Festivals
Sherri Lansing, Keri Putnam, Callie Khouri, Kasi Lemmons to be Honored at Athena FF
The Fourth Annual Athena Film Festival will present former Paramount and 20th Century Fox chief Sherry Lansing with the Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as salute Sundance Executive...
Sundance US Competition List a Disappointing Tumble from Last Year’s Equality Benchmark
At last year’s Sundance Festival, the future looked rosy, with half of all U.S. narrative features and documentaries in the Park City lineup coming from female filmmakers. It was a promising...
The Punk Singer Director Sini Anderson: “It’s Not Hard to be Drawn to Kathleen Hanna’s Story”
Sini Anderson has worked in film for over ten years as a producer, first assistant director, and creative consultant. The Punk Singer is Anderson’s first feature length documentary. She has served...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Laura Checkoway
Journalist Laura Checkoway has penned revealing celebrity profiles and investigative features for numerous publications and is the former senior editor of Vibe magazine. Her acclaimed first book, My...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Cecilia Peck
Before Brave Miss World, Cecilia Peck most recently directed and produced, with Barbara Kopple, the feature-length documentary Shut Up & Sing, which chronicles the political backlash against and...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Vicki Vasilopoulos
Vicki Vasilopoulos is a Greek-American journalist whose articles have been published in The New York Times, Esquire, New Jersey Monthly and Time Out New York. She spent over a decade as Senior...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Lucy Kostelanetz
Filmmaker Lucy Kostelanetz premiered her first documentary feature Sonia in 2007 in film festivals around the world. Her previous work included two award-winning films for children, Rebeka Goes Down...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Gitte Peng
Gitte Peng is an education reform expert who served as Senior Education Policy Advisor in Mayor Bloomberg’s administration, developing and overseeing the City’s school reform policies and...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Therese Shechter
Therese Shechter deftly fuses personal narrative, interactive technologies and grassroots activism to chronicle 21st-century feminism, most recently as the writer and director of the documentary How...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Linda Hoaglund
Since 2007, Linda Hoaglund has produced three films and directed two relating to the Pacific War and postwar Japan. Born in Japan as the daughter of American missionary parents, she attended...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Sierra Pettengill and Jamila Wignot
Sierra Pettengill is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker. Town Hall is her directorial debut. She is the producer of Cutie and the Boxer (U.S. Documentary Directing Award, Sundance ’13) and the archival...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Dori Berinstein
Dori Berinstein is a Broadway producer and a director of feature-length documentaries about theater. Her Broadway producing credits include Carol Channing: Larger Than Life, Legally Blonde,...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Sarah McCarthy
Born in Sydney, Sarah McCarthy studied film in her native Australia. After graduating with first-class honours, she moved to London, where she worked in development for the BBC and RDF Media before...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Samantha Grant
Samantha Grant is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, and educator. In 2007, Sam was named a Carnegie/Knight fellow as part of the News 21 Initiative on the Future of Journalism and...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Beth B
Beth B produced, directed and edited Exposed. She also shot much of the film, and, with composer Jim Coleman, wrote several of the musical numbers. Beth B exploded onto the New York underground...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Merete Mueller
Merete Mueller is a writer and award-winning filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. With a background in fiction-writing and journalism, Merete has worked as the Managing Editor of elephant journal, a...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Suzan Beraza
Born in Jamaica and raised in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, social and environmental issues pervade Suzan’s work. Her films have appeared on National Public Television and on the...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Ky Dickens
Award-winning filmmaker Ky Dickens directed the documentary Fish Out of Water, which uses animation, LGBT narratives and historical analysis to deconstruct the seven Bible verses used to condemn...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Dawn Porter
DawnPorter is the founder of Trilogy Films and the director/producer of Gideon’s Army, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and aired on HBO. Before becoming a filmmaker, she was...
The LA Femme Film Festival: By Women, For Everyone
Leslie LaPage launched the LAFemme Film Festival in 2005 after a dispiriting trip to the Sundance Film Festival, where she saw precious few films directed or written bywomen. The first LA Femme...
DOC NYC Announces Line Up
DOC NYC, the largest documentary festival in the U.S., has just announced its slate. The festival will run from November 14–21. Over 125 documentary filmmakers and and special guests are expected...
Guest Post: Let’s Change the Conversation About Women Directors
A few weeks ago, as Jane Campion’s TV series Top Of The Lake drew to a close, Marie Claire UK wrote an article entitled ’11 facts about the director that will blow your mind’ where the...
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...
Athena Co-Chair Diablo Cody Helps Kicks Off The Athena Film Festival Tonight
As we here at Women and Hollywood gear up for the Athena Film Festival starting tonight at Barnard College, we are so excited and thankful for the press that has been circulating about the festival....
Athena Film Festival Needs Volunteers and Women Filmmakers
As we previously reported, The Athena Film Festival (co-founded by our own Melissa Silverstein) is gearing up for its third year. Here’s where you come in! If you are in the New York...
Apply for This Athena Film Festival Workshop — Crafting a Short: How to Find Your Story and Make It a Movie
We are gearing up for the 3rd Athena Film Festival from February 7–10, 2013. We are very excited to be partnering with the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women for a day of...
TIFF: Interview with Margarethe von Trotta and Barbara Sukowa — Director and Star of Hannah Arendt
Last, but not the bit least is a conversation with master director Margarethe von Trotta along with actress Barbara Sukowa who bring us the story of Hannah Arendt one of the first highly visible...
Fill the Void Written and Directed by Rama Burshtein Gets Picked Up by Sony Pictures Classics
The team at Sony PIctures Classics has been very busy since Toronto and they added another women directed film Fill the Void written and directed by Rama Burshtein to their list of acquisitions. The...
TIFF: Interview with Cate Shortland — Director and Co-Writer of Lore
Lore is Cate Shortland’s second film after the exciting Somersault. It is a bold look at a young girl who lived her whole life in the belly of the Nazi beast and had no perspective on anything...
TIFF: Interview with Shola Lynch — Director of Free Angela & All Political Prisoners
On the day of the premiere of her documentary at the Toronto Film Festival, director Shola Lynch answered some questions about the film. Here is a look at the importance of the film — Black...
Trailer Watch: The Patience Stone
The Patience Stone was the movie in Toronto that two separate women told me I needed to see. And boy was it worth it. It is basically a monologue performed brilliantly by Iranian actress Golshifteh...
TIFF: Interview with Susanne Bier — Director of Love Is All You Need
At the Toronto Film Festival you see a lot of heavy movies really early in the morning. Love is All You Need was a most welcome respite from the intensity that was around at the festival. Academy...
TIFF: Interview with Deepa Mehta — Director of Midnight’s Children
Midnight’s Children is literally an epic movie. It tells about the birth and development of India through the eyes of children born the moment the country declared its independence. Deepa Mehta...
TIFF Review: The Stories We Tell — Sarah Polley’s Effective New Documentary
Toronto loves Sarah Polley. The display of that love was evident last week at the premiere of her first documentary Stories We Tell which held its Canadian premiere at the Toronto International Film...
TIFF: Interview with Judi Levine — Producer of The Sessions
The Sessions is a very lovely movie about Mark O’Brien, a writer with polio who has to spend most of his life in an iron lung and his quest to lose his virginity and find a new level of intimacy in...
Women and Hollywood Events in Toronto
Hey folks here in Toronto- I’m going to be speaking with director Deepa Mehta today at 4pm in the Filmmakers Lounge on the mezannine level of the Hyatt Regency on King Street. Deepa is an amazing...
TIFF Trailer Watch: Ginger and Rosa -Written and Directed by Sally Potter
In 1960’s London, Ginger (Elle Fanning) and Rosa (newcomer Alice Englert) are inseperable best friends who discuss everything from politics to hairstyles. But when the Cold War meets the Sexual...
TIFF Trailer: The Sapphires
The Sapphires follows a late 1960’s Australian Aboriginal girl group as they are discovered by a talent scout and go to Vietnam to perform for the U.S. troops. It will be premiering as a Special...
TIFF Preview: The Female Directing Masters Playing at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival
The Toronto Film Festival opens tonight. Over the next 10 days there will be a couple of hundred movies to be seen. This is one festival where you can make a decision to see films by women and see...
TIFF Trailer Watch: Free Angela and All Political Prisoners — Directed by Shola Lynch
Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, directed by Shola Lynch, is a documentary about Angela Davis, her 1970’s imprisonment and how she became an international icon. Free Angela and All...
TIFF Preview: Women Directors to Watch
The Toronto Film Festival launches tomorrow and there are women directors all over the lineup. We reached out to a couple of directors whose careers are on the way up (we will have some of our...
TIFF Trailer Watch: The Stories We Tell Written and Directed by Sarah Polley
This first documentary by the incredibly talented Sarah Polley is getting great reviews out of Venice and Telluride.
TIFF Trailer: Inescapable — Written and Directed by Ruba Nadda
Ruba Nadda’s Inescapable focuses on a father (Alexander Siddig) whose daughter goes missing in Syria. He must go back to Syria, where he hasn’t been in decades, to find his daughter and deal...
TIFF Trailer: English Vinglish Directed by Gauri Shinde
The film captures a modern day struggle experienced all too often by the un-American elite trying to make it in America: the language barrier. Sridevi’s character, Shashi, is made to feel insecure...
Trailer Watch: Sarah Polley Directs a Documentary — Stories We Tell
This is a busy year for Sarah Polley. Her film Take This Waltz is now in release in the US and now she has a documentary premiering at Venice and Toronto. Here’s the opaque description from the...
Women Directed Additions to Toronto 2012 Lineup
The Toronto International Film Festival rolled out 60 additional titles today. Here are some of the women directed films in the documentary and vanguard programs. (All Synopses from the TIFF press...
Trailer Watch: Cloud Atlas — Co-Directed by Lana Wachowski
The Wachowskis are an incredibly successful writing/directing duo best known for the Matrix Trilogy. They are also known for the cult classic Bound and for writing V for Vendetta. They’ve been off...
Toronto Trailer Watch: Lore — Directed by Cate Shortland
Australian Director Cate Shortland’s first film Somersault was great and this film looks to be even better. This is one at the top of my list to see in Toronto. Music Box has the US rights but no...
Locarno Film Festival Lineup: 2 Women Directed Films In Competition
On Wednesday, the Locarno Film Festival announced its lineup for in-competition films and the Piazza Grande program. Held from August 1–11, Locarno is one of the world’s oldest film festivals,...
Cross-Post: A Heroine’s Journey
The world has moved on but I’m still obsessing about why, for the second time in three years was there no films directed by a woman in the main competition at Cannes this year. I mean I know...
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival
One thing that many people before me have taken note of is that film festivals have become the only way some films get seen in this new world of limited distribution. No where is that point clearer...