ALL POSTS
The Cast of ‘Ghostbusters’ Reboot Chosen — McCarthy, Wiig, Jones, and McKinnon to Suit Up
The casting of an all-female Ghostbusters reboot has been the source of much speculation since the project was first announced. Now we finally have word on which women will be headlining the Paul...
Jane Fonda: “We Have to Shame the Studios for Being So Gender-Biased”
Only 7% of the top 250 films last year were directed by women, according to the latest Celluloid Ceiling Report from the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State....
Ava DuVernay’s Next Picture to be Hurricane Katrina Drama with Star David Oyelowo
Ava DuVernay has lined up her follow-up to Selma. The ascendant filmmaker will collaborate with Selma star David Oyelowo for the third time in an untitled love story and murder mystery set against...
Guest Post: How the Female-Heavy Crew Making ‘Little Accidents’ Probably Saved the Production
Although it was never an intentional goal, one of the best aspectsof making Little Accidents was making a film with so many strong women up anddown the ladder of production and finance. I became...
‘Song One’ Director Kate Barker-Froyland on Rewriting Her Script for Anne Hathaway, Being Typecast as a “Woman Director”
Song One begins with anthropology grad student Franny (Anne Hathaway) immersed in Moroccan culture. We witness her carefully observing local rituals and taking meticulous notes. The drama chronicles...
Trailer Watch: How College Campuses Became ‘The Hunting Ground’ for Rapists
The first trailer has arrived for The Hunting Ground, and it is heartbreaking and frustrating, which is to be expected given its subject matter: the ubiquity of sexual assault on U.S. campuses and...
Guest Post: Earning My Invitation into the Highly Secretive, Male-Dominated Fraternity of Magicians
Ricky Jay, the subject of my American Mastersdocumentary DeceptivePractice (premieres Friday, January23 at 9 PM on PBS), told me that the field of sleight of hand is one of theworld’s few true...
The Big O: Ava DuVernay’s Sisterhood of Un-Nominated Women Directors — and How They’ve Fared Since
As the country celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this week, it was difficult not to think about what could have been when the nominations for the 87th Academy Awards were announced last...
Guest Post: ‘It Happened Here’: Documenting Rape Culture on College Campuses
I’ve been adocumentary filmmaker for over 40 years, and in that span I have crafted film on topicsas diverse as the Barbie doll, the New York Mets, restorative justice, breastcancer, and people...
Guest Post: #OscarSoWhite Includes the Documentary Category, Too
The 2015 Oscarnominations upset many people. When the Academy nominated the highlyregarded film Selma for Best Picture but snubbed its African-American femaledirector, Ava DuVernay, publications as...
Suffragettes, Action Heroines, and BDSM: Most Anticipated Films By and About Women in 2015
Our 2014 end-of-year coverage highlighted the good and the bad for women and Hollywood in 2014. As we usher in a new year, let’s focus on some of the exciting female-centric films that await us in...
2015 Golden Globes: Fey, Poehler, Fonda, Tomlin, Moore, Adams, Arquette, and Gyllenhaal Speak Out for Women
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler set the theme for the 2015 Golden Globes in more ways than one last night. Perhaps it was Fey or Poehler’s gender-conscious jokes the two years before — or maybe it...
Tig Notaro Gets Her Own HBO Special
Grammy-nominated comedienne Tig Notaro will appear in her first HBO special later this year. Notaro will record an all-new standup performance before a live audience in the coming months. A guest...
Women Directed 17 of the Top 250 Grossing Films of 2014
Female directors accounted for only 17 of the top 250 grossing films of 2014 — a mere 6.8%. As paltry as this number is, it represents a minor improvement from 2013, when women comprised 6% of...
Quote of the Day: Rose McGowan
Rose McGowan said what we’re all thinking at the New York Film Critics Circle awards ceremony earlier this week when she urged for more films from women directors while accepting the group’s...
The A to Z of Women in Film in 2014: Part 1
In some ways, it’s been a year like any other. Some extraordinary female talent has broken through. Some miraculous, female-led stories have been told. And yet the industry as a whole has done its...
Ava DuVernay Becomes First African American Woman Nominated for Best Director Golden Globe
From my latest Forbes post on the importance of Ava DuVernay’s historic nomination: One of the most important parts of seeing Ava DuVernay’s nomination is the visibility that she will get on a...
Manohla Dargis Thrusts Ava DuVernay into the Best Director Race
In this Sunday’s NY Times Arts & Leisure section, one of the Grey Lady’s chief film critics, Manohla Dargis, forcefully made the case for Selma director Ava DuVernay to get recognized in the...
Pulitzer-Winning Playwright Marsha Norman on Trapped Girls and the Perils of New Play Development
Crossposted with permission from The Interval. “I’ve become an activist, which was kind of a surprise to me. I thought it was going to be enough that I do it [write, succeed]; that my example...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Meghan O’Hara — ‘In Country’
Meghan O’Hara is a San Francisco-based filmmaker and educator. She is a 2014 Fellow of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and was named one of the 10 Filmmakers to Watch in 2014 by...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Mary Dore — ‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’
Mary Dore is an award-winning documentary producer who brings an activist perspective to her films. Dore grew up in Auburn, Maine, and began her career working with a Boston film collective that...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Geeta V. Patel — ‘Meet the Patels’
Geeta V. Patel is writer/director of the upcoming feature film Mouse. Patel made her directorial debut with the documentary war thriller Project Kashmir, which led to directing fellowships at...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Rachel Lears — ‘The Hand That Feeds’
RachelLears’ most recent feature documentary, TheHand That Feeds, co-directed with Robin Blotnick, won the audience awardfor best feature at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2014, Best of...
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Wanda Sykes, Dawn Ostroff Among 2014 Women in Film and Television Awardees
For its 34th year, the New York Women in Film and Television’s Muse Awards will honor Maggie Gyllenhaal, Wanda Sykes, Conde Nast Entertainment president (and former CW head) Dawn Ostroff, and...
DOC NYC Directors: Meet Andrea B. Scott — ‘Florence, Arizona’
Andrea B. Scott is a Brooklyn-based documentary filmmaker, editor, and writer. She was an editor and an associate producer on A Place at the Table, directed by Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush,...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Sarah Teale & Lisa F. Jackson — ‘Grazers: A Cooperative Story’
Sarah Teale hasproduced a number of films for HBO, including the recent four-part series TheWeight of the Nation, which was nominated for a Primetime Emmy; Dealing Dogs(Emmy-nominated for Best...
Weekly Update for November 7: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Actress (Docudrama) Brandy Burre had a recurring role on HBO’s The Wire when she gave up her career to start a family. When she decides to reclaim her life as an actor,...
EXCLUSIVE: ShortsHD Celebrates Women Filmmakers with ‘100 Films By Her’ Month
ShortsHD, a high-definition cable network dedicated to short movies, will celebrate women directors this month with a 100 Films By Her special. Programming will consist of works from established and...
November 2014 Film Preview
The month of November arrives under thesign of the Mockingjay, promising the keenly anticipated return of KatnissEverdeen to our screens in The HungerGames: Mockingjay — Part 1. The hype has...
Trailer Watch: Ana Lily Amirpour’s Iranian Vampire Western ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night’
We’ve been hearing raves about A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival back in January. And now first-time filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour, who was nominated...
Playwright Katori Hall to Direct Film Version of ‘Hurt Village’
Katori Hall, the Olivier Award-winning playwright of The Mountaintop, will direct a screen adaptation of another one of her works. Hall will helm Hurt Village, her 2011 play about the dissolution...
Review: Keira Knightley Charms in Lynn Shelton’s Sweet Seattle Comedy ‘Laggies’
“Suck it up, go with your gut.” That’s the advice Seattle late-twentysomething Megan (Keira Knightley) gives to adolescent Annika (Chloe Grace Moretz) at the end of Lynn Shelton’s most...
43% of 2014 DOC NYC Features Directed by Women, But Where Are the Films About Women?
It’s generally not hard to find female-directed features at documentary film festivals, since women filmmakers face less obstacles in the nonfiction world. This year’s DOC NYC Film Festival...
Weekly Update for October 17: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Dear White People Sam White (Tessa Thompson) is a media studies major and student filmmaker determined to tell the world that things are far from where they should be. She...
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...
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...
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,...
October 2014 Film Preview
October may be the time of ghosts and ghouls, not that you’d know it from the many diverse film offerings made by and starring women this month. But we definitely start with one ghoul: the one in...
Women in Film, Indiegogo, and the Black List Launch New Award for Young Female Filmmakers
When it comes to fostering female directing talent, support and mentorship can’t come soon enough. To that end, a group of producers, media companies, and film organizations have come together to...
Watch: A Mother is Terrorized by Her Child’s Favorite Book in ‘The Babadook’
When it debuted at Sundance this year, writer-director Jennifer Kent’s debut, The Babadook, became one of the festival’s breakout hits, with critics praising the film as a “flat-out...
Book Excerpt: How Nicole Holofcener Got Her Debut Feature, ‘Walking and Talking,’ Made
The following is an excerpt from independent film producer Ted Hope’s new book Hope for Film, which was published August 5, 2014. Nicole Holofcener alwaysmade it clear to me that she would not...
Rose McGowan Brings Female Film Heroines to LA Theater
Actress Rose McGowan has big plans for the next stage of her career as a filmmaker. Her first step? An Oscar. Back in January, McGowan’s directorial debut, the 17-minute short Dawn, played at...
Elisabeth Moss to Star in Broadway Revival of Wendy Wasserstein’s ‘Heidi Chronicles’
It’s hard to think of another actress with a better career than Elisabeth Moss does today. She was utterly fantastic in Jane Campion’s Sundance miniseries Top of the Lake, steals every scene...
Guest Post: Living With and Making Films About Dementia
Let’s be completely honest. Professional women are still expected to be faultless and competitive, make it look effortless, and downplay the demands of family and life outside of work. But every...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Michelle Latimer — ‘The Underground’
Michelle Latimer, writer and director of the dramatic short The Underground, is an actor, filmmaker, and curator. Her award-winning documentary Aliaspremiered at the 2013 Hot Docs Film Festival...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Sophie Barthes — ‘Madame Bovary’
A Columbia University graduate, Sophie Barthes was born in France and grew up in the Middle East and South America. Barthes has just completed an English adaptation of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame...
Seattle Fest Announces Women in Cinema Lineup: Lynn Shelton, Hannah Espia, Jessica Yu, More
The Seattle International Film Festival has released the lineup for its Women in Cinema showcase. The showcase will be a four-day event at SIFF 2015, and will include 12 features and documentaries,...
TIFF Women DIrectors: Meet Shonali Bose — ‘Margarita, With a Straw’
Shonali Bose was raised in Calcutta, Mumbai, and Delhi. She received her BA from Delhi University and her MA from Columbia before earning her MFA at UCLA film school. She made her feature debut as...
TIFF 14 First Thoughts — The Appetizer Before the Meal
I’ve been on the ground here in Toronto for three days. This is my fourth year, and it’s the first time that the first couple of days didn’t feel like I was going out of my mind. There are a...
Weekly Update for September 5: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening Rocks in My Pockets — Written and Directed by Signe Baumane (Opened September 3) Rocks in My Pockets is Signe Baumane’s autobiographical “funny film about...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Laura Nix — ‘The Yes Men Are Revolting’
Laura Nix is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles.She has over seventy productioncredits and has directed the featurefilm The Politics of Fur (2002) and twofeature documentaries, The Light inHer Eyes...