ALL POSTS
TV: More Female Politicos to Run the Small Screen
Call it the Scandal effect. Or the Homeland effect. Or the Veep effect. Or the Parks and Recreation effect. There’s no denying that “women leaders in government” is a TV trend right now....
Donna Langley Becomes Second Most Powerful Woman in Hollywood
On Sunday, The New York Times published a great profile of Donna Langley, the Chairwoman of Universal Pictures. The article coincided with the announcement that Langley’s contract at NBCUniversal...
Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In to Become Movie
Three or four times a year (if that much), Hollywood seems to remember that women exist. Thus we get the occasional film that caters to female filmgoers, nearly always starring white actresses: the...
DC Theaters to Launch Festival Showcasing Women Playwrights
The New York Times reports that 44 theater companies in Washington, DC, have joined forces to launch the Women’s Voices Theater Festival. The inaugural event will take place over eight weeks...
Women Win Nearly a Third of Sundance Awards
The 2014 Sundance Film Festival came to a close yesterday, culminating in a two-hour awards ceremony hosted by Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally. Women directors, editors, cinematographers, and...
Shonda Rhimes “Honored” and “Pissed Off” at DGA Awards
Nary a week goes by at Women and Hollywood when we don’t devote a post to Shonda Rhimes. That’s because the Scandal showrunner is one of the few industry insiders with the courage and the...
Trailer Watch: Angelina Jolie in New Maleficent Spot
“There is evil in this world. Hatred. Revenge,” Maleficent declares in the new Maleficent trailer. Then she giggles — not girlishly or coquettishly, but with ironic bemusement, like...
Monday Morning Pick You Up: Carole King and Sara Bareilles Duet at the Grammys
To help get your work week off on the right foot, check out this inspirational performance from rock music legend (and recipient of the 2014 Music Cares honor) Carole King and the amazingly talented...
Hollywood Feminists Fire Back at Mike Huckabee’s “Gender Victim” Comments
Who the hell knows what Mike Huckabee meant when he claimed that Republicans want to “empower [women] to be something other than victims of their gender” at a Republican National Committee...
Lexi Alexander To Appear at Athena Film Festival to Talk About “That Blog Post”
For those of you who follow this issue and who read Women and Hollywood, a blog post from director Lexi Alexander caused a viral sensation last week. Her post An Oscar-Nominated Director Gets Real...
Weekly Update for January 24: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Run and Jump — Directed by Steph Green and Written by Ailbhe Keogan Oscar-nominated director Steph Green’s feature debut is the first great film of 2014....
Interview: Run and Jump Director Steph Green on Families in Flux and Discovering Will Forte’s Dramatic Side
The January doldrums are over. The first great movie of 2014 has arrived: Oscar-nominated director Steph Green’s Run and Jump, her feature debut. Run and Jump centers on an Irish woman named...
TV: The Staying Power of Veronica Mars
In the past year, Veronica Mars, Rob Thomas’ procedural about a high-school girl (Kristen Bell) who became a private investigator, has been back in the news cycle repeatedly. That’s not...
Producer Alix Madigan’s Sundance Keynote: Instability of Indie Film is Worth the Risk
Alix Madigan has produced some great (female-centric) films: the Anna Faris stoner vehicle Smiley Face, Debra Granik’s Jennifer Lawrence-launcher Winter’s Bone, and Lynn Shelton’s new comedy...
Slamdance Women Directors: Meet Nailah Jefferson
Born and raised in New Orleans, Nailah Jefferson created the production company Perspective Pictures in March 2010 to tell stories that shed light on little known issues. A month later, the BP oil...
Sundance Woman Directors: Meet Tracy Droz Tragos
Tracy Droz Tragos won an Emmy Award for her first documentary, Be Good, Smile Pretty, which aired on PBS’s Independent Lens and chronicled her journey to know her father, who was killed in...
Five More Women-Directed Films Sold at Sundance
Some deals for women directors coming out of Sundance. Sony Pictures Classics is the new home of Martha Stephens and Aaron Katz’s Land Ho! In her interview with Women and Hollywood, Stephens...
Disney Helps More Girls See Themselves Onscreen with Multilingual “Let It Go” Video
There’s a small but crucial scene in Frozen that’s merits some discussion. It occurs early in the film during Anna’s song “For the First Time in Forever,” when she imagines she might meet...
Mark Ruffalo Defends Abortion on Roe v. Wade Anniversary
In commemoration of yesterday’s 41st anniversary of the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion across the United States, Mark Ruffalo has released a video with the Center for Reproductive...
The Big O: The Truth Behind Emma Thompson and Oscar Isaac’s Oscar Snubs? Lack of Tragedy
When this year’s Oscar nominations were announced, there were a few surprising omissions on the ballot, especially in the acting categories. You wouldthink, for instance, that the 6,000 or so...
TV: Rashida Jones Leaves Pawnee for Tribeca
When Parks and Recreation star Rashida Jones announced last year that she’d be leaving America’s most civic-minded sitcom, she had her choice of projects to choose from. Deadline reports that,...
Infographic: Women in Filmmaking at Sundance
Though the 2014 lineup at the Sundance was disappointingly low on women directors, the festival remains committed to advancing the ranks of women directors in the industry. Two years ago, Sundance...
Capturing Truth through Fiction in South Africa
The story of how I found my way to film is a funny one. I was living in Paris, and I had no money. I was working as a waitress and a babysitter, pretty much doing everything I could to feed myself....
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Sydney Freeland
Drunktown’s Finest is Sydney Freeland’s feature film debut and her response to a news story that characterized her hometown of Gallup, New Mexico, as “Drunktown, USA.” She has worked for a...
TV: Six More Makers Docs to Air on PBS This Summer
PBS will air six documentaries about women’s progress in the divergent fields of war, space, comedy, business, Hollywood, and politics starting in June. Oscar-nominated filmmakers Rachel Grady...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Geetu Mohandas
Geetu Mohandas is a filmmaker based in India. In 2009, along with her director/cinematographer husband Rajeev Ravi, she formed Unplugged, which produced her first short fiction film, “Kelkkunnundo...
Trailer Watch: Freida Mock’s Anita
“Once I got subpoena’d, I knew what I had to do. I’m gonna tell what happened to me.” Directed by Oscar nominee Freida Mock, Anita focuses on the Clarence Thomas hearings, particularly the...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Rose McGowan
Actress-turned-director Rose McGowan (Grindhouse, TV’s Charmed) was born in Italy and raised on a steady diet of pasta, European cinema, and classic films. Along with her cinephile father, she...
Sundance Women Producers: Meet Mel Eslyn
The One I Love producer Mel Eslyn began working on films and music videos in the Midwest in her teens, working her way up through the set hierarchies. Years later, she relocated to Seattle,...
Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child Sold at Sundance
Just a couple of days after it acquired Lynn Shelton’s Laggies, A24 (which has a good track record for releasing women directed films- last year they released Sally Potter and Sofia Coppola) has...
TV: Amy Poehler Signs Three-Year NBC Deal and Hires Natasha Lyonne for Comedy Pilot
Amy Poehler is flexing her producer’s muscles. We announced earlier this year that the Parks and Rec star was producing Broad City, a Comedy Central vehicle for comediennes Ilana Glazer and Abbi...
Sundance Women Producers: Meet Katie Stern
Listen Up Philip producer Katie Stern grew up in New York City. At a young age, she started making movies with her older brother, many of which have appeared on public access television. She has...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Madeleine Olnek
Madeleine Olnek is a writer and director who honed her skills in New York venues with more than 20 produced plays, all comedies. Her Sundance Film Festival shorts “Countertransference” (2009)...
Pic of the Day: Emma Thompson Continues Her Campaign Against Heels
It hasn’t been Emma Thompson’s year. Despite being feted by Meryl Streep early this awards season for her performance in Saving Mr. Banks, Thompson was snubbed for an Oscar nomination and has...
Sundance’s Women in Film Event Calls Out Hollywood Sexism, Awards $32k in Grants
There was apparently one running theme at the eighth Women in Film panel hosted by the Sundance Film Festival: entrenched industry sexism. Six women directors and producers, representing five...
No Meaningful Change Over Time in Female Filmmaker Participation at the Sundance Film Festival Among New Research Released Today at Sundance
This morning, Women in Film and the Sundance Institute released the next stage of research on female filmmakers. Last year they released an unprecedented first phase in the work that began the...
Lynn Shelton’s Laggies Sold at Sundance
Two days after its Friday premiere at Sundance, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that director Lynn Shelton’s arrested-development dramedy Laggies had been bought by A24 for approximately...
To Sue Or Not to Sue: What History Teaches Us About Equality in Hollywood
When the Director Guild of America’s Women’s Steering Committee was officiallyestablished in 1979, women comprised just 0.5% of episodic TV directoremployment. One half of one percent! According...
Sundance Women Producers: Meet Mynette Louie
Producer Mynette Louie has worked on the films Children of Invention, Cold Comes the Night, and California Solo. Louie is also the current president of Gamechanger Films, which funds women-directed...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Martha Stephens
Raised in the hills of Appalachian Kentucky, Land Ho! co-director Martha Stephens longed to create films celebrating and investigating her native land and people. A graduate of the North Carolina...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia
Web Junkie co-directors Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia came to work together on a documentary about Internet addiction out of a shared curiosity and anxiety about the effects that our technological...
Sundance Women Producers: Meet Galt Niederhoffer
Film producer, director, and novelist Galt Niederhoffer is a Sundance veteran, with eight Park City selections or award winners to her name. She is a producer on Maya Forbes’ Infinitely Polar...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Maya Forbes
Maya Forbes was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She moved to Los Angeles in 1990 to write for film and television. She began her career on HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show and has since...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Jennifer M. Kroot
To Be Takei documentarian Jennifer M. Kroot previously directed the documentary feature It Came from Kuchar, about the legendary underground filmmaking twins George and Mike Kuchar, which screened...
More Women Directors Announced for Berlinale
Sadly, not a whole lot of them. Of the 36 films screening at the Berlin International Film Festival’s Panorama event, “an overview of current international fictional-feature production,” only...
Weekly Update for January 17: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Band of Sisters (doc) — Written and Directed by Mary Fishman “I did exactly what the church asked me — and now, the church is looking at me like, where have...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Chelsea McMullan
Chelsea McMullan is a Canadian filmmaker and artist whose films have screened on the international festival circuit and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. McMullan is a member of...
Sundance Women Directors: Lynn Shelton on the Question that Shapes Her Work and the Beauty of Sundance
Laggies director Lynn Shelton is best known as the writer-director of the acclaimed comedy Your Sister’s Sister, starring Emily Blunt, which screened at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Her 2009...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Gillian Robespierre
Gillian Robespierre has written and directed several short films, including “Chunk” in 2006, which follows an overweight teen forced to attend fat camp, and “Obvious Child” in 2009. Her...
What Happened to the Women Directed Films from the Sundance Class of 2013?
The 2013Sundance Film Festival was notable for the number of women directors,particularly in the U.S. Dramatic and Documentary Competitions — where halfwere female filmmakers. As Sundance 2014...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Valerie Veatch
Love Child director Valerie Veatch made her directorial debut at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival with the hit Me @ The Zoo (co-directed by Chris Moukarbel). Her highly anticipated follow-up, Love...