different generations of women pursuing their artistic vision in the predominantly male bastion of rock and roll. And of course, the...
Pissed Off: When Did Playing Evil Women Become a Rite of Passage for Oscar Winning Actresses?
You know I hate all the princess shit that we see everywhere. The film business has up it ass that boys get to be superheroes and girls get to be princesses. The boys save the girls and...
Hollywood Feminist of the Day: Willow Smith
God I love this girl. She rules and I want that t-shirt. Smile girl. You are awesome. h/t Jen Pozner and from How You Say My Love in Thug
Guest Post: Aroused
I never thought I would ever make a documentary film, let alone one where my leading cast would be some of the biggest names in the Porn industry. I am a photographer, and yes, I have always felt...
Guest Post: The Appearing Female Magician – Desperate Acts of Magic
When I was seven, my parents took me to a magic shop at Pier 39 in San Francisco. I bought my first magic trick, the Imp Bottle. I loved playing with it. Not long after that, my parents bought me a...
Guest Post: Marilyn Monroe Comic Book Tribute
I had written one comic book for the publisher, Bluewater Productions, which was about Elizabeth Taylor and they asked me to take on Marilyn. I said yes because I loved writing the first one so much,...
Guest Post: Can Major League Dreams Defy Martial Law?
In the face of daunting odds of gender, geography and living under the gun, women and girls are the power players in my new documentary – The Only Real Game. This is the first nonfiction...
Remembering Mary Thom
The feminist movement suffered a huge loss this weekend with the death of Mary Thom. Mary Thom was a long time editor at Ms. Magazine where she arrived in 1972, and rose through the ranks...
Cartoon: The New Hollywood
This came from Donnelly’s piece on the latest episode of Mad Men in her ForbesWomen.com column. _________________________________________________ Liza Donnelly is a contract cartoonist...
Infographic: Where are the Women Directors?
Fandor, a streaming movie service with a huge library of global independent films, has put together an infographic on the lack of women directors working within the Hollywood system. It does...
A Look at the Women’s Films Opening in the Summer of 2013
With the arrival of Entertainment Weekly’s Summer Movie Preview last week, the summer blockbuster season is officially creeping upon us. As always, be prepared for explosions, superheroes,...
Cross Post: Some Depressing Stats about Female Comedy Directors
Last week, I wrote about how rare it is to be a female director especially a female comedy director. Well, we decided to do some research and find out exactly how rare it is – here are the...
Cross Post: The Host: Less Anti-Feminist than Twilight, but Hardly a Sisterhood Manifesta
I readily admit I did not read The Host. I couldn’t face it after immersing myself in all things Twilight while researching my book Seduced by Twilight. I started it, but less than 20 pages in...
Cross Post: Tyler Perry’s Rape Problem
Trigger warnings: rape, sexual assault, acquaintance rape, Tyler Perry A week after rapper Rick Ross found himself in hot water over a lyric that was said to promote date rape, producer and director...
Cross Post: Women Film Festivals: Do We Need Them?
Recently Ottawa International Animation Festival director and programmer Chris Robinson asked in a private Facebook message to 10 female animators what they felt about gender specific festivals....
Cross Post: Chastain, “Roles for Women Have Taken a Step Back”
It’s refreshing to read a quote from an actress working today willing to criticize the kinds of roles offered to women now in Hollywood. Sure, it’s easy to get attention if you put on a...
SXSW Review: Women-Directed Shorts including Sequin Raze and Ellen Is Leaving
At SXSW I was able to catch some excellent short films. There were a bunch of great women-centric ones including: Dotty a funny and touching look at an elderly woman struggling to send a...
Guest Post: “It’s A Great Career, But I Earned It”: A Power Talk With Sheila Nevins
After listening to Sheila Nevins speak for even five minutes, it’s not hard to understand why she’s so successful in the documentary world. She is, in a word, frank, but also gifted with...
Cross Post: “Oz the Great and Powerful” Rekindles the Notion That Women Are Wicked
Dorothy Gale–the girl who went to Oz–has been called the first true feminist hero in American children’s literature. Indeed, she was condemned by many readers, including...
Guest Post: Fusion Film Festival at NYU Looks Back on the State of Gender Equality in the Film Industry on its Tenth Anniversary
As was widely reported this year in the “Exploring the Barriers and Opportunities for Independent Filmmakers” study that was presented at the Sundance Film Festival, 2013 is a record year for...
The Happy Girl vs. The Cool Girl: Why People Don’t Like Anne Hathaway
People, especially women, really don’t like Anne Hathaway. This isn’t something that just started since Hathaway won her Oscar for Les Miserables last week–it’s been long...
Hollywood Feminist of the Day: Mike White – Creator/Writer of Enlightened
Enlightened is hands down the best show that you aren’t watching. It follows Amy Jellicoe (Laura Dern), a former corporate executive who post-nervous breakdown goes to a holistic rehab...
Interview with Dyllan McGee – Executive Producer of MAKERS: Women Who Make America
Women and Hollywood: What made you come up with the idea for this massive undertaking? Dyllan McGee: As a filmmaker who had covered many historical events and figures (The Kennedys, Lincoln,...
How the Case of Zero Dark Thirty Reflects on Hollywood’s Treatment of Women
I was a happy person a couple of months ago. I walked out of seeing Zero Dark Thirty very much liking the film, but also sighing a bit in relief that Kathryn Bigelow had hit another one out of...
Cross Post: This Is What Directors Look Like (Or at Least 9% of Them)
I attended the launch of Melissa Silverstein's book, In Her Voice: Women Directors Talking at the Athena Film Festival at Barnard College. This is a collection of interviews with over-40 female...
Cross Post: A Female Tarantino
As a recently decided film major midway through the fall of my sophomore year, I was sitting in the back of 511 Dodge Hall at Columbia University, idly doodling in the minutes before my Script...
Cross Post: My Two Favorite Golden Globe Winners: JLaw & Anne Get it Right on Body Image
As a complete movie nerd, I dragged my reluctant friends and family to my tiny local movie theater quite a few times over this past winter break. There have been just too many great movies to choose...
Guest Post: What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Aging: An Oscar-Nominated Filmmaker’s Conversation-Starter on Women and Aging
Ten years ago, when I began work on the short documentary that would become Kings Point, issues of aging weren’t really a part of the public discussion. In a way, that helped me: because they...
Tina Fey on her new film Admission, Feminism, Motherhood and Lily Tomlin
At a recent press conference in New York, Tina Fey said that feminism remains a factor in choosing her projects: Feminism is certainly something that appeals to me and I certainly try to avoid any...
Guest Post: A Perfect Ending — Lesbian Film, Art House Film or Both?
So what is it that makes a movie a lesbian movie? Does it require lesbians playing the roles of the characters? Does the director have to be gay? Is there a quota of girl on girl...
Stoker- Starring Mia Wasikowska and Nicole Kidman
The media and art that I always tend to be attracted to, some would say, could fall into the disturbing spectrum. I like messy, complicated and at times psychotic female characters. This has ranged...
Standing Up and For Women
When I first started Women and Hollywood I knew that I wanted to the site to support women and their roles and accomplishments in pop culture but I really did not know exactly what that meant. Now,...
Cross Post: Uppity Women: How Maya and Kathryn Bigelow Continue to Threaten the Status Quo
“A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it’s in hot water.” — Eleanor Roosevelt If you want to win an Oscar for Best Picture now, make an...
The Sun Sets on 30 Rock
As we wrote last week two female written sitcoms were shut down last week, Ben and Kate and Don't Trust the B in Apartment 23. We also said goodbye to Private Practice which did not get...
Cross Post: A Common Problem I See In Plays By Women Playwrights. It’s Not What You Think.
My theatre company is in heavy season planning mode, so I’ve recently read dozens of new plays. I’m always reading new plays, but this time of year, I’m reading a lot of plays, all...
Cross Post: Reel Girl’s Gallery of Girls Gone Missing From Children’s Movies in 2013
In 2012, I waited until the last possible minute. It wasn’t until December that I posted Reel Girl’s Gallery of Girls Gone Missing from Children’s Movies in 2012. Even though in the...
Sundance Review – Salma: Tamil Poet’s Struggle Against Patriarchy
Salma, a film premiering at the Sundance Film Festival this year, focuses on the life of the prolific Tamil poet, by British documentary filmmaker Kim Longinotto. It highlights the struggles of a...
Guest Post: Why We Shot on Film in Rural West Texas
“What’s the movie about?” a very solemn man in a cowboy hat asks us. I hesitate. One of the first things I learned when traveling to West Texas to shoot our low budget indie BEST...
Anticipating Sundance: Using Sundance to Shift the Narrative on Women Directors
I am heading to Sundance for the first time. I am looking forward to seeing a bunch of women directed movies over the next couple of days. There are also several women's events...
Anticipating Sundance: Sundance Lineup is a Win for Women Directors and for Everybody Who Cares About Movies
This post was originally published on November 29, 2012. For the last couple of years (the time that I have written this blog) I have lived in a world full of disappointment when it comes to...
Cross Post: The Brave One
Hard as it may be to believe, I won’t remember the 70th annual Golden Globes Awards for my beloved Tina Fey. Or Amy Poehler. Or Sofia Vergara’s golden globes. I mean, sure, they were all...
Why Girls Still Matters in Season 2
Last night was a huge lady-centric night for television with the delightful Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosting the Golden Globes, the premiere of season two of the criminally underwatched Enlightened...
Guest Post: How to Do an Abortion Plotline
When Amy tearfully asked Drew, “Do I look normal?” following her abortion procedure in the latest episode of Parenthood, it spoke to the narratives often pushed by the anti-choice...
Guest Post: A Response to “This Woman is Too Fat for Hollywood?”
Recently Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood wrote a blog entitled "This Woman is Too Fat For Hollywood?" Consider this a response to the aforementioned article. There's a lot...
Looking Back at 2012: Some of Our Favorite Pieces of the Year
Looking back over the last year we are some of our favorite and buzz worthy pieces that ran on the site. We think they are a great overview of what went on for women in and around Hollywood in...
Cross Post: Heroines of Cinema: An A-Z of Women in Film in 2012
Since this column began in August, it has profiled a wide variety of women – fictional and real, contemporary and historic – whose achievements in film have been considered worthy of...
The Women Directed Movies of 2012
We here at Women and Hollywood want to salute the women who directed films in 2012. We have compiled a list of features and docs (and foreign films) that were released in US theatres in...
Cross Post: Breaking Into the Film Business
So, recently I've been gaining a little modest traction in this oh-so-fickle business. And as I try to figure out what the next phase of my career will hold, I've been finding myself...
Cross Post: Too Old?
DC playwrights are watching their "in" boxes this week, awaiting word about whether they've been accepted into Arena Stage's playwrights' group. Six locals will be invited to...
Cross Post: On Sex, Disability, and Helen Hunt in ‘The Sessions’
I hadn’t heard of Mark O’Brien before I saw The Sessions. I only knew that the film starred John Hawkes (of Deadwood, Winter’s Bone, and Martha Marcy May Marlene fame) and Helen...