#Diversity
Oscar Winner Lupita Nyong’o Poignantly Discusses “Black Beauty” at Essence Event
Since Thanksgiving last year, Lupita Nyong’o has run a stealth but undeniably successful campaign. No, not for her richly deserved Best Supporting Actress trophy for 12 Years a Slave, but it has...
Viola Davis to Star in Shonda Rhimes’ Next Show
The return of Scandal tomorrow night after a three-month hiatus isn’t the only good news to come out of Shondaland. Oscar-nominated actress Viola Davis (The Help, Prisoners) has signed on to star...
Infographic: The Diversity Gap in the Academy Awards
It’s never been easy to take the Oscars seriously, but it gets harder each year, especially as the Academy stays white and male while the rest of America (and indeed, the international moviegoing...
TV: Black Female Creators Discuss Responsibilities, Opportunities
Among the most interesting discussions this week about the difficulties and possibilities of culture creation today was a 30-minute roundtable discussion posted on YouTube called “The State of...
UCLA Releases Scathing Report on Diversity in Film and TV
Just when you thought it was safe to be hopeful again, here comes another reality check. The Bunche Center at UCLA has released its annual “Hollywood Diversity Report” to remind us that we’re...
Athena FF: Amma Asante’s Belle Revisits Jane Austen Through Black POV
“This is the story of a woman who is loved.” Those are the words black British director Amma Asante used to describe her marvelous sophomore feature Belle at the Athena Film Festival this past...
Vanity Fair’s Diverse 2014 Hollywood Issue: FINALLY
Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood Issue has always been a reliable barometer of the stardom industry’s fickle moods. In previous years, the magazine has reflected Hollywood’s preoccupations with...
Disney Helps More Girls See Themselves Onscreen with Multilingual “Let It Go” Video
There’s a small but crucial scene in Frozen that’s merits some discussion. It occurs early in the film during Anna’s song “For the First Time in Forever,” when she imagines she might meet...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Sydney Freeland
Drunktown’s Finest is Sydney Freeland’s feature film debut and her response to a news story that characterized her hometown of Gallup, New Mexico, as “Drunktown, USA.” She has worked for a...
To Sue Or Not to Sue: What History Teaches Us About Equality in Hollywood
When the Director Guild of America’s Women’s Steering Committee was officiallyestablished in 1979, women comprised just 0.5% of episodic TV directoremployment. One half of one percent! According...
The Good and the Bad Among the 2014 Oscar Nominees
2013 was an even-worse-than-usual year for non-acting women in Hollywood — only 6% of the 250 top-grossing films were directed by female filmmakers and just 10% written by female...
NAACP Awards: 2013 Was a Good Year for Black Men in Hollywood, Abysmal for Black Women
2013 was a good year for black men in Hollywood. 12 Years a Slave, Lee Daniels’ The Butler, Fruitvale Station, and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom gave stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Forest Whitaker,...
Crosspost: Heroines of Cinema: An A to Z of Women in Film in 2013
It’s at times like these that twenty-six letters seems awfully few. Not that this list is intended as an encyclopedia. Instead, please see it as a mere sample of the films worth seeing, the...
TV: New Black Comedienne to Join SNL (Finally)
Public protests from castmembers, widespread media scrutiny, and the existence of many talented black comediennes have finally convinced longtime SNL producer Lorne Michaels to add an...
Shonda Rhimes, Betsy Beers to Receive DGA Diversity Award
Sometimes it feels like Women and Hollywood is really just a Shonda Rhimes fan club in disguise, but we can’t help getting excited everytime the Scandal creator is recognized for being the force...
5 TV Women to be Thankful for This Thanksgivukkah
Writing about women and popular culture can be an exercise in enormous frustration, given how few women are in positions of power in the entertainment industry, how few of them get the funding and...
Marvel Introduces Kamala Khan, a Muslim-American Superheroine
You’d never know it from Marvel’s (white)sausage-fest movies, but the comic-book company has reinvented itself in recentyears as Team Diversity. Vulture noted last month that, “in a cheeky bit...
UK Sets a Diversity Forum
Screen International and Broadcast are teaming up with FilmLondon and Creative Skillset to host a forum on November 13 in London about improving diversity within the UK Film and TV...
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...
Guest Post: Trouble in Hollywood — Hunger Games Fans Resort to Racist Tweets
The first installment of the highly anticipated The Hunger Games trilogy finally made its way to the silver screen, earning an historic $155 million its opening weekend. While fans cheered on...
The LA Times Confirms What We Already Know — The Academy is Old, White and Male
For some reason the folks that run the Academy have made it their business to keep the membership a secret. You kind of know who has recently been asked to be a member because they now release lists...
Hollywood is So Racist That Even George Lucas Can’t Get a Movie Made
George Lucas is rolling out his new film Red Tails about the Tuskegee Airmen and he went on The Daily Show to talk about how hard it was to get the film made. He didn’t mince words when talking...
Hollywood Feminist of the Day: George Clooney
…It was my first time to create a character from beginning to end. I’ve always just shown up and, whatever my lines are, I just do it, like almost robotic in a way. But this is the first time I...
Trailer Watch: Slaying the Dragon Reloaded: Asian Women in Hollywood and Beyond
Description from the you tube page: “Slaying the Dragon Reloaded: Asian Women in Hollywood and Beyond” is a 30-minute video documentary that examines visual representations of Asian women made...
Paramount Pictures Has a Gender (and Race) Problem
The folks at Racebending who advocate for just and equal opportunities in film and TV, have been tracking race issues related to the recently released film The Last Airbender. While doing their...
Interview with Sandra Laing- Real Life Subject of Skin
Skin is the heartbreaking true story of Sandra Laing (played by Sophie Okonedo) as a woman with black skin born to white parents in apartheid S. Africa. She is a white girl who looked black. As a...