ALL POSTS
Athena Co-Chair Diablo Cody Helps Kicks Off The Athena Film Festival Tonight
As we here at Women and Hollywood gear up for the Athena Film Festival starting tonight at Barnard College, we are so excited and thankful for the press that has been circulating about the festival....
Jane Campion Named President of 2013 Cannes Short Film Jury
In exciting news from Cannes, Jane Campion has been named president of the Short Film Jury and the Cinefondation at this year’s festival. Campion (who we just interviewed at Sundance) has...
SXSW Line Up: Not Great for Women Directors
Fresh on the heels of Sundance is SXSW’s film line up. While there are some awesome women-directed films featured such as Sini Anderson's documentary, The Punk Singer, about Kathleen Hanna,...
For the First Time Women are the Majority on Berlin Film Festival Competition Jury
The 2013 Berlin International Film Festival announced this year’s competition jury. In a first for the festival, women are the majority of the voting body—comprising 4 of the 7 jury...
2012 Celluloid Ceiling Study Results Are In. Spoiler Alert: They Aren’t Great
Following the Sundance Institute & Women in Film’s unveiling of their new groundbreaking study of women directors during the Sundance Film Festival, comes Dr. Martha Lauzen's annual...
Five Minutes with Jane Campion
This week at Sundance I got to sit down for a brief couple of minutes to check in with Jane Campion who was in town promoting her six hour mini series Top of the Lake which will premiere on the...
Jane Campion and Stacie Passon’s Films Announced in Berlin Line Up
Last week, the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival announced more films to their lineup. Among the women directed films include Stacie Passon’s Concussion, which premiered at Sundance (and...
New York Times Says ‘Female Directors Gain Ground, Slowly.’ Should We Wait That Long?
The great Carrie Rickey published a piece in the New York Times this past weekend with the depressing headline ‘Female Directors Gain Ground, Slowly’. The piece reported that in 2012, by...
Women Directors and Women-Centric Films Win Big at Palm Springs Film Festival
Women and women-centric films were big winners at the 24th annual Palm Springs Film Festival. The fest began on January 3rd and ends today. The Sapphires, about an Aboriginal girl group in the 1960s,...
Elisabeth Moss and Holly Hunter Talk Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake at TCAs
At the Sundance Channel’s Television Critics Association panel last week, everyone was buzzing about Top of the Lake, Jane Campion’s epic seven part miniseries starring Elisabeth Moss and...
The Academy Snubs Kathryn Bigelow for History Making Second Best Director Nomination
I sit here ruminating, fulminating and seething, thinking about how Kathryn Bigelow could have been overlooked for a second best director nomination. I'm pretty sure the people who thought...
Athena Film Festival Announces 2013 Line Up
I am so very proud to be sharing with you the line-up for the 3rd Athena Film Festival, a celebration of women and leadership, which will take place this upcoming February 7-10 on the campus on...
Cinema Eye Honors Audience Choice Prize Has No Women Nominees
The Cinema Eye Honors for Non Fiction Filmmaking have announced their 2013 nominees for outstanding achievements in documentary filmmaking. We were troubled to note that their Audience Choice...
2012 The Year in Review
We took a look back on the news for women in and around Hollywood in 2012 and here are the topics we think resonated this past year. Let us know what you think and if we missed any big news of...
Cross Post: Heroines of Cinema: An A-Z of Women in Film in 2012
Since this column began in August, it has profiled a wide variety of women – fictional and real, contemporary and historic – whose achievements in film have been considered worthy of...
Cross Post: On Sex, Disability, and Helen Hunt in ‘The Sessions’
I hadn’t heard of Mark O’Brien before I saw The Sessions. I only knew that the film starred John Hawkes (of Deadwood, Winter’s Bone, and Martha Marcy May Marlene fame) and Helen...
Chicken & Egg Pictures Awards $220,000 in Grants to Women Filmmakers
Chicken & Egg Pictures, one of our favorite nonprofits supporting women filmmakers, announced $220,000 in grant funds to 25 documentaries directed by women. And while we usually...
The NAACP Image Awards Nominations Ignore Ava DuVernay
Dear Nominators of the NAACP Image Awards: With all due respect, what the fuck were you thinking? It's 6am here on the east coast and I am finally getting to read the nominations for the 44th...
The Hollywood Reporter’s Director Roundtable Omits Women
Yesterday was a good day with the Sundance numbers news. But we were reminded not to get overexcited about those numbers since women directors only made up 17% of the worldwide competition and...
Stacie Passon Wins Two Women Directing Awards
Stacie Passon has had a big couple of weeks. First on November 20 she won this year’s IFP Labs/Adrienne Shelly Foundation Director’s Grant for her film Concussion at the...
Guest Post: Brain Power: From Neurons to Networks: The Parallels between Children’s Brains and the Global Brain of the Internet
We’re constantly striving to push ourselves further. When we couldn’t see far enough, we invented the telescope. When we needed to speak with people who weren’t within shouting...
Watch This: Restless – Starring Charlotte Rampling, Michelle Dockery and Hayley Atwell
Well, this looks amazing. Restless, stars Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey) as Ruth, a woman who discovers that her mother, Sally (the iconic Charlotte Rampling) was a spy during World War II....
Guest Post: Women in Film Los Angeles Gets Busy
Women in Film Los Angeles (WIF) is already well known for its foundation’s scholarship programs and its unique Film Finishing Fund which helps women filmmakers from around the world to finish...
Cross Post: Ry Russo-Young Discusses John Krasinski’s First Sex Scene and Collaborating With Lena Dunham for ‘Nobody Walks’
Ry Russo-Young may have worked with her highest profile cast to date for her third directorial offering Nobody Walks, but that doesn’t mean she’s softened up. Working off an incisive and...
Interview with Coley Sohn — Writer and Director of Sassy Pants
Sassy Pants is, yes, a sassy movie starring the breakout star of MTV’s show Awkward Ashley Rickards. She plays Bethany Pruitt who is basically held prisoner in her home by her overprotective...
Guest Post: Labor of Love: How Women are Changing Documentaries
In 2010, I finished my first feature documentary, Living Downstream. Based on the book by ecologist and cancer survivor, Sandra Steingraber, the film follows Steingraber as she tries to ring the...
Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere Has Big Opening Weekend
Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere opened with the top per screen average this past weekend. As Indiewire reports, opening on just 6 screens, the film made $78,030 — about $13,005 per theater....
Middle of Nowhere Enters The Oscar Conversation
I’ve been talking about Middle of Nowhere since I saw it last June at the LA Film Festival. As I wrote in my piece Could Middle of Nowhere Be a Game Changer? this is a very special movie. I talked...
Women Do Rule the Documentary World
Last week was Independent Film Week here in NYC. There are a wide variety of events, panels and of course parties. I was able to attend the Chicken and Egg Pictures event (which was beyond packed)...
Patricia Riggen Directing Chilean Miners Film, The 33
It was announced that Patricia Riggen will be directing The 33, the story of the 33 Chilean Miners who were trapped in the San Jose Mine. The film will cover the events leading up to the collapse of...
TIFF: Interview with Judi Levine — Producer of The Sessions
The Sessions is a very lovely movie about Mark O’Brien, a writer with polio who has to spend most of his life in an iron lung and his quest to lose his virginity and find a new level of intimacy in...
Interview with Sarah Koskoff — Writer of Hello I Must Be Going
Hello I Must Be Going is the coming of age story of a 35 year old woman who had been sleepwalking through her life until her whole world is shaken when her husband leaves her. With no skills, no...
TIFF Preview: The Female Directing Masters Playing at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival
The Toronto Film Festival opens tonight. Over the next 10 days there will be a couple of hundred movies to be seen. This is one festival where you can make a decision to see films by women and see...
Interview with Ann Dowd, Star of ‘Compliance’
If you’ve ever watched any of the Law and Order series you have seen Ann Dowd. She’s been on them all. She’s a journeywoman actress, one you have seen in many places, whose work you constantly...
The LA Times Talks to Three Women Directors — Where is the Female Equivalent of Woody Allen?
Check out the LA Times piece on Ava DuVernay, Jullie Delpy and Leslye Headland. While things still suck for women directors, it kind of feels like the conversation is shifting. Maybe I am being too...
Trailer Watch: Nobody Walks — directed by Ry Russo-Young and written by Ry Russo Young and Lena Dunham
The film premiered at Sundance 2012 and will open in theatres on October 12
Drew Barrymore, Amy Berg Announce New Directing Projects
Two exciting new women-directed projects were announced this week. Amy Berg, Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, will be directing her first narrative feature. Indiewire reports that Every...
Cross Post: Sisters in Cinema: Where are the Black Women Film Directors?
Last week, the Twitterverse was gifted a priceless nugget when film director Ava DuVernay and her guild, AFFRM, released the second trailer for her anticipated movie, Middle of Nowhere. The...
Interview with Aurora Guerrero — Writer/Director of Mosquita y Mari
Mosquita y Mari writer and director Aurora Guerrero answered some questions (by email) fresh from the film recently winning Best Actress (Fenessa Pineda) and the Audience Award for Outstanding First...
Interview with Aurora Guerrero–Writer/Director of Mosquita y Mari
Mosquita y Mari writer and director Aurora Guerrero answered some questions (by email) fresh from the film recently winning Best Actress (Fenessa Pineda) and the Audience Award for Outstanding First...
In Appreciation: Lupe Ontiveros
Latina actress Lupe Ontiveros lost her battle with liver cancer last week at 69. She had a long a varied career in Hollywood beginning in 1976 when she appeared in an episode of Charlie’s...
New Trailer: Middle of Nowhere — Written and Directed by Ava Duvernay
MIDDLE OF NOWHERE | In theaters October 12, 2012 Synopsis: Winner of the Best Director Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, MIDDLE OF NOWHERE follows Ruby, a bright medical student who sets...
Trailer Watch: Detropia — Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
This doc opens September 7. More info here. Detroit’s story has encapsulated the iconic narrative of America over the last century — the Great Migration of African Americans escaping Jim...
Trailer Watch: Bachelorette — Written and Directed by Leslye Headland
This is based on the play by Leslye Headland and premiered at Sundance in January. The more I see information about this movie, the more I want to see it. I am also excited to see more of Rebel...
Interview with Lauren Greenfield, Director of Queen of Versailles
In some ways this movie’s subtitle is revenge of the 99%. The film gives you a behind the scenes look of an absurdly wealthy couple — David and Jackie Siegel — who are building the...
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Beasts of the Southern Wild is the perfect example of how to make a movie in this new post recession world. Take a great script, make it for a price and then let the movie stand on its merits. And...
Could Middle of Nowhere Be a Game Changer?
I had the privilege last week of attending the LA Film Festival gala of Middle of Nowhere written and directed by Ava Duvernay. If you recall, Ava is the first African American woman to win the best...
Indiewire Looks at the Potential Fall Festival Releases
My colleagues at Indiewire have taken an expansive look at 50 films that they would love to see hit the festival circuit this fall. There are some very interesting women’s films on the list. (All...
Interview with Susan Youssef, Director of Habibi
Susan Youssef’s film Habibi played at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Women and Hollywood: In the press notes you say your film was funded 100% through grants. Can you give advice to other...
Women’s Films Opening — June 15, 2012
Your Sister’s Sister I saw Your Sister’s Sister back at the Toronto Film Festival in September. I really liked it. I highy recommend it. The film is the story of sisters Iris and Hannah played...
Trailer Watch: For a Good Time, Call…Written By Lauren Miller and Katie Anne Naylon
This was a big hit at Sundance. Could it be this year’s Bridesmaids? The film opens August 31. Yahoo! Video Player