ALL POSTS
Interview with Jill Soloway – Writer and Director of Afternoon Delight
Women and Hollywood got the chance to interview Jill Soloway about her film Afternoon Delight, which she wrote and directed. Afternoon Delight opens in theaters on August 30th. Women...
Cross Post: Meet The Butler’s Powerhouse Producer
Sheila Johnson is a highly successful businesswoman, entrepreneur, producer, and philanthropist, with achievements and accolades far too numerous to list. I have the honor of serving on the...
Interview with Liz W. Garcia – Writer and Director of The Lifeguard
Women and Hollywood got the chance to speak to Liz W. Garcia, writer and director of The Lifeguard, which opens in theaters on August 30th. The film is also available on ITunes now. Women and...
Samuel Goldwyn Films Acquires Anita Hill Documentary
Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired the U.S. rights to Anita, the documentary about Anita Hill. Directed by Freida Mock, Anita follows the life of Anita Hill–looking at her experiences...
Trailer Watch: Mother of George – Written by Darci Picoult
Mother of George, written by Darci Picoult, was a Sundance hit with massive praise for Danai Gurira’s standout performance. It’s gorgeous cinematography took home the top award. Gurira...
Women Directed Documentaries on HBO’s Fall Line Up
HBO announced their Fall 2013 documentary line up and it’s ruled by women directed features. They’ll be airing docs from Whoopi Goldberg, Andrea and Sean Fine and Cynthia Wade....
New Trailer Watch: After Tiller Directed by Martha Shane and Lana Wilson
I saw After Tiller when it premiered at Sundance. It is a film that needs to be seen and is so relevant to our times and the continued assaults on women’s reproductive freedom....
Cross Post: Heroines of Cinema: The 10 Most Exciting Young Female Directors in the World Today
This week, the British Film Institute released statistics revealing that a mere 14 feature films were directed by women in the UK last year, compared to 164 by men....
Sticking Together
Having recently completed my first feature film, Arcadia, I’m occasionally asked in q&a’s what my experience has been directing a feature as a woman. In truth, I don’t often...
Sony Pictures Classics Only Counting on Women for Austenland
Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) has made a calculated decision that the audience for the upcoming Jerusha Hess (who co-wrote Napoleon Dynamite) directed film will be predominantly women. They are...
Outfest Review Roundup: Road Trips, True Love and Iconic Queer Memoirs
This year’s Outfest Los Angeles has yet again proven why they are one of the best LGBT film festivals in the country. They’ve had a spectacular line up of LGBT films including a few we...
Cross Post: Why Women Should Get The Jobs
In a recent episode of the television series Mad Men, two advertising agencies merge. Each agency has a single woman on their creative team and one woman is told she’s...
Directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal Use Kickstarter to Replace PBS Funding
Documentarians Tia Lessin and Carl Deal made a big wave with their film, Trouble the Waters about Hurricane Katrina. They got funding through PBS to make their new film that examined the role...
Ava DuVernay To Take on Martin Luther King Jr. Biopic Selma
Ava DuVernay has signed on with Plan B (Brad Pitt’s company) and Pathe UK to helm Selma, a biopic on civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. The film will focus on the voting rights...
Cross Post: Dear Hollywood: Hiring Women Directors Could Rescue the Superhero Movie. Love, Half the Human Race
The superhero picture is suffering from female trouble, and not just because a franchise based on Wonder Woman keeps going in and out of development limbo. Any creature on screen minus a...
Trailer Watch – The Lifeguard – Directed by Liz W. Garcia
We wrote last week about Liz W. Garcia’s amazing and perfect quote about women working as directors in a recent interview. Garcia’s latest film, The Lifeguard, premiered at Sundance and...
Trailer Watch: Afternoon Delight – Directed by Jill Soloway
Jill Soloway’s directorial debut, Afternoon Delight, was a big hit out of Sundance with great reviews and winning the Dramatic Directing Award. The film follows Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) a...
Hollywood’s Glass Ceiling: Why Doesn’t the Film Industry Trust Women?
Here’s a piece I wrote for CNN’s Leading Women section: It would be wonderful to say that in 2013 things were looking up for women in Hollywood — both onscreen and behind the...
Interview with Ava DuVernay – Director of Venus Vs.
Venus Vs.shows an unexpected side of Venus Williams. The film is all about the fight for equal pay for women in tennis. Billie Jean King led the charge in her day and the US Open started...
Quote of the Day: Liz W. Garcia – The Obstacles That Women Face in Hollywood Are Particularly Difficult Because Many Can’t Be Seen, Or Easily Identified…
I came across this interview from Go Into the Story with writer/director Liz W. Garcia whose film The Lifeguard premiered at Sundance in 2013 and will be coming out on August 30th. It’s a...
Trailer Watch: Touchy Feely – Directed by Lynn Shelton
Lynn Shelton’s latest, Touchy Feely, premiered at Sundance earlier this year. We got a chance to speak with Shelton at the festival about the film, which focuses on Abby (Rosemarie DeWitt), a...
Weekly Update June 14: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Weekend The Bling Ring – Written and Directed by Sofia Coppola The Bling Ring may be the most anxiety producing film I...
Trailer Watch: In A World… Written, Directed and Starring Lake Bell
Lake Bell’s directorial debut came out strong from Sundance with great reviews and winning the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. Finally, we’ve now got a trailer for the film. This was one...
Women Directed and Centric Films Playing at Human Rights Watch Film Festival
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival kicks off on June 13th with a great line up of women directed and centric films. Held in New York, the festival will be showing 18 documentaries and two fictional...
Trailer Watch: Blackfish – Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite
The official trailer for Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s Sundance hit, Blackfish, was recently released. Intense is the only way to describe it. It feels a lot like The Cove about dolphins in...
Heather Graham Talks About Roles for Women, Sexuality and Expectations
Last week, we reported that Michelle Rodriguez, fed up with the writing of female characters, has been doing her own writing. And it looks like Heather Graham is doing the same thing. In an...
Lake Bell On Women Directors: If You Happen to Have a Vagina, That’s Okay
Lake Bell, director of the anticipated summer film In A World, spoke in an interview for her latest film that she acts in, Black Rock, directed by Katie Aselton, about being a woman director in...
HBO Summer Documentary Series Very Women-Centric
Last week, HBO announced their summer documentary series and it is very women-centric from the content to the majority of women directors of these films. Some of the women-centric docs include Pussy...
Three Women-Centric Films Opening on August 16th
If you survive the summer of male centric super hero and action films, mark your calendars for August 16th because three women-centric films will be opening. While August has been in the past seen as...
Trailer Watch: Emanuel and The Truth About Fishes – Written and Directed by Francesca Gregorini
Francesca Gregorini’s Emanuel and The Truth About Fishes made its debut at Sundance. The film follows Emanuel (Kaya Scodelario) who lives with her father (Alfred Molina) and stepmother (Frances...
Vulture Includes No Women on 20 Essential Documentary List, Thom Powers Counters
Recently, Vulture listed their 20 Essential Documentaries of the century. Documentaries from Michael Moore, Werner Herzog and Morgan Spurlock made the cut, but not a single women-directed documentary...
A Look at the Women’s Films Opening in the Summer of 2013
With the arrival of Entertainment Weekly’s Summer Movie Preview last week, the summer blockbuster season is officially creeping upon us. As always, be prepared for explosions, superheroes,...
Poster Premiere: A River Changes Course – Kalyanee Mam
Kalyanee Mam’s A River Changes Course is a documentary that chronicles the lives of three Cambodian families who are dealing with the struggle to maintain their traditional ways of life while...
Jane Campion to Receive Carrosse d’Or
At next month’s Cannes Film Festival, Jane Campion will receive the Carrosse d’Or. Campion is serving as president of the Cinefondation and the short film jury at the festival....
SXSW Interview with Hannah Fidell, Lindsay Burdge and Kim Sherman of A Teacher
A Teacher is a tense, unflinching piece of film that gets under your skin and refuses to let go. It’s the tightly drawn portrait of Diana (Lindsay Burdge), a young high school teacher who is...
Cross Post: Women Film Festivals: Do We Need Them?
Recently Ottawa International Animation Festival director and programmer Chris Robinson asked in a private Facebook message to 10 female animators what they felt about gender specific festivals....
Anne Hathaway and Chloe Grace Moretz Sign onto Lynn Shelton’s Laggies
When Women and Hollywood interviewed Lynn Shelton earlier in the year at Sundance, she mentioned her next project, Laggies, written by Andrea Seigel. Shelton described it about a twentysomething...
Magnolia Pictures Picks Up Lynn Shelton’s Touchy Feely
Magnolia Pictures has acquired the world-wide distribution rights to Lynn Shelton’s Touchy Feely. Premiering at Sundance, the film, directed and written by Shelton, follows Abby...
Trailer Watch: Top of the Lake – a Mini-Series Directed by Jane Campion
It’s always important to note when something by Jane Campion is about to be released. Next week starts a seven part mini series Top of the Lake written and directed by Campion....
Trailer Watch: Stories We Tell – Directed by Sarah Polley
Actress and now very talented director, Sarah Polley has a new documentary that premiered last fall in Toronto. Stories We Tell received a good deal of critical praise as it made its way around...
Interview With Ramona S. Diaz Director of Don’t Stop Believin
Don’t Stop Believin‘ is a terrific crowd pleasing documentary of the rags to riches story of Arnel Pineda who took over as the lead singer of the rock band Journey after he was spotted on...
Guest Post: Fusion Film Festival at NYU Looks Back on the State of Gender Equality in the Film Industry on its Tenth Anniversary
As was widely reported this year in the “Exploring the Barriers and Opportunities for Independent Filmmakers” study that was presented at the Sundance Film Festival, 2013 is a record year for...
Guest Post: DGA Women Directors Foment a Rebellion
This past Saturday, March 2, 2013, became an historic day as the DGA Women’s Steering Committee hosted the DGA Women of Action Summit in LA bringing together 150 female American directors for a...
Bloomberg Story On Why Women in Hollywood Can’t Get Financing
Yesterday, Bloomberg published a great article 'Why Women in Hollywood Can't Get Film Financing?' by Lauren Sandler. Sandler discusses the dismal statistics, the research out of Sundance...
Cross Post: This Is What Directors Look Like (Or at Least 9% of Them)
I attended the launch of Melissa Silverstein's book, In Her Voice: Women Directors Talking at the Athena Film Festival at Barnard College. This is a collection of interviews with over-40 female...
IFP’s Independent Filmmakers Lab Seeking New Filmmakers
IFP’s Independent Filmmakers Lab is on the lookout for new voices in film. It’s a year-long fellowship supporting new, independent filmmakers through completion, marketing and...
Trailer Watch: Two Mothers – Directed by Anne Fontaine
Anne Fontaine's Two Mothers premiered at Sundance to mixed reviews. The film follows the friendship of two mothers (Robin Wright and Naomi Watts) who both sleep with each other's extremely...
Cross Post: A Female Tarantino
As a recently decided film major midway through the fall of my sophomore year, I was sitting in the back of 511 Dodge Hall at Columbia University, idly doodling in the minutes before my Script...
Lana Wilson and Martha Shane’s After Tiller Picked Up by Oscilloscope Laboratories
The directorial debut from Lana Wilson and Martha Shane, After Tiller, has been picked up by Oscilloscope Laboratories. The documentary, which premiered at Sundance, looks at the state of third...
SXSW Adds More Women Directed Films to Schedule
SXSW has announced another round of films to their lineup, adding more films directed by women. They have also added many films written by women, such as Sundance favorite The East, co-written and...
On the Ground in Berlin
I arrived in Berlin two days ago from NY after the huge success of The Athena Film Festival. Did you hear we had a blizzard and people still came. I missed the opening weekend craziness...