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Heidi Ewing, Dawn Porter Among Awardees of Catapult Film Fund
Women directors comprised five of the seven awardees of the Catapult Film Fund, which “provides development funding to documentary filmmakers who have a compelling story to tell, have secured...
Directing the Future Panelists Are Beating the Odds
According to an oft-cited statistic, women comprise only 9%of directors in the film industry. But the participants of the “Directing theFuture” panel at Pepperdine University School of Law’s...
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...
Latest Forbes Post: Year End Roundtables and Best of Lists Highlight the Lack of Gender Diversity in Films
Here’s my latest Forbes Post: The awards season is another time of the year where you can literally feel the gender disparity of behind the scenes personnel in the film business. While the summer...
AFI: Roundup of the Women-Directed Foreign Language Oscar Entries
This year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Filmwill be chosen from a field of 76 entries, with each feature submitted to theAcademy by its respective country. Sixteen of these...
Angelina Jolie, Angela Lansbury Honored at the Governors Awards
Angelina Jolie and Angela Lansbury, along with Steve Martin and costume designer Piero Tosi, received honorary Oscars at the Governors Award last night. Awarded by the Board of Governors of the...
Clio Barnard, Claire Denis Awarded at Stockholm Film Fest
The Selfish Giant is quickly becoming Women and Hollywood most anticipated film of 2014. News arrived from Stockholm yesterday that Selfish director Clio Barnard was bestowed yet another...
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...
Weekly Update for November 15: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Currently Playing The Broken Circle BreakdownAss Backwards — Written by Casey Wilson and June Diane Raphael Reaching for the Moon — Co-Written by Julie Sayres, Carmen...
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...
Female Filmmakers Sweep Half of AFI Awards
Women directors received half of the awards presented at the closing of the American Film Institute Film Festival in Los Angeles yesterday. British filmmaker Clio Barnard, whose first narrative...
5 Things Melissa Rosenberg Should Do with Her Jessica Jones Show for Netflix
It was terrific to get the news last week that Marvel, which has devoted its big-screen franchises to the adventures of white dudes in Spandex and body armor, would not just be producing four new...
Friday Fun: Flash Mob Recreates ‘When Harry Met Sally’
No, not Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal’s chatty, batty twelve-year courtship. Twenty women from a performance group called Improv Everywhere, a “New York City-based prank collective that causes...
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...
Trailer Watch: Francesca Gregorini’s The Truth About Emanuel
Lots of people have from mommy issues, but none quite like Emanuel’s (Kaya Scodelario). In the dramatic thriller The Truth About Fishes (formerly Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes), the angry,...
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...
The Big O: When it Comes to Oscar Dames, Dench Rules
According toRodgers and Hammerstein, there is nothing like a dame. According toOscar, few dames are grander than Judi Dench. Of the 14 Academy Award-nominated actresses who have held the lofty...
Lily Allen Calls Out Sexism in the Music Industry, Undermines Her Message with Questionable Video
Lily Allen has staked a claim in mainstream music as pop’s most adorable tomboy, first arriving on YouTube in a flouncy dress and mall sneakers. Her public persona balances the sweetness in her...
TV: Maya Rudolph to Return to NBC in Variety Show
SNL comedienne and Up All Night actress Maya Rudolph is the latest entertainer to attempt a resuscitation of the primetime variety show. She and SNL producer Lorne Michaels have sold a vehicle for...
A Report from the Diversify Summit
Screen International and Broadcast hosted a diversity summit at the BAFTA headquarters yesterday, Diversify — Improving Diversity in Film and TV. The event was sold out and attendees were...
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...
Judi Dench Releases Funny or Die Video in Ongoing Philomena Ratings Battle (UPDATED)
UPDATE: Hours after Judi Dench and Steve Coogan’s Funny or Die video was released, the MPAA backed down and lowered Philomena’s rating from R to PG-13. Read the original post below. Philomena...
AFI Women Directors: Meet Stephanie Martin
Born in Sao Paulo and raised mostly in Buenos Aires, Stephanie discovered her passion for film while at Wellesley College where she studied French and Political Science. Following graduation,...
Trailer Watch: Divergent
Teenage girls of the future continue to get the raw deal in Divergent, the big-screen adaptation of Veronica Roth’s best-selling YA trilogy. Shailene Woodley plays Tris, a “divergent” who...
Trailer Watch: Angelina Jolie as Maleficent
Angelina Jolie is all cheekbones and horns in the new teaser trailer for Disney’s Maleficent. The film follows the Wicked template of lending sympathy for the evil queen/stepmother/middle-aged...
Round-Up of October Movies Directed by Women
There areseveral milestones among the 22 films directed by women that were released inOctober. Among the ten features is Carrie,the first wide-release (3,157 theaters) studio film from a female...
Sunlight Jr. and Sherrybaby Director Laurie Collyer Shines a Light on the Unseen America
Laurie Collyer is best known for writing and directing Sherrybaby, for which actress Maggie Gyllenhaal received a Golden Globe nomination. She also directed the documentary Nuyorican Dream (1999)....
AFI Women Directors: Meet Patrice Toye
Patrice Toye was born in 1967 and studied film in Brussels. She has made several short films, documentaries and television programs. In 1995, she wrote the feature Tin Soldier with the support of...
My Latest Forbes Column: A Closer Look at the Bechdel Rating
Last week four non-profit movie theatres in Sweden (yes, Sweden again) released a ratings system named after the Bechdel Test. For those uninitiated, to pass the Bechdel Test, a film has to have two...
AFI Women Directors: Meet Karlyn Michelson
Karlyn Michelson is an Emmy Award-winning multimedia producer and video journalist. (AFI) Charlie Victor Romeo is playing AFI as part of the American Independents program. Women and Hollywood:...
Quote of the Day: Shonda Rhimes
Today in “duh tinged with schadenfreude,” Shonda Rhimes reveals that gray-haired male ABC execs have no idea what women are like or what they want to watch. In an interview to NPR,...
Lena Dunham and Mindy Kaling Talk Feminism, Role Models, and Being the Boss
Yesterday, RollingStone.com published a revealing excerpt from Rookie: Yearbook Two, the second book from Tavi Gevinson’s teen site, in which Lena Dunham (HBO’s Girls) interviewed Mindy Kaling...
Study: PG-13 Movies Have More Gun Violence than R-Rated Ones; Sex Still Taboo
On the heels of yesterday’s story about Judi Dench and Harvey Weinstein’s battle against the logo-phobic pearl-clutchers at the MPAA comes another example of the rating board’s skewed...
Nancy Meyers and Reese Witherspoon to Team Up for Workplace Comedy
Actress Reese Witherspoon is in talks to star in writer-director Nancy Meyers’ next project, a workplace comedy currently titled The Intern. (The name will probably be changed so as to avoid...
(You Oughta Know) There Will Be an Alanis Morisette Musical on Broadway
Alanis Morisette is riding the current wave of nineties nostalgia to Broadway. Her 1995 alt-rock album Jagged Little Pill, which helped usher angry rock chicks into mainstream radio and led to a...
Actresses Tackle a Difficult Subject in The Book Thief
Hereis a small fact: You are going to die. Witha first line like that in a novel, you know it’s going to be serious. Andimportant. The Book Thief,based on the book by Martin Zusak, opened...
AFI Women Directors: Meet Jillian Mayer
Jillian Mayer steeps her artistic practice in the verisimilitude of a generation that came of age in the 1980s. Her video works have premiered at galleries and museums internationally and at film...
TV Roundup: Patricia Cornwell, Zooey Deschanel, and Nahnatchka Khan Sell Shows to Networks
Bestselling author Patricia Cornwell, New Girl star Zooey Deschanel, and Don’t Trust the B — — in Apt 23 creatorNahnatchka Khan are among several women who recently announced...
Jennifer Lynch, Mary Harron to Contribute to All-Female Horror Anthology
There’s no shortage of women in horror — on screen or in theater seats, that is. “We know that women make up about half of the audience for horror films, and yet the female creative voice...
Judi Dench takes on the MPAA for ‘Philomena’
In the superb upcoming drama Philomena, where an elderly woman embarks on atrans-Atlantic search for a son who was adopted against her will fifty years previously, star Judi Dench doesn’t kill...
Trailer Watch: ‘Veronica Mars’ Looks like ‘Choosing Boyfriends: The Movie’
VeronicaMars is one of the best female characters to arrive on the pop culturallandscape in the past decade. Played with indelible humor by Kristen Bell,Veronica was a too-smart-to-be-cynical teen...
Directors Susanne Bier and Clio Barnard Nominated by European Film Awards, British Indie Awards
Award season is often the most frustrating time for Women and Hollywood, with so many nominations and prizes distributed to the same stubbled faces we see every few years. The European Film Awards...