ALL POSTS
In Praise of ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ Star Rachel Bloom, the Anti-Felicity
Charlize Theron in Talks to Take on Role Meant for Brad Pitt
After becoming the star of the summer by kicking patriarchy’s pasty, shriveled ass in “Mad Max: Fury Road,” Charlize Theron appears to be pursuing more action roles. The Oscar winner is in...
Trailer Watch: Laurie Anderson Offers Emotional, Experimental Tribute to Her Pet in ‘Heart of a Dog’
“I kissed her on the head and I said, ‘I’ll love you forever.’” Experimental artist and director Laurie Anderson makes this solemn oath not to a newborn child or a cherished lover, but to...
Meryl Streep to Lead Berlinale Awards Team in Her First Festival Jury Role
Meryl Streep will serve as president of the awards jury at the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival. It will be the three-time Oscar winner’s first time on a film-festival jury. Streep...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Chanya Button — ‘Burn Burn Burn’
Chanya Button made her start in the industry at an early age, working as an Assistant Director on the “Harry Potter” feature-film franchise. Button has since worked extensively across both the...
Quote of the Day: Mimi Leder: In Filmmaking, “It’s Mostly Males Hiring, and They Mostly Hire Males”
In 1998, “Deep Impact” left a serious impression at the box office, earning nearly $350 million dollars on an estimated $80 million budget. But we haven’t seen much of its director Mimi...
Lena Dunham Exec-Producing ’60s Feminist Comedy Set in Magazine World for HBO
If you’ve read “Not That Kind of Girl,” Lena Dunham’s memoiristic essay collection, you know that the “Girls” creator used to be obsessed with Helen Gurley Brown, the editor-in-chief of...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Micah Magee — ‘Petting Zoo’
In addition to making films, Micah Magee has worked as managing and programming director of Austin’s Cinematexas International Short Film Festival, pirate-radio programmer and print journalist. In...
Barbra Streisand to Receive 2015 Sherry Lansing Award
Barbra Streisand has been named this year’s recipient of the Sherry Lansing Award, which celebrates female leadership in the media. The pioneering...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Natalie Cristiani — ‘Nicola Costantino: The Artefacta’
Natalie Cristiani graduated from Centro Sperimentale Di Cinematografia in Rome as a Film Editor in 2002. From 2002 she has worked as a film editor with various talented young directors, including...
The 3 Most WTF Excerpts from Quentin Tarantino’s Interview Diminishing Kathryn Bigelow & Ava DuVernay
Does Quentin Tarantino want to be taken seriously, or doesn’t he? Based on a new NY Times interview with novelist Bret Easton Ellis, the answer seems to be “as long as you work under the same...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Laura Bispuri — ‘Sworn Virgin’
Laura Bispuri’s 2010 short film “Passing Time” won Italy’s David di Donatello Award. “Sworn Virgin” is her first feature film. (Variety) “Sworn Virgin” will premiere at the 2015 BFI...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Miranda Pennell — ‘The Host’
Miranda Pennell originally trained in contemporary dance and later studied visual anthropology. Pennell’s video work until 2007 explored different forms of collective performance and has been...
Why Queer Women (and Women in General) Should Be Excited for Netflix’s ‘Jessica Jones’
For those who have been waiting — and waiting and waiting and waiting — for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to give us a queer female character, the wait is finally over. Over the weekend,...
5 Awesomely Candid Things J. Law Wrote About Being Paid Less Than “the Lucky People With Dicks”
Jennifer Lawrence received a Golden Globe, a BAFTA award and her third Oscar nomination for her performance in “American Hustle.” But the period crime drama has also become an albatross for the...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Mabel Cheung — ‘A Tale of Three Cities’
Mabel Cheung is an award-winning director and producer. Her debut feature, “The Illegal Immigrant” (1985), won her the Best Director Prize at the Hong Kong Film Awards and a Special Jury Award...
Trailer Watch: Janis Joplin Goes From Singer to Legend in Amy Berg’s Doc ‘Janis: Little Girl Blue’
A trailer has arrived for Amy Berg’s Janis Joplin doc “Janis: Little Girl Blue.” The spot begins with a voiceover from Joplin herself, who says, “I started singing when I was about 17.” It...
Disney Hiring Women Screenwriters, But Not Women Directors, for Its Live-Action Adaptations
Disney has been rewriting both its history (“Saving Mr. Banks”) and its own movies (“Alice in Wonderland,” “Maleficent,” “Cinderella”). Interestingly, three of the four films...
CBS Greenlights New Murder Mystery from Former ‘Good Wife’ Writer Corinne Brinkerhoff
Corinne Brinkerhoff, formerly a writer/supervising producer on “The Good Wife” and writer/co-EP on “Jane the Virgin,” is getting her own show. CBS made a straight-to-series order for...
Trailer Watch: Elizabeth Bennet Fights the Walking Dead in ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’
A teaser has been released for the big-screen adaptation of the best-selling novel “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” This gory take on Jane Austen’s 19th-century romance about lovers from...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Alexandria Bombach and Mo Scarpelli — ‘Frame by Frame’
Alexandria Bombach is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker who lives on the road. The founder of Red Reel, Bombach is known to sell all her belongings to tell a story she believes in. Mo Scarpelli is a...
Australian Directors Guild Proposes 50–50 Quotas at Screen Australia for Women Filmmakers
Last year, the Swedish Film Institute reached 50–50 gender parity in its funding distribution between male and female helmers. Some in Australia, including noted filmmaker Gillian Armstrong, are...
Gwyneth Paltrow Was Told Not to Use “S.A.T. Words” in Interviews to Avoid Seeming “Unlikable”
Gwyneth Paltrow was honored at Variety’s Power of Women Luncheon on Friday for her support of LA Kitchen, a non-profit focused on food-related issues. The Oscar winner delivered a speech at the...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Johanna Schwartz — ‘They Will Have to Kill Us First: Malian Music in Exile’
Johanna Schwartz is an award-winning, American-born, UK-based filmmaker. Working across the world — with a particular focus on Africa — she has produced and directed films for...
Amma Asante’s Royal Interracial Romance ‘A United Kingdom’ Begins Filming
The cameras have begun rolling on “A United Kingdom,” BAFTA-winning director Amma Asante’s follow-up to “Belle.” Starring David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike and set in British-colonized...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Sarah Turner — ‘Public House’
Sarah Turner is an artist, filmmaker, writer, curator and academic. Her feature films include “Ecology” (2007), “Perestroika” (2009) and “Perestroika: Reconstructed.” Turner’s short...
Weekly Update for October 9: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Week A Ballerina’s Tale (Documentary) — Opens October 14 There are not enough words to describe the joy and sheer feeling of inspiration watching Misty...
Filmmaker Elizabeth Giamatti on Making a Film While Her Co-Director Battled Terminal Breast Cancer
15% of Oscars Submissions for 2016’s Best Foreign Language Film Category Directed by Women
Twelve films directed or co-directed by women have been submitted by their respective countries for the 2016 Oscars’ Best Foreign Language Film category. Those dozen works make up about 15% of...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Hanna Polak — ‘Something Better to Come’
Hanna Polak is an Oscar-nominated director. She has worked on various movies as producer, director, cinematographer and still photographer. In 2002, she was awarded Best Producer of Documentary and...
ArcLight Cinemas to Launch Women in Entertainment Summit
Theater chain ArcLight Cinemas will launch the inaugural ArcLight Presents Women in Entertainment Summit, set to take place at the Hollywood Dome on November 5. ArcLight’s first venture into live...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Paz Fábrega — ‘Viaje’
Paz Fábrega is an award-winning director who has studied at the University of Costa Rica, the Colegio Universitario de Alajuela and the London Film School. Her filmography includes the short...
California’s Fair Pay Act May Help Solve Hollywood’s Pay Gap Problem
A groundbreaking new law is predicted to shake up Hollywood by — gasp! — paying women what they deserve. This week, California Governor Jerry Brown signed the state’s Fair Pay Act....
Effie Brown on Matt Damon’s Diversity Comments: “This is No Longer OK”
With staggeringly low statistics for women and racial minorities behind and in front of the camera in Hollywood, it’s easy to lose hope that the tables will ever turn. Yet there seems to be a...
‘Big Stone Gap’ Director Adriana Trigiani Discusses Her Novel’s 15-Year Road to the Big Screen
In “Big Stone Gap,” Ave Maria Mulligan (Ashley Judd), the town’s self-proclaimed spinster, has resigned herself to a quiet life of singlehood and being useful. She works in her family’s...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari — ‘The New Classmate’
Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari spent 16 years in the advertising agency Leo Burnett telling stories for the biggest brands in India and South East Asia. “The New Classmate” is her first feature film....
Director Afia Nathaniel Talks ‘Dukhtar,’ Pakistan’s Oscar Submission About Fleeing Child Marriage
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Svetla Tsotsorkova — ‘Thirst’
Svetla Tsotsorkova graduated from the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 2004. Since then, she has been working mainly as a producer and actress. Her first short film...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Evangelia Kranioti — ‘Exotica, Erotica, Etc.’
Evangelia Kranioti is a Greek-born visual artist based in France. She is the 2015 recipient of the Special jury Prize and the Elie Saab Prize at the 30th Hyères Fashion and Photography festival,...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Olivia Wyatt — ‘Sailing A Sinking Sea’
Olivia Wyatt is a filmmaker and photographer based in Los Angeles. She is a member of the Sublime Frequencies film and music collective. Her first feature, “Staring Into the Sun,” is about...
UK Program Launched to Get More Women into Film Exhibition Management
Independent Cinema Office, the U.K.’s national organization for the development and support of international film, is teaming up with “strategic skills body” Creative Skillset with the aim of...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Małgorzata Szumowska — ‘Body’
Małgorzata Szumowska is one of Poland’s most prominent Polish filmmakers and covers a broad spectrum of filmmaking duties, from screenwriting and producing to documentary and narrative-film...
‘Suffragette’ Screenwriter Abi Morgan on Feminism and the Challenges of Casting Men for the Women’s Rights Film
“Suffragette” screenwriter Abi Morgan was recently interviewed by Variety and touched on everything from female-driven narratives and the difficulty of casting men in supporting roles to the...
Ava DuVernay: For Women and People of Color, Hollywood is “A Whole Bunch of Locked Doors”
Ava DuVernay was her usual candid self in a fantastic new interview with NBC News, in which she described Hollywood as “a whole bunch of locked doors,” revealed what she plans on doing as an...
Female Teenage BFF Inmates From Liz Garbus’ Doc ‘Girlhood’ to Get Movie Treatment
A narrative feature based on the two subjects of Liz Garbus’ 2003 documentary “Girlhood,” young female inmates Shanae Watkins and Megan Stahl, is in the works. The project, titled “Hood...
Amy Berg’s Janis Joplin Doc ‘Janis: Little Girl Blue’ Acquired by FilmRise
2015 is turning out to be quite the year for documentary portraits of female musicians. “Amy,” Asif Kapadia’s Amy Winehouse doc, is the year’s second biggest nonfiction film so far, while...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Christina Comencini — ‘Latin Lover’
Cristina Comencini began her career as a screenwriter, with co-writing credits for “Il matrimonio di Caterina” (1982), “Quattro storie di donne” (1986) and “Buon Natale… Buon anno”...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Laura Citarella — ‘Dog Lady’
Laura Citarella is a member of the production company El Pampero Cine, along with Mariano Llinás, Alejo Moguillansky and Agustín Mendilaharzu. In 2006 she won the Historias breves 5 contest and in...
Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple Getting a Youthful Makeover at CBS
Yesterday we reported that CBS is developing a series centered on Nancy Drew, and today brings word that another procedural with a famous female crime-solver with literary roots is in the works at...
LFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Maya Newell — ‘Gayby Baby’
Maya Newell is an Australian filmmaker with a focus on directing documentaries. Her award-winning short “Two” screened at festivals internationally and she was awarded Best New Documentary...
Ashley Judd Calls Out Studio Mogul for Sexual Harassment
Ashley Judd is making headlines for describing how she was sexually harassed by one of the industry’s “most famous, admired-slash-reviled bosses” as a young actress. The actress and...