News
Dear WB, Consider Hiring These Women Writers and Directors for Your Wonder Woman Movie
Yesterday, Warner Brothers did what studios do these days: announce superhero movies and spin-offs. This announcement was a little different than the usual proceedings, though, because among the 15...
Trailer Watch: Katie Holmes is a Captivating Female Vigilante in ‘Miss Meadows’
Marvel Introduces New Asian-American Superheroine
After creating a Muslim-American superheroine in teenage Kamala Khan (alias: Ms. Marvel), Marvel Comics will continue to diversify its roster of do-gooders with a new series devoted to Silk, an...
Jane Campion’s ‘Top of the Lake’ to Return for Season 2
Top of the Lake was one of the most notable breakthroughs in television of the last five years, a masterwork of tone, suspense, and cinematography that upended the routinely sexist murder-mystery...
LFF Women Directors: Rebecca Johnson — ‘Honeytrap’
Layla (Jessica Sula) is 15 and has been living in Trinidad. Returned to her estranged mother in London, she is faced with settling into a new home and a new city with a fresh set of rules and codes....
Crosspost: Tony-Nominated Writer Sarah Ruhl on Plays About Motherhood and Challenging Theater’s Male Domination
The following has been cross-posted with permission from The Interval. “You should know about me arranging playdates for my daughter,” says Sarah Ruhl as she runs into a friend during the course...
Monica Potter to Star in NBC Sitcom Produced by Ellen DeGeneres
Parenthood star Monica Potter, who was nominated for a Golden Globe for her portrayal as Kristina Braverman, will headline a new sitcom on NBC when the critically acclaimed family drama goes off the...
Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls at the Party Goes Legendary
Patricia Ariza Wins Award for Creating Social Change Through Theater
Patricia Ariza, a Columbian artist and activist, has received the LPTW Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award for her endeavors toward peace and greater awareness of women’s issues during...
LFF Women Directors: Meet Corinna McFarlane — ‘The Silent Storm’
On a remote Scottish island in the 1950s, Aislin (Andrea Riseborough) lives with her minister husband Balor (Damian Lewis). He is a man of sudden and violent mood swings and stern religiosity....
Susanne Bier on ‘A Second Chance,’ ‘Serena,’ and Her Upcoming Mary, Queen of Scots Biopic
Susanne Bier is one of the most respected and well-known women directors in the world. One of three female filmmakers to win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, the prolific Danish helmer’s...
Trailer Watch: ‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’ Chronicles the Turmoil of the Women’s Movement
Feminist movements, then and now, have been largely ignored by the movies. Unlike, say, the civil-rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s, which receives respectful remembrance in high-profile...
Gamora and Wonder Woman to Get New Comic-Book Series
Neither Marvel nor DC, the two powerhouses that dominate the comics industry, has a great track record at gender diversity. According to 538, female characters account for only about one of four...
Watch: Viola Davis on Her Anti-Hunger Campaign: “I Didn’t Know Where My Next Meal Was Coming From”
As an honoree at Variety’s 2014 Power of Women event, a celebration of female philanthropy within the film industry, Viola Davis delivered a personal speech last Friday about her difficult...
Laura Poitras Humanizes Edward Snowden in ‘Citizenfour’
Woodstock Film Festival Women Directors: Jenna Ricker — ‘The American Side’
There’s three sides to every story. The truth, the lie, and the American Side. Following a mysterious suicide at Niagara Falls, a low-rent detective unravels a conspiracy to build a revolutionary...
Athena Film Festival: Igniting Conversation and Sparking Ideas — What Would You Like to Hear?
As we enter our 5th Year, the Athena Film Festival is proud to have offered a history of unique panels, conversations, and standalone events featuring powerful women leaders. To name a few: In...
Weekly Update for October 10: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women OpeningYou’re Not You — Co-Written by Shana Feste Hilary Swank plays a very put together successful woman who seems to have the perfect life. Yet that life quickly...
Power Showrunners — The Women
The Hollywood Reporter has published its list of the “50 Power Showrunners of 2014.” The list features 14 women who serve as the showrunners for 16 series. You’ll definitely recognize some of...
Guest Post: Finding a Rare POV on a Familiar Global Issue in ‘Waiting for August’
There have been many discussions in the film industry lately about the stubborn imbalance against women’s representation in cinema. Although we have gone a long way in theright direction, there is...
4 Ways Shonda Rhimes Is Changing the Conversation About Herself
As TV’s most successful female showrunner — and TV’s most successful black showrunner — there are a lot of questions Shonda Rhimes is sick of being asked. Sometimes well-intended,...
LFF Women Directors: Josephine Decker — ‘Butter on the Latch’ & ‘Thou Wast Mild and Lovely’
One of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of 2013, Josephine Decker makes films, performances, and friends in strange places. Her newest two films, Butter on the Latch and Thou Wast Mild and...
The Big O: Who’s More Overdue for a Win — Amy Adams or Julianne Moore?
Think back to last year’s Best Actress category and what a titanic lineup it was. Sandra Bullock for Gravity, Judi Dench for Philomena, Meryl Streep for August: Osage County, and Cate Blanchett,...
Mary Harron, Karyn Kusama, Jennifer Lynch, Jovanka Vuckovic to Direct Horror Anthology
Anthologies are one way the horror genre has experimented with new stories, effects, and themes without the arduous burden of stretching out a good idea or visual into feature length. As with...
Biopic of Mexican Pop Superstar Gloria Trevi Finds Distribution
Pop stars: they’re not like us. Most of us don’t wear conical bras in public, judge televised singing contests, or French-kiss our professional competitors for the cameras. But Mexican diva...
The Mother of all Bad Guys: ‘Homeland’ Returns
[This essay contains some spoilers for the last episode of Homeland Season 3 and the first two episodes of Season 4.] I’ve never watched a character go from complicated to villainous in the public...
LFF Women Directors: Desiree Akhavan and Cecilia Frugiuele — ‘Appropriate Behaviour’
Appropriate Behavior writer-director Desiree Akhavan is the Iranian-American co-creator and star of the criticallyacclaimed web series The Slope, acomedy that follows a pair of superficial,...
Watch: Gillian Jacobs and Leighton Meester Are Codependent Besties in the Female-Friendship Comedy ‘Life Partners’
Paige is straight, Sasha is gay. Paige suddenly has a fiance, Sasha is still alone. The first of these two situations isn’t remotely a problem. The second one, though, creates a riff between the...
Jessica Chastain Deconstructs Strong Female Characters as “A Disservice to Women”
Jessica Chastain has called out for more female protagonists once more as part of her press tours for The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her/Him (October 10), Interstellar (November 7), and A Most...
Kerry Washington Lands Her First Starring Film Role in More Than a Dozen Years
I first saw Kerry Washington in a 2001 indie called Lift, in which the Scandal star played a put-together young woman with a shoplifiting problem. Written and directed by Boston natives DeMane Davis...
13 Studio Execs Sign On to Mentor for AFI Directing Workshop for Women
Thirteen female executives from the six major studios will assume mentorship duties for filmmakers at the AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women (DWW). Those women comprise the “Executive Circle,”...
Scarlett Johansson to Star in Edith Wharton Miniseries
No one’s had a better career in the last year than Scarlett Johansson. She earned enthusiastic praise (and some Oscar consideration) for a vocal performance in Her, followed up with crowd-pleasing...
LFF Women Directors: Shira Geffen — ‘Self Made’
Self Made’s opening scene sees a young woman sleeping contentedly, only for her bed to suddenly give way and collapse underneath her. It is a moment that is at once dreamlike and shocking, and it...
Watch: New Trailer for Kristen Stewart’s Guantanamo Drama ‘Camp X-Ray’
Guest Post: Patience is a Virtue — and a Screenwriter’s Best Friend
It’s the spring of 2006. A book arrives by messenger, sent to me by my agent: Addicted by Zane, about “a woman’s sexual obsession.” Compelling title. Provocative cover. I open to a page at...
London Film Fest Director Clare Stewart on Cinephilia as a Religion and Her Advice to Future Programmers
As the Director of the London Film Festival and the Head of Exhibition at the BFI, Clare Stewart has curated and will showcase nearly 250 films this month. The London festival will run from October...
Julia Louis-Dreyfus to Receive BAFTA’s Charlie Chaplin Award
National treasure and perennial award-winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus (five Emmy and counting!) will receive another recognition of her genius later this month at the 2014 BAFTA LA Britannia Awards. The...
Makers Presents ‘Women in Hollywood’; ‘Maleficent’ Screenwriter Linda Woolverton on What’s Changed and What Hasn’t
Tonight, the Makers documentary series continues with a look at women in Hollywood. There are some great interviews, including one with Jane Fonda, where she talks about how she was able to get her...
17% of Oscar Submissions for Foreign Language Film Are Directed by Women
In the past few decades, the Oscar race for Foreign Language Film has been kinder — or maybe just fairer — to female filmmakers. Three women — Marleen Gorris, Caroline Link, and...
Watch: Frances McDormand is a Maine Toughie in Lisa Cholodenko’s ‘Olive Kitteridge’
Olive Kitteridge (Frances McDormand) is many things: beloved teacher, resented mother, seen-it-all middle-ager, wry chronicler of her small Maine town. Based on author Elizabeth Strout’s...
Ruba Nadda’s ‘October Gale’ and Liv Ullmann’s ‘Miss Julie’ Find Distribution
Three weeks after their debuts at the Toronto International Film Festival, two women-centric, women-directed films have found distribution. Writer-director Ruba Nadda’s October Gale has been...
Sarah Jessica Parker and Catherine Zeta-Jones Board Women-Directed Films
Sarah Jessica Parker and Catherine Zeta-Jones have signed on to starring roles in projects by European female filmmakers. Parker will return to the rom-com genre in Ella Lemhagen’s All Roads Lead...
A Woman You Should Know: Margaret Nagle — Developer of the Red Band Society and the Writer of The Good Lie
Margaret Nagle was one of the first women in met in Hollywood who told me really what it was like to be a working woman in Hollywood. She told me about unbelievable (which I totally believed)...
Anna D. Shapiro Takes Over as Steppenwolf Artistic Director from Martha Lavey
Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company will pass the torch from one female artistic director to another next year when Anna D. Shapiro takes over the position that Martha Lavey has occupied for two...
Winners of Women Composers Competition Announced
The League of American Orchestras and EarShot have named Julia Adolphe and Melody Eotvos the winners of a new program designed to promote women composers. Adolphe and Eotvos will each be awarded...
Watch: First Look at ‘Inside Out,’ Pixar’s First Girl-Centric Movie After ‘Brave’
It took Pixar nearly two decades to make a movie with a female protagonist, but fortunately the studio seems to have gotten the memo that girls and women watch adorable animated adventures too....
Sherry Lansing Biography Scheduled for 2016 Release
Sherry Lansing, the first female head of a major film studio, will be the subject of a new biography to be penned by Hollywood Reporter editor Stephen Galloway. The as-yet-untitled book will be...
Sunday Night Sex Talks: Turning Weekend Brunch with the Girls into a Monthly Storytelling Experience
Six months into my life in Los Angeles, I realized that I did nothave enough female friends. I was living with two wonderful gay men in West Hollywood, dating a smart and sweet television...
‘Bad Judge’ Review: I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This
I’m going to use the word bad a lot in this post, and I already feel bad about it. As must actress Kate Walsh, who took on a seemingly interesting lead role in Bad Judge, the new NBC comedy about...
Quvenzhané Wallis Books New Gig in Adaptation of Bestseller ‘Counting by 7s’
Oscar nominee Quvenzhané Wallis has signed on for The Mazur/Kaplan Company and Olympus Pictures’ adaptation of Counting by 7s, based on Holly Goldberg Sloan’s bestselling novel. Wallis will...
Helen Mirren to Reprise Her Role as Elizabeth II on Broadway
Helen Mirren will soon reprise the role that made her an Oscar winner, that of Queen Elizabeth II, on Broadway. Here’s the twist: Mirren won’t be starring in a stage adaptation of The Queen,...