ALL POSTS
A Scathing Put Down of ABC TV Executives
I’ve heard a lot of the stories but have never heard it quite like this. Clearly someone affiliated (or formerly affiliated) with Pan Am has some feelings about how the network has handled the...
Borgen Premieres Saturday Night on Link TV
For those of you out there who still wish Commander in Chief had lasted more than a handful of episodes I have some good news. The Danes (who actually just elected their own female Prime...
The Education of Dee Dee Ricks Premieres on HBO Tomorrow Night
When we first meet Dee Dee Ricks she is newly diagnosed with breast cancer. While breast cancer sucks for everyone who has it, in the grander scheme of things, Dee Dee was lucky. She had lots of...
Guest Post: What do Afghan Women Want? By Gini Reticker
Throughout the last year, as the director of a documentary film that follows three Afghan women, I’ve been peppered by friends and family with a recurring question: What do Afghan women want? Or...
Comments on the Age Discrimination Suit Filed Against IMDB
At first when I read about the lawsuit, I didn’t really take it seriously. Everybody’s birth dates are on imdb. I go on imdb practically every day in order to find out how old people are. I like...
Miss Representation Directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom Premieres October 20 on OWN
Readers of this blog know that there are gender biases in media. The documentary film Miss Representation which premiered last year at Sundance (and also played the Athena Film Festival) is the film...
Rooney Mara Covers Vogue
Gearing up for the Christmas release of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, star to be Rooney Mara gets the cover of November’s Vogue. Here are some new things I picked up in the piece. Author of the...
Interview with Ami Canaan Mann — Director of the Texas Killing Fields
The Texas Killing Fields opens in the US tomorrow fresh off its debut at the Venice Film Festival. It tells the true story of the investigation of women who have gone missing in Texas. Ami Canaan...
Australian Producers of My Tehran for Sale Release Statement
Folks- this is not going away and I will do my best to keep this alive until Marzieh Vafamehr and others held in Iran are released. Yesterday, I wrote that the lead actress of My Tehran for Sale...
Johnny Depp Inserts Foot in Mouth in Vanity Fair Interview
Johnny Depp is the highest paid actor hauling in piles of cash to make crappy movies about being on a pirate ship in the caribbean and then making pretty unwatchable films based on Hunter S. Thompson...
Greetings from Bucharest
Hey folks. I’m here in Bucharest, Romania on the jury of the Romania International Film Festival. I am part of a jury of two competitions — one is films from the Black Sea Region, and one is...
Roman Polanski In Our Faces Again
I don’t know why I feel obsessed by this story, but I am. In some ways I feel it is my feminist duty to remind people every time this guy gets the adoring press he always does that he is...
Interview with Agnieszka Holland — Director of In Darkness
I was able to interview the Academy Award winning director (Europa Europa) Agnieszka Holland in Toronto at the debut of her new film about the Holocaust, In Darkness. In Darkness is Poland’s entry...
Pink Ribbons, Inc. — Directed by Léa Pool
Next week starts the annual pinkification of cancer — breast cancer awareness month. Now I don’t want to take anything away from any woman who is figuring out a way to fight and survive this...
Shonda Rhimes Is Still at the Top of Her Game
I know that at times Grey’s Anatomy seems like a tortured soap opera. But I also know that I would take that soap opera any day over some of the other crap on TV, and that is because Shonda Rhimes...
Women, War and Peace Debuts on PBS October 11
This week in NY was the annual opening of the UN General Assembly where heads of states make their speeches. Seeing all these dudes stand up at the podium while the world is a total mess one thing is...
Interview with Tatiana von Fürstenberg and Francesca Gregorini Directors of Tanner Hall
Women and Hollywood: How is your coming of age story different from others we have previously seen? Francesca Gregorini: We tried to make an artful, poetic film about teens. One that values...
TIFF: The Lady — The Story of Aung San Suu Kyi
(Update: The Lady is opening today for one week in LA for an Oscar qualifying run. It will open early next year here in the US. I also have been told that about 30 minutes has been shaved...
Sisters in Crisis: Your Sister’s Sister and Union Square
My time in Toronto was spent trying to seek out as many women directed films as I could. Two of my favorites from the past week are films about sisters. First up was Lynn Shelton’s Your Sister’s...
Interview with Nadine Labaki — Director of Where Do We Go Now?
Women and Hollywood: Congratulations. I read your film is going to represent Lebanon in the Oscars. How does that feel? Nadine Labaki: It feels great. I don’t know what will happen afterwards, but...
Guest Post: From Hollywood to Bon Temps, and Nary a Feminist In Sight…by Emilie Spiegel
Sunday night’s HBO lineup included both the series finale of Entourage and the season 4 finale of True Blood — two vastly different shows, herein considered together not only because they...
Toronto Day 5 — It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint
It’s Day 5 and I just feel like I’ve gotten my groove on. I think I’ve seen 10 movies and I have one more today. Power watching films is a skill, and I haven’t yet developed those chops....
TIFF: Wuthering Heights Directed by Andrea Arnold and In Darkness Directed by Agnieszka Holland
There is no denying that Andrea Arnold is one of the most interesting and provocative directors working today. If you haven’t seen her first two films Red Road and Fish Tank you have missed two...
TIFF- Albert Nobbs
It was so great to see Glenn Close back on the big screen in Albert Nobbs. It’s been too long. She, like many other actresses of her generation, have found TV to be the place where she can play...
Toronto Film Festival — Day 2
The thing that I’ve gotten from this festival so far is that this is a festival really about buying and selling. The cool thing for me is to look at all the great European films for sale and try...
Toronto Film Festival — Day 1
It didn’t look like I was going to make it this morning because the day started with a monsoon and my flight out of NY was cancelled which of course I wasn’t notified about until I was at the...
The Testosterone Driven Oscars
When I first read the Brett Ratner was going to produce the Oscars I let out a big sigh. Brett is not known for his gender sensitivity. He’s best known for the Rush Hour movies and I remember him...
Interview with Circumstance Writer and Director Maryam Keshavarz
Here’s a piece I wrote for this summer’s Human Right Campaign Magazine Equality on the film. You can tell from the piece how impressive a film it is. It is a change making film because it tells...
Love and Risk in Iran: Circumstance Written and Directed by Maryam Keshavarz
Here is a piece I wrote on Circumstance written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz for the Human Right Campaign’s Equality Magazine, for their Summer 2011 Issue. Making an independent film is always...
Guest Post: I Sold My House To Make My Feature by Sloane U’Ren
I sold my home to make my feature film debut Dimensions: A Line, A Loop, A Tangle of Threads. It’s a sci-fi love story that takes place in England in the 1920s and 1930s…a period-science...
Interview With Lone Scherfig — Director of One Day
One Day directed by Lone Scherfig tells the story of Emma and Dex played by Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess. Two people who become friends and who stick it out even though there are times when they...
The Hedgehog Written and Directed by Mona Achache
The Hedgehog is a very unexpectedly touching film. It starts off jarringly, with 11-year-old Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic) sick and tired of watching her self possessed family decides she is going...
Interview with Marie Feret Star of Mozart’s Sister
15-year-old Marie Feret plays Nannerl Mozart the elder sister to Wolfgang in her father Rene’s Mozart’s Sister opening this week in the US. A prodigy in her own right, she was trained by her...
More Toronto Additions
The Toronto Film Festival added to its already impressive lineup with some women directed films that I’ve been waiting for. There is a long awaited film from Nancy Savoca and Lynn Shelton’s...
Guest Post: Money and Independent Film, Climbing the Financing Mountain by Elizabeth Dell
There was a time when all I wanted to do was make my first movie. And when sweat, tears and a lot of luck turned into a movie, all I could think about was getting it out into the...
Rooney Mara Defends Teaser Poster for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
One of my favorite EW issues is about to hit my mailbox — the fall film preview issue. Yum. Can’t wait to take a more in-depth look at all the films coming down the pike this fall. One of the...
Interview with Octavia Spencer of The Help
Octavia Spencer has the breakout role of her lifetime as Minny Jackson in The Help. She talked about the film and how important it is for women to support women’s films. I have to say that even...
Guest Post: Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood, or Malice in Wonderland by Jennifer Frost
Whether known as the “duchess of dish” or a “gargoyle of gossip,” Hedda Hopper was a powerhouse of Hollywood’s golden age. Known mostly today for her famous hats — which led to titles...
Guest Post: How Jumping the Broom Made it to the Big Screen by Arlene Gibbs
Around seven years ago when I was a production company executive, producer Glendon Palmer and screenwriter Elizabeth Hunter pitched the idea of Jumping The Broom (JTB) to me. I loved it and told my...
Happy 100th Birthday Lucy
Today is Lucy’s 100th birthday. While she wasn’t the first groundbreaking female TV star (that honor goes to Gertrude Berg, and if you want to learn about her see Yoo Hoo Mrs. Goldberg), she is...
The Whistleblower — directed by Larysa Kondracki and written by Kondracki and Eilis Kirwan
When I was growing up the thing that scared the crap out of me was nuclear war. For many years I was convinced that we were all going to radiated away. So when I saw Silkwood it resonated with me in...
Interview with Larysa Kondracki — Director of The Whistleblower
Women and Hollywood: How did you come up with the idea for the film? Larysa Kondracki: I am a Ukrainian Canadian, and the issue of sex-trafficking was very much being discussed in my community. My...
Interview with Amy Wendel — Director of All She Can
In All She Can Luz wants to get the hell out of Benavides, Texas. The way she can get out is either through the Army or through a weight lifting scholarship to college. Her brother is in the Army and...
Chicken and Egg Pictures Announces 2011 Grants
Chicken and Egg Pictures supports women filmmakers who are telling the tough stories. They just gave out their latest round of grants. One of the the organization’s co-founders filmmaker Judith...
25 New Face of Independent Film: The Women
Not a bad job on representing both genders. Here’s the editors talking about creating the list: Welcome to the 14th edition of Filmmaker’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” When we...
Guest Post: Things You Should Know: 5 Lessons for Young Female Directors by Elena Rossini
The movie business is just like a mafia family: incredibly powerful, for the most part inaccessible (unless you have family ties), it’s a patriarchal system that keeps its status by enforcing...
The Tree — Written and Directed by Julie Bertuccelli Opens Today
The Tree is a lament on love, loss and family. It’s a movie about trying to find a way through your grief to see some light on the other side. One of the stars of the film is this gigantic Moreton...
Guest Post: Women Filmmakers and Screenwriters At The Action on Film Film Fest by Caitlin McCarthy
When it comes to film festivals, I’ve been around the block, having won awards and received nominations in over 60 international screenplay competitions and labs. Some are cold and cliquey. Some...
Guest Post: Interview with Sophia Takal — Writer/Director of Green by Melissa Silvestri
Actress/writer Sophia Takal’s directorial debut, Green, is a film that is both dark in its themes of jealousy, yet shines with a natural ease depicting the burgeoning friendship of two very...
Guest Post: Interview with Sophia Takal – Writer/Director of Green by Melissa Silvestri
Actress/writer Sophia Takal’s directorial debut, Green, is a film that is both dark in its themes of jealousy, yet shines with a natural ease depicting the burgeoning friendship of two very...
The Love Crimes of Kabul Directed by Tanaz Eshaghian Premieres Tonight on HBO
If you want to see the lack of progress the US investment in women in Afghanistan, check out the Love Crimes of Kabul. This is the true story of women (and some girls) being held in the Badam Bagh...