ALL POSTS
Trailer Watch: Claire Danes Quits the CIA But Can’t Leave it Behind in ‘Homeland’ Season 5
When we last saw Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), she had quit the CIA and seemed committed to taking a more active role in raising her daughter Frannie. A trailer for season five of Showtime’s...
Profitable Personal Films: Nicole Holofcener’s ‘Walking and Talking”
In high school, I caught by chance Nicole Holofcener’s “Walking andTalking” (1996) on cable. I would turn on IFC and get glimpses of these amazingindie movies from the ’90s. I was a quiet...
‘The Second Mother’ Director Anna Muylaert on Why It Took 20 Years to Make Her Award-Winning Drama
Anna Muylaert is a Brazilian film and television director and screenwriter. Her first feature film, “Durval Discos” (2002), won seven awards at Festival de Gramado, including Best Film and Best...
Guest Post: From Day Job to Dream Job: How This Cupcake Girl Got a Feature Film in 6 Easy Steps
A lot ofpeople in Hollywood have a day job and work as writers, actors, directors, etc., by night. Well, I was justthe same, working at Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills, when it occurredto me...
16% is Not a Win: Parsing the DGA’s Latest Stats on Women and Minority Directors in TV
“Female TV directors make gains,” proclaimed mainstream headlines following the DGA’s release yesterday of a report on female and minority directors in TV. If this is progress for women, color...
Quote of the Day: Maisie Williams Is Fed Up With Female Characters Being Just the “Hot Piece”
Last month, “Game of Thrones” star Maisie Williams declared, “It’s time for society to stop telling girls what they should and shouldn’t do.” In a new interview with the Evening...
TIFF Announces More Films, Incl. Works by Catherine Hardwicke, Natalie Portman, Chantal Akerman
TIFF continues to roll out additions to its lineup on a near daily basis, and thankfully many of the newly announced crop of films are helmed by women. Three female directors have been added to the...
Weekly Update for August 14: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Week Mistress America — Co-Written by Greta Gerwig — Women and Hollywood’s Pick of the Week As the titular character in 2012’s “Frances Ha,” Greta...
Guest Post: Making Period Films on a Budget and the Importance of Authentic Casting
As a feature-film writer-director, I’ve created a wide range of projects: a Western about awoman who passes as a man, a neo-noir thriller about a bedridden gossip, a musical-dramaabout an...
Trailer Watch: Alison Brie Learns About Masturbation in Dirty Rom Com ‘Sleeping with Other People’
Lainey (Alison Brie) is a serial cheater and Jake (Jason Sudeikis) is a sex addict. While they aren’t, shall we say, an ideal match, the red-band trailer for writer-director Leslye Headland’s...
Kristen Stewart and the Evolving Politics of Coming Out
To be out or not be out, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler to come out definitively and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous publicity or to take arms against the sea of labels and...
CW’s Many Female Showrunners Discuss Keeping Sexual Assault, Violence Against Women Off Their Series
Eight of the CW’s 12 female showrunners took the stage at this year’s TCAs in a display of the network’s commitment to telling stories for women, by women. Representing series as diverse as...
‘Little House on the Prairie’ Actress Melissa Gilbert Running for Congress in Michigan
Laura Ingalls Wilder has her sights set far beyond the prairies. Former “Little House on the Prairie” star Melissa Gilbert has announced that she’s running for Congress. Gilbert will be...
The 5 Women We’re Excited to See This August
It’s been a much-better-than-usual summer for women on screen. We’ve had females leading smart comedies (“Spy,” “Trainwreck”), inspiring blockbusters (“Inside Out,” “Mad Max: Fury...
Amy Schumer Gets HBO Special Teaser, Speaks Out for Gun Control at Locarno Film Fest
Another week, another round of Amy Schumer headlines. This time around, the net is abuzz with chatter of Schumer’s upcoming HBO stand-up special, which has a new “announcement teaser.”...
‘The Mindy Project’ Season 4 Gets Premiere Date, Will Feature Alt-Reality Episode, Female Friendship
The fourth season of “The Mindy Project” on Hulu will find Mindy Kaling’s self-absorbed but dedicated Dr. Mindy Lahiri pregnant and wondering what would have happened if she’d never met...
The Women of Color Heroes We Both Need and Deserve
This summer has been a pretty big one for nerd culture so far. Nerd Christmas came and went with this year’s San Diego Comic-Con”: “Ant-Man” premiered; the trailers for “Superman v....
Watch: Amy Schumer Takes on Gun Violence (VIDEO)
Amy Schumer has become a star by being one of the funniest people alive about feminism, but recent events have forced her to publicly embrace other politics as well. After a man killed and injured...
August 2015 Film Preview
Get ready: August will see the releases of a number of female-driven narratives. Furiosa may have driven out of the box office into the sunset — meaning “Mad Max: Fury Road” is now on...
‘Le Dep’ Director Sonia Bonspille Boileau on the Need for Better Representations of Indigenous Women
Two Canadian First Nation women — a director from theKanesatake Mohawk tribe and an actress from the Uashat mak Mani-Utenam community — teamed up recently to make one of the first-ever...
Director Marielle Heller Protests NC-17 Rating for ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’ in the UK
After receiving the British equivalent of a NC-17 rating from an all-male ratings board, the team behind “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” is speaking out against the perceived double standards at...
Weekly Update for July 24: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Week Unexpected — Directed by Kris Swanberg; Written by Megan Mercier and Kris Swanberg Rarely do we see stories about pregnancy represented onscreen. Rarer...
Guest Post: Why You Should Consider Embracing the Punk Rock Ethos by Editing Your Doc Yourself
Jessica Yu. Ondi Timoner. Naomi Kawase. What do these names all have in common? Yes, they’re all successful female documentarians. But theyhave something else in common. Something you may not...
The Groundbreaking Gyno-Humor of Amazon’s Realistic Rom Com ‘Catastrophe’
“Catastrophe,” the Amazon sitcom by Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney about a bi-continental couple dealing with an accidental pregnancy resulting from a casual hookup, has been called “the best...
Kris Swanberg Talks ‘Unexpected’: Female Collabs and Complicated Female Protagonists
Rarely do we see stories about pregnancy represented onscreen. Rarer still are depictions where mothers-to-be have seriously conflicted feelings about the imminent arrival of their bundles of...
Trailer Watch: FBI Trainee Is Accused of Terrorist Attack in New ABC Drama ‘Quantico’
Protecting her country has always been Alex Parrish’s (Priyanka Chopra) dream — which is why she could never have predicted the day when she’d find herself accused of “the most...
Trailer Premiere: A Mother Saves Her Daughter From Child Marriage in Pakistan’s Oscar Submission ‘Dukhtar’
“I was 15 when I got married,” a woman named Allah Rakhi (Samiya Mumtaz) says bitterly in Afia Nathaniel’s gorgeous thriller “Dukhtar.” “After that, my story ends.” Allah Rakhi is...
Guest Post: Midwives Finally Get the Spotlight They Deserve in ‘The Mama Sherpas’
After having myfirst child, I always got a lump in my throat when noting that my son was bornvia cesarean birth. Whether rational or irrational, I felt a sense of failure that my body couldn’t do...
The Art of Discovery: Jane Anderson discusses ‘Packed in a Trunk: The Lost Art of Edith Lake Wilkinson’
Jane Anderson is an award winning playwright, screenwriter and director. As well as being nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Dramatic Series for her work on the second season of...
‘Tig’ Offers an Intimate Look at the Comic’s Darkest Moments and Unexpected Joys
Overnight success in the Internet age is often equal parts skill, timing and luck. Or, in the case of comic Tig Notaro, really bad luck. While well known in comedy circles, Notaro wasn’t a...
How Girl Power Made This Year’s Comic-Con the Best in Recent Memory
Comic-Concarried me away this year — sometimes quite literally. As I exited Hall H on Sunday and was swept into a direction I didn’t mean to go by a wave ofthousands, I thought about my...
Trailer Watch: Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette Are Inseparable Besties in ‘Miss You Already’
Fresh off the news that Catherine Hardwicke will direct a $50 million romantic epic set in China comes the trailer for a different kind of romance helmed by the “Twilight” director, “Miss You...
Guest Post: The Challenges of Making Docs About Women and Why It’s So Crucial to Overcome Them
When I began work on “In The Game” almost six years ago, I assumed that in terms of funding and distribution it would be like shooting into an open goal. It was a film that was going to look at...
Susan Sarandon Takes on Politics in New TV Series ‘Graves’
Susan Sarandon’s career has spanned over 40 years, but she’s never been a series regular on a television series — until now. Sarandon has appeared in shows like “The Big C,” “30...
‘Game of Thrones’ Star Maisie Williams is Unstoppable — and Wants All Girls to Feel That They Are Too
Arya Stark is easily one of the most beloved characters in the “Game of Thrones” universe: Maisie Williams’ portrayal of the indomitable youngest Stark daughter has always stood out among the...
Why Do Sitcoms Keeping It Real Offend You?
Theother night, at a bar I was far too tired to be at, I was talking to a writerfriend (of a friend) about the ever-talked about problem of diversity inHollywood. You see, bar conversations in...
Pride, Protest and Questioning Convention: Crowdfunding Campaigns
In a media-centric society where women’svoices are often drowned by a deluge of mainstream, male-dominated narratives,it is all too easy for any alternative story to slip underneath our radar. The...
Impact Partners Launches Fellowship for Emerging Documentary Producers at DOC NYC 2015
Impact Partners, a film fund and advisory service that funds independent socially-conscious cinema, has announced the launch of a new annual Emerging Documentary Producers Fellowship. Five...
Ava DuVernay Will Not Be Directing ‘Black Panther’ for Marvel
I wasn’t very surprised to read this weekend that Ava DuVernay will not be directing a Marvel movie. Quite frankly, to me, it always seemed like wishful thinking. While last week there were lots...
Carol Leifer to Adapt Her Memoir ‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Crying’ for TV
Four-time Emmy nominee Carol Leifer will turn her life writing TV comedy into, well, a TV comedy. The stand-up comedienne AND “Modern Family” and “Devious Maids” writer will adapt her 2014...
More of June 2015’s Noteworthy Women-Centric Crowdfunding Projects: Black Beauty, Life After Death
This week’s featured women-centric crowdfunding projects may differ in style, message, and tone, but each one focuses on the self. Whether it’s finding the person you are or leaving behind the...
Weekly Update for June 26: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Week A Little Chaos — Co-Written by Alison Deegan A drama following Sabine (Kate Winslet), a strong-willed and talented landscape designer who is chosen to build...
Ten Lesbian Films for Pride Month That Show How Far We’ve Come
We’ve come a long way, baby. As celebrations continue across the country for LGBT Pride Month (especially after the Supreme Court decision making gay marriage legal in all fifty states), it’s a...
Guest Post: It Starts With a Pronoun
On June 23, my documentary, “A Self-Made Man,” aired onAmerica Reframed. After a successful festival run, this was its broadcast premiere. I used to get quite nervous when I had to speak about...
Zoe Saldana: Male Stars Get Private Jets and Yachts as Perks, Female Stars Can’t Get Child Care
Zoe Saldana recently broadened the ongoing conversation about Hollywood’s pay gap in a new interview with USA Today. While male stars are routinely treated to over-the-top extravagances, the...
Weekly Update for June 19: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Week Inside Out (Pick of the Week) Pixar’s latest film is nothing short of brilliant. Taking place within the colorful labyrinth of an 11-year-old girl’s brain,...
Why This Season of ‘Game of Thrones’ Will Be My Last
Spoilers for the show’s finale follow. I really thought I had said all I had to say about “Game of Thrones,” which concluded on Sunday with a finale that killed off one of the few likable...
Crosspost: In Hollywood’s King’s Guard, Women Directors Are All Brienne of Tarth
The following is cross-posted from Lexi Alexander’s blog with permission of the author. It has been slightly edited from the original. “All my life, men like you’ve sneered at me, and all my...
LAFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Lyn Goldfarb — ‘Bridging the Divide: Tom Bradley and the Politics of Race’
Lyn Goldfarb is an Academy Award-nominated andaward-winning filmmaker specializing in historical and social-issuedocumentaries for PBS and major cable. Her series and documentaries include “The...
LAFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Kaitlin McLaughlin — ‘Pocha (Manifest Destiny)’
Kaitlin McLaughlin is an award-winning writer/director. Her debut feature, “Pocha (Manifest Destiny),” will premiere at the 2015 Los Angeles Film Festival. She wrote and co-directed the indie...
LAFF 2015 Women Directors: Meet Åse Svenheim Drivenes — ‘Maiko: Dancing Child’
Åse Svenheim Drivenes is a Norwegian-born filmmaker who made herdirectorial debut with the documentary “Our Man in Kirkenes” (2010), which screened on NRK (Norway’s BBC) and YLE (Finland’s...