ALL POSTS
A Conversation with Ava DuVernay
Hollywood Reporter: Ava DuVernay Will Be Keynote Speaker at BlogHer Conference Hollywood Reporter: Ava DuVernay’s Advice on Hollywood: “Follow the White Guys, They’ve Got This Thing...
Welcome Casey Cipriani to Women and Hollywood
I just wanted to do a big Women and Hollywood welcome to our new news editor, Casey Cipriani. Casey Cipriani is a New York-based arts and entertainment journalist with a passion for sci-fi, fairy...
Trailer Watch: Sarah Follows in Beth’s Footsteps in ‘Orphan Black’ Season 4
The clone club survived Season 3 of “Orphan Black,” but they’re far from unscathed in the aftermath of clone gate. A new, action-packed trailer has arrived for the fourth season of BBC...
Exclusive: Release Date Set for Maya Vitkova’s Debut ‘Viktoria’
Maya Vitkova’s 2014 Sundance hit “Viktoria” is finally hitting U.S. theaters and Women and Hollywood has the exclusive release date. The film will premiere in New York on April 29, distributed...
Ghetto Film School L.A. Introduces New Program for Female Students
Ghetto Film School L.A. is adding a new program to its curriculum. A new class, “Iris-In: A Ghetto Film School Program for Young Women,” will be offered to female students. The nonprofit will...
Sony Pictures Television Backs Faye Ward’s Fable Pictures
Sony Pictures Television has taken a minority stake in “Suffragette” producer Faye Ward’s new U.K. film and television production company, Fable Pictures. Fable will specialize in high-end...
Working Title Acquires Film Rights to Jessica Swale’s Hit Play ‘Nell Gwynn’
Working Title has acquired the film rights to Jessica Swale’s hit play “Nell Gwynn.” The period comedy is now running on London’s West End with Gemma Arterton (“Gemma Bovery”) in the...
Actress and Producer Roma Downey to Receive Inaugural Irish Diaspora Award
Roma Downey has been selected as the inaugural recipient of the “Irish Diaspora Award,” presented by the Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA) in association with the Office of the Minister...
It Was a Great Weekend for Women at the Box Office
It was a good weekend for women at the specialty box office. The Helen Mirren thriller “Eye in the Sky” and Sally Field comedy “Hello, My Name is Doris” both performed well, according to...
Strategies for Success: The Swedish Model for Gender Equity in Film
“Strategies for Success: The Swedish Model for Gender Equity in Film” a dialogue between Anna Serner, CEO of the Swedish Film (SFI) Institute and Melissa Silverstein of Women and Hollywood. The...
Trailer Watch: Christmas Comes in April with ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ Season 2 Trailer
They alive dammit! A new trailer for Netflix’s “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” has just hit the web and we’ve never been more excited to visit a year-round Christmas store. According to the...
Warner Bros. Launches Directors Workshop for Underrepresented Directors
Last year, a study conducted by the Los Angeles Times revealed that, among the major studios, Warner Bros. hired the least women directors. An embarrassing claim to fame, period, but especially in...
Eileen Meyer Awarded the 2016 Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship
Eileen Meyer has been awarded the 2016 Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship. Meyer edited the award-winning 2015 documentary “Best of Enemies,” an exploration of pundit politics. The editor...
‘Parisienne’ Director Danielle Arbid on Telling A Positive Story About a Foreigner Living in Paris
Danielle Arbid been directing films since 1997. Selected for numerous festivals in France and abroad (Cannes, New York Film Festival, San Francisco, Locarno, Pusan, Tokyo Filmex, etc.), her narrative...
Weekly Update for March 11: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Week Lolo — Directed by Julie Delpy; Written by Julie Delpy and Eugenie Grandval (Opens in NYC) Violette (Julie Delpy), a 40-year old workaholic with a career...
Happy Friday: Watch the Women of ‘Hamilton’ Sing and Rap About Feminism for Women’s History Month
Dying to see “Hamilton” but can’t score tickets? You’re not alone. The Broadway sensation is sold out for months to come, but fortunately we have something to tide us over: The female cast of...
SXSW 2016 Women Directors: Meet Stella Meghie — ‘Jean of the Joneses’
Stella Meghie has a blind script deal at Warner Brothers, a pilot in development with John Wells Productions, a comedy optioned by BET and a deal to pen a feature script for VH1. Meghie is a Tribeca...
Amy Ryan to Topline Nicole Holofcener Comedy Series
Nicole Holofcener is coming to TV, and she’s taking Amy Ryan (“Birdman”) with her. The “Enough Said” helmer is looking for a straight-to-series order for a new half-hour, untitled comedy...
Julia Louis-Dreyfus to Produce HBO Miniseries Portraying Female Friends in the National Guard
Julia Louis-Dreyfus is working on another project with HBO, the home of her Emmy-award-winning series “Veep.” Louis-Dreyfus is producing a miniseries based on Helen Thorpe’s non-fiction book...
SXSW 2016 Women Directors: Meet Anne Hamilton — ‘American Fable’
Anne Hamilton is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She got her start in the business as an intern on Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life.” Hamilton was selected to be one of eight women in the...
16 Emerging Filmmakers Sent to Cannes, Only 4 Are Women
16 emerging filmmakers are headed to Cannes Film Festival — but only a quarter of them are women. L’Atelier de la Cinéfondation will host the directors at the 2016 edition of the...
Trailer Watch: James Franco Is An Unreliable Narrator in Pamela Romanowsky’s ‘The Adderall Diaries’
A trailer has arrived for Pamela Romanowsky’s debut feature film, “The Adderall Diaries.” The drama is based on Stephen Elliott’s bestselling memoir of the same name and made its world...
Variety’s Power of Women Event To Honor Julianne Moore, Lupita Nyong’o, Misty Copeland and More
Variety’s 2016 Power of Women Event will celebrate five women who have been named as Lifetime Impact Honorees: Academy Award-winning actresses Julianne Moore and Lupita Nyong’o, everyone’s...
IFC Films Picks Up Kelly Reichardt’s ‘Certain Women,’ Starring Michelle Williams
IFC Films has acquired the U.S. rights to Kelly Reichardt’s “Certain Women.” The star-studded drama premiered in January at Sundance to strong notices. Stage 6 Films scooped up the...
Trailer Watch: Meryl Streep is Fabulously Off-Key in ‘Florence Foster Jenkins’
In the opera biopic “Florence Foster Jenkins,” it ain’t over ’til the deluded lady sings. Meryl Streep plays the aging socialite of the title, a woman who is not very talented, but wholly...
14 Women Directors Included in Second Half of Tribeca Fest’s Feature Film Lineup
The Tribeca Film Festival has announced the second half of its feature slate for 2016. This newly announced 55-film lineup is 25% female directed, with the work of 14 women directors being featured...
SXSW 2016 Women Directors: Meet Julia Hart — ‘Miss Stevens’
Julia Hart’s debut script “The Keeping Room” landed on the Black List and was made into a feature directed by Daniel Barber starring Brit Marling. She’s written for John Requa and Glenn...
The National Film Board of Canada to Divide Funding 50/50 Between Female and Male Directors
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB), an agency of the country’s federal government, is working to close the gender gap in Canadian filmmaking. On Tuesday the public agency announced that at...
Julie Taymor Launches Fellowship for Young Theater Directors
Julie Taymor, the first woman to win a Tony Award for directing a musical, has created a fellowship for young theater directors. The Julie Taymor World Theater Fellowship is designed to enable...
Guest Post: Why Are People Concerned Directing Is “Too Much” for Women? We Can Handle It, Thanks
When I was a little girl my mother worked in an unheated factory five days a week and cleaned houses on weekends. Never once did anyone tell her, “Well, that’s too big a job for a woman.” Nor...
Jill Soloway to Helm Coming-of-Age Movie About a Woman Who Moves to a Pot Farm for Amazon Studios
The love affair between the folks over at Amazon and “Transparent” creator Jill Soloway continues to bear fruit. Only a few weeks ago, we reported that Soloway was working on a new television...
Focus World Picks up Natalie Portman’s Directorial Debut
The U.S. rights for “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” Natalie Portman’s directorial debut, have been acquired by Focus World, a division of Focus Features. The Oscar winner premiered the drama,...
Longlist Announced for Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction
Literary debuts dominate this year’s longlist for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. 20 novels appear on the longlist, and 11 of them are by first-time authors, marking a tie for the highest...
Gina Torres To Star As a Mega Successful Entrepreneur with a Secret in Soapy ABC Drama
Gina Torres is getting her own show. The “Suits” star will topline ABC’s soapy drama pilot “The Death of Sofia Valdez.” Torres plays the titular character, an immigrant who is, on the...
Guest Post: How the Female Directors in Film Fatales Are Tackling Hollywood’s Inclusion Problem
By now we have all heard the statistics. The film industry is facing a crisis of inclusion. According to research by the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at USC Annenberg, less than 20%...
Celebrate International Women’s Day With Films By and About Women
Happy International Women’s Day from the Women and Hollywood team. In honor of the occasion, we’ve asked our interns to highlight some of their favorite movies by and about women. They’ve...
Thelma Golden Wins Major Curatorial Award
Thelma Golden, the Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, has been named as the 2016 recipient of the annual Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. The honor is awarded by...
Trailer Watch: Susan Sarandon Smothers Rose Byrne with Love in ‘The Meddler’
A trailer has landed for “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” writer-director Lorene Scafaria’s latest offering, “The Meddler.” The title refers to the film’s central character,...
Waking the Feminists Comes to New York City
Last week I had the privilege to participate in Waking theFeminists as it arrived in NYC from Dublin. This movement began when womenprotested at the Abbey Theatre about the lack of women playwrights...
Eva Husson’s Teen Sex Drama ‘Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)’ Gets U.S. Distribution
Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired North American rights for “Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story),” Eva Husson’s feature directorial debut. The company bought the rights from Films Distribution....
Watch: Film Community Speaks Out About Hollywood’s Gender Problem
As we reported back in January, a new docu-series from director Caroline Suh will interrogate gender inequality in Hollywood. A video featuring interview clips with a host of high-profile names has...
J.J. Abrams Takes the Lead Towards Making Hollywood Less Pale and Male
J.J. Abrams is working to make Hollywood a little less less white and a little less male. Abrams and his writing team added a female character, Rey (Daisy Ridley,) to the center of one of the most...
YouTube Creates Global Production Program for Women Content Creators
YouTube is making an effort to make digital content creation more female-friendly. The streaming behemoth has launched the YouTube Spaces program, a global production program to support female...
Networking with Women Filmmakers – London 2015
A variety of women filmmakers including Andrea Arnold, Carol Morley, Cairo Cannon, Sophie Fiennes and many others gathered to discuss the state of affairs for women filmmakers. Hosted by Kate...
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...
Tina Fey’s ‘Whiskey Tango Foxtrot’ Tops Commercial Spending for the Week
“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” starring Tina Fey, opens on 2,300 screens this weekend. The sheer amount of studio money behind the comedian’s latest project is exciting. Paramount is pushing the war...
Amy Adams on ‘American Hustle’: “I Knew I Was Being Paid Less … It Doesn’t Mean I Liked It”
Amy Adams has spoken out about the “American Hustle” pay gap scandal in an interview with British GQ magazine. The five-time Oscar nominee has revealed that she was aware that she was being paid...
A New International Film Competition Moves Beyond the Bechdel Test
One of the oldest chapters of Women in Film and Video is teaming up with Harvard Square Script Writers to launch Flicks4Chicks, a new international film contest. The two Boston-based non-profits grew...
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...
Tribeca Film Festival Announces 2016 Competition Lineup That’s 33% Female-Helmed
The competition slate for the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival has been announced. The 15th edition of the New York-based festival features three competition sections: U.S. Narrative, International...