Alliance of Women Film Journalists

AWFJ Women On Film - The Week In Women, March 5, 2010 - MaryAnn Johanson

MaryAnn Johanson — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:28:35 +0000

Female directors barely exist, the joke of enlightened sexism and

CUT, PRINT, MOPE. EW.com has named its 25 greatest working directors. Guess how many of them are women?

One.

And honestly, it feels like a bit of a stretch for EW to say that Kathryn Bigelow clocks in on this list at No. 4. It feels as if The Hurt Locker hadn’t managed to catch on with critics and arthouse film fans, there wouldn’t be a single woman on this list at all. Sure, there are guys on this list that made me say, “Hmm, really? Greatest working film director? I mean, he’s made a couple of pretty good movies, but greatest working film director? Hmm.” Like Jason Reitman at No. 17, and Guillermo Del Toro at No. 15. I mean, they’ve made good films, but still… The whole list feels like a bit of a stretch in places.

And even given that — that surely EW was working on a curve here — they could find only a single female filmmaker to call one of the greatest.

I’m not suggesting, either, that EW is wrong in its overall assessment of the state of filmmaking. But that’s even more depressing: it’s a sad commentary on how few women are making movies at all. The second tier of the list, 26 through 50, includes three more women — Nancy Meyers at No. 50, Mira Nair at No. 45, and Sofia Coppola at No. 30 — but that barely makes a dent. That’s still, for the overall list of 50, only an eight-percent representation by women. Terrible.

NO SUCH THING AS ENLIGHTENED SEXISM. Susan J. Douglas at AlterNet beautifully breaks down the current state of depictions of women in mainstream media in a piece entitled “Enlightened Sexism: ‘Women’s Success’ Means It’s Fine to Resurrect — Even Celebrate — Sexist Stereotypes.” First, she examines how shallow is the “female power” image that the media presents to us:

What the media have been giving us, then, are little more than fantasies of power. They assure girls and women, repeatedly, that women’s liberation is a fait accompli and that we are stronger, more successful, more sexually in control, more fearless and more held in awe than we actually are. We can believe that any woman can become a CEO (or president), that women have achieved economic, professional and political parity with men, and we can expunge any suggestion that there might be anyone living on the national median income, which for women in 2008 was $36,000 a year, 23 percent less than their male counterparts.

Yet the images we see on television, in the movies, and in advertising also insist that purchasing power and sexual power are much more gratifying than political or economic power. Buying stuff—the right stuff, a lot of stuff—emerged as the dominant way to empower ourselves. Women in fictional settings can be in the highest positions of authority, but in real life maybe not such a good idea. Instead, the wheedling, seductive message to young women is that being decorative is the highest form of power—when, of course, if it were, Dick Cheney would have gone to work every day in a sequined tutu.

And then, because women are — allegedly — so powerful, it’s okay for us to play with clichés of “femininity” and female sexuality:

But the media’s fantasies of power are also the product of another force that has gained considerable momentum since the early and mid-1990s: enlightened sexism. Enlightened sexism is a response, deliberate or not, to the perceived threat of a new gender regime. It insists that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism—indeed, full equality, has allegedly been achieved. So now it’s okay, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women. Enlightened sexism sells the line that it is precisely through women’s calculated deployment of their faces, bodies, attire, and sexuality that they gain and enjoy true power— power that is fun, that men will not resent, and indeed will embrace. True power here has nothing to do with economic independence or professional achievement: it has to do with getting men to lust after you and other women to envy you. Enlightened sexism is especially targeted to girls and young women and emphasizes that now that they “have it all,” they should focus the bulk of their time and energy on being hot, pleasing men, competing with other women, and shopping.

Enlightened sexism is a manufacturing process that is constantly produced by the media. Its components—anxiety about female achievement; renewed and amplified objectification of young women’s bodies and faces; dual exploitation and punishment of female sexuality; dividing of women against each other by age, race and class; and rampant branding and consumerism—began to swirl around in the early 1990s, consolidating as the dark star it has become in the early 21st century.

Finally, Douglas looks at how it all serves to shackle women:

What so much of this media emphasizes is that women are defined by our bodies. This is nothing new, of course, but it was something millions of women hoped to deep-six back in the 1970s. Indeed, it is precisely because women no longer have to exhibit traditionally “feminine” personality traits—like being passive, helpless, docile, overly emotional, dumb and deferential to men—that they must exhibit hyperfeminine physical traits—cleavage, short skirts, pouty lips—and the proper logos linking this femininity to social acceptance. The war between embedded feminism and enlightened sexism gives with one hand and takes away with the other. It’s a powerful choke leash, letting women venture out, offering us fantasies of power, control and love and then pulling us back in.

These are but small excerpts from a much longer and very well argued piece. Read it all.

WEIGHT POLICE ON PATROL. Against that backdrop, we’re probably supposed to see Kirstie Alley’s new series, Big Life, as some sort of triumph against the body Nazis: it’s a docu-reality show about the actress and “her battle with weight loss,” among other things. But as LatoyaPeterson at Jezebel notes:

Viewers have an insatiable appetite for narratives about fat people that serve up the desire to change, embarrassing situations, and a heaping helping of self-flagellation.

and

Fat shaming is the new Millennium bloodsport, and American television watchers have taken the place of the voyeurs in the Coliseum.

But it’s Big Life is enlightened, see? It’s about a woman being honest about her weight. There’s no rubbernecking aspect to it at all. Not at all.

AND THE AWARD FOR MOST CLUELESS FEMINIST GOES TO… Kim Elsesser, who is actually a research scholar at the Center for Study of Women at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times this week suggesting that there is no longer any reason to segregate Academy Award acting categories by gender. Because the wominz, we are so totally equal these days!

Since the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929, separate acting Oscars have been presented to men and women. Women at that time had only recently won the right to vote and were still several decades away from equal rights outside the voting booth, so perhaps it was reasonable to offer them their own acting awards. But in the 21st century women contend with men for titles ranging from the American president to the American Idol. Clearly, there is no reason to still segregate acting Oscars by sex.

Clearly!

But separate is not equal. While it is certainly acceptable for sports competitions like the Olympics to have separate events for male and female athletes, the biological differences do not affect acting performances. The divided Oscar categories merely insult women, because they suggest that women would not be victorious if the categories were combined. In addition, this segregation helps perpetuate the stereotype that the differences between men and women are so great that the two sexes cannot be evaluated as equals in their professions.

It’s true that biological differences do not affect acting performances. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that so few movies offer meaty roles to female actors! It’s always tough winnowing down the best performances by men each year, because there are often so many of them. And it’s often equally tough to come up with enough performances by women in movies that give them the opportunity to really act.

Today, the number of female-run production companies, female directors and great roles for women continues to increase. Four of the five films represented in this year’s best actress category center on strong female characters.

But would those movies be represented at the Oscars at all if the acting categories were gender neutral? There’s no guarantee that they would be, and in fact, it seems likely that they would not.

Sounds like more of that “enlightened feminism” nonsense…

OPENING THIS WEEK. Alice in Wonderland — wonder of wonders! — features a female protagonist and a female villain. Too bad the movie’s so damn dull that it is not even worth recommending on that basis along. And Brooklyn’s Finest, of course, features just about no female characters of any substance at all. Though the one hooker character is refreshingly unencumbered with a heart of gold.

See the AWFJ’s regular weekly rundown of new releases for more.

AWFJ Women On Film - Releasing March 5, 2010

Jennifer Merin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:36:42 +0000

AWFJ Women On Film highlights movies made by and about women:

Friday, March 5

Alice in Wonderland -Walt Disney Pictures, Disney Digital 3D and IMAX 3D, 108 mins.- Linda Woolverton wrote the screenplay for this Tim Burton vision of Louis Carroll’s young heroine, now a teenager and returning to the locale of her childhood adventures to take up the cause of old friends against the mad and maddening Red Queen.

Brooklyn’s Finest - Overture Films, 140 mins.

The Secret of Kells - GKIDS, 75 mins., limited NY with upcoming expansion to Boston and beyond - Nora Twomey co-directed this animated fable about a lad who dreamed up the Book of Kells

AWFJ Women on Film - The Week In Women, February 25, 2010 - MaryAnn Johanson

MaryAnn Johanson — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:41:22 +0000

Imagine if men were all but invisible onscreen; Kathryn Bigelow is a man, baby! and

WHERE ARE WOMEN? Sometimes it just sneaks up on a gal all of a sudden, almost like she’s discovering it for the first time: So few movies are about women. I attended five press screenings this past week, and only one of those films featured any female people onscreen with any meaningful participation in the stories being told. Cop Out is about two male cops, and while each is driven to do the things he does because of women (a daughter whose wedding needs to be paid for, a wife who may be cheating on her husband), the story is not about these women. A Prophet (Un Prophète) is set almost entirely in a prison — women are barely even glimpsed. Brooklyn’s Finest is another story about male cops: there’s one wife in a walk-on part (again, she’s the motivation for a male character but not a character herself) and one prostitute (who is there to represent a man’s emotional isolation; she is a symbol of her job, not a person in herself); there’s also a slew of female victims and a slew of female set-dressing (naked women cutting coke and counting cash is as much a signifier of “drug den” as the drugs and money themselves). The Secret of Kells is entirely about male characters, though there is a magical female sprite who helps the protagonist, a young boy, discover what he needs to discover in order to change and grow (she doesn’t change or grow herself). Only The Crazies features one woman, a doctor — among several male characters with equal or greater presence in the story, of course — with significant screentime and who could be said to have anything like a character arc.

Perhaps it struck me this week because these movies run the full spectrum of what The Movies has to offer us: There are arthouse films here and Hollywood films, American films and foreign films; the quality runs from absolutely shitty to pretty good to absolutely great. It was a reminder that everywhere a movie lover turns, finding a story — any story — about a woman is tough. A story about more than one woman, as all of these stories were about more than one man? Forget it.

And here’s the thing, too: This week was a reminder of something that I’ve long believed but have not articulated (at least not that I can recall): I cannot condemn any of these movies of the past week on an individual level for being as male-dominated as they are. Cop Out is a terrible movie for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with its gender balance; Brooklyn’s Finest is a great fim for all sorts of reasons that are not lessened by the lack of gender balance. A Prophet (Un Prophète) is a riveting story that would not be the same if there were some sort of obligation for all films to feature 51 percent female characters.

But of course, no one is suggesting such a thing… not even those — like me — who complain that there so few movies about women. It’s the aggregate that’s the problem. Where are the hard-edged movies about female cops in Broolyn? Where are the submoronic comedies about female cops? Where are the historical fantasy cartoons about little girls wandering in the woods? Do filmmakers believe that women do not face tough moral dilemmas like, say, Ethan Hawke does in Brooklyn’s Finest? Where’s the movie about the wife of a gangster who keeps his operation running when he’s sent to prison?

The fact that we do not see these films — and that when we do see movies about women, they are almost exclusively about women chasing men or taking care of children — is so much the norm that I think many people, male and female alike, barely even notice it. But I notice, and it is so disheartening to me both as a woman and as a lover of well-told stories: there is a vast range of human experience that we are not hearing stories about because half the human race is being excluded from the stories we are being told.

Imagine this: Most movies feature female protagonists and villains doing all sorts of interesting and exciting things. Women are cops, thieves, lawyers, terrorists, doctors; women are saving the world, dying of dramatic diseases, and juggling the demands of career and romance and family and fun. They are astronauts and adventurers and spies and goofballs and assholes — they are funny and sexy and messed up and gorgeous and ugly and weird and smart and stupid. Men, when they appear in these stories, only hover in the background — sometimes only figuratively, not actually even appearing onscreen; they are noble creatures, but simple ones, objects of concern or worry or desire or frustration to the women, but hardly people worthy of their own stories: everyone already knows that men are either already perfect or already irredeemable, so what would be the point of stories about them anyway? The men are there just so they can be protected or used by the women, as suits the women. Sometimes, the perfection of the men is such that one of them can guide the flawed but fascinating women to be better people (en route to saving the world or finally admitting that the great guys waiting at home for them deserve better from them). Always, the men are luscious eye candy for the women onscreen and for everyone in the audience… and everyone in the audience will indeed appreciate them, because everyone knows that male beauty is simply more aesthetically pleasing than women’s weird bodies, which have strange bits sticking out in unexpected places and are often kinda doughy and out of shape. Once in a while, there might be a movie about a man, but that movie will invariably be an adorably, fluffy comedy about the search for a job that will allow him to support his family, or perhaps a lighthearted jape about how difficult it is for a single guy to get laid these days. Hey, that’s all that men think about anyway, right? And any male movie fan who complains about the lack of men onscreen… well, he’s probably gay. If he weren’t, he’d appreciate more the fact that movies are all about women.

Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?

IT STARTS AT BIRTH. As Geena Davis told the Sydney Morning Herald this week:

It all started six years ago, when Davis’s daughter Alizeh was a toddler. “When she was about two I started watching G-rated videos and little kids’ preschool programming,” Davis told the Herald.

“And it jumped out at me. There was this huge gender gap. It’s partly because I had been in some movies that had resonated with women, so I’d had this heightened awareness of the paucity of parts for female actors. The stuff that we make for us. But I really didn’t know that it was like this for kids.

“You just expect Sesame Street took care of everything and now it’s all educational. So I thought, ‘You know what? I would like to know the facts.’ ”

Her response was to found the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which has commissioned ongoing studies to compare the roles played by girls/women with boys/men. One project examined the 100 top-grossing G-rated films from the period 1990 to 2005.

“It was fascinating,” Davis says. “Typically there are three male characters for every one female character. If it’s a crowd scene, that ratio goes out to four or five males for every female. And 87 per cent of narrators are male.”

Davis argues that young girls (and boys) need to see female characters onscreen, or else they will grow up thinking of females as invisible or unimportant. The institute’s motto is: “Kids need to see entertainment where females are valued as much as males.”

The Herald piece came in advance of her closing keynote address at the UN’s “Engaging Philanthropy to Promote Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.” You can watch her address at the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT. From the Los Angeles Times’ blog 24 Frames:

Women may make up 51% of the population, but actresses nabbed only 29.9% of the 4,379 speaking parts in the 100 top-grossing films of 2007, or so says a new study released by University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, which was conducted by professor Stacy. L Smith.

According to Smith’s study, 83% of all directors, writers, and producers on those films were male. Not surprisingly, the number of female characters grew dramatically when a woman directed a film — up to 44.6% from 29.3% if a man was behind the camera.

AND EVEN WHEN A WOMAN DOES SUCCEED… James Cameron is being gallantly magnanimous: The Academy should give that Best Director Oscar to Kathryn Bigelow because he’s already got one. What a gentleman! And if the Academy does give it to Bigelow, the question will be, Did she win because she’s female? Except she’s not really a girl: she’s a man in drag.

Even if Bigelow wins, she loses.

OPENING THIS WEEK. As mentioned above, Cop Out and A Prophet (Un Prophète) are not so great for women, though The Crazies is marginally better. See the AWFJ’s regular rundown of new releases for more.

AWFJ Women On Film - “Ghost Writer” - Cynthia Fuchs

Cynthia Fuchs — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 04:00:59 +0000

The ghostwriter encounters all manner of trouble, including the chance to sleep with a beautiful, vulnerable, angry woman. “Bad idea,” he tells himself in his bathroom mirror. And you, who’ve seen Chinatown, can only mutter, “No kidding.” Read more>>

AWFJ Women On Film - “The Crazies” - Susan Granger reviews

Susan Granger — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 03:00:59 +0000

In case your travel agent hasn’t warned you, don’t plan to visit Ogden Marsh, Iowa, pop. 1,260. Not if you want to come back. Not if you happen to drink the water.

There’s something decidedly wrong in this bucolic farming community. Only it’s just becoming obvious to strait-laced Sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant), his trigger-happy deputy (Joe Anderson) and his feisty, newly pregnant wife, Dr. Judy Dutton (Radha Mitchell) and her office assistant (Danielle Panabaker).

On the opening day of high-school baseball season, the notorious town drunk, Rory Hamill (Mike Hickman), walks onto the field with a loaded shotgun. Sheriff David tries to talk him down and is forced to hill him. But Rory’s wife swears he’s been sober for two years and that’s confirmed by the medical examiner. Meanwhile, Dr. Judy’s mystified about her patient Bill Farnum (Brett Rickaby), whose wife (Christie Lynn Smith) senses that something’s amiss. That night Farnum torches his home, burning it to the ground with his wife and son inside. And the following day, a parachute-harnessed corpse is found in a nearby swamp near a submerged plane. No one’s reported the plane missing but the swamp drains right into the local water supply. Suddenly, Ogden Marsh is isolated and quarantined – all connections to the outside world are cut off. And ordinary townsfolk are becoming cold-blooded, zombie-like killers..

Directed by Breck Eisner (“Sahara”) from a script by Scott Kosar (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “The Amityville Horror”) and Ray Wright (“Pulse”), it’s a remake of a 1973 horror thriller by George Romero, whose zombie classic “Night of the Living Dead” has spawned countless remakes and rip-offs. In “The Happening” (2008), for example, M. Night Shyamalan transmuted the toxin into the air, turning its victims suicidal, not homicidal. Originally, Romero devised a paranoid parable about a government experiment-gone-wrong and a military conspiracy. Now it’s become bio-terror and fear of the federal government.

On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10 “The Crazies” is a spooky, suspenseful, scary 6. It’s a grisly gorefest – but you expect that, don’t you?

AWFJ Women On Film - “The Crazies” - Cynthia Fuchs reviews

Cynthia Fuchs — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:30:39 +0000

The lawmen facing off with guns incarnate the filmâ€™s broader dilemma pretty much exactly: who is crazy here, those who have been made irresponsible by disease or those who won’t take responsibility for the devastation they wreak? Read more>>

AWFJ Women On Film - “Cop Out” - Susan Granger reviews

Susan Granger — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:00:26 +0000

Well, at least you can’t accuse them of deceptive advertising: this stereotypical, interracial/buddy action comedy is, indeed, a cop out – in every sense of the word.

In pre-production, it was known as “A Couple of Dicks,” referring to a pair of Brooklyn-based, longtime NYPD partners, taciturn tough-guy Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis) and manic Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan). Celebrating their ninth year of working together, Monroe’s obsessed with the whereabouts of the prized 1962 Andy Pafko baseball card that he had planned to cash in to pay for his daughter’s (Michelle Tractenberg) $48,000 wedding, which his ex-wife’s smarmy new husband (Jason Lee) has offered to finance. It seems that while Monroe was having the rare card appraised at a pawnshop, a verbally dexterous petty thief (Seann William Scott) made off with it. And Hodge suspects that his wife (Rashida Jones) is canoodling with their next-door neighbor.

Soon they’re involved with a baseball-loving Mexican drug kingpin (Guillermo Diaz) whose younger brother, as it turns out, was a supplier they’d tried to arrest in an undercover sting operation that went awry, causing them to be suspended for 30 days without pay. Plus there’s a kidnapped Spanish spitfire (Ana de la Regurera).

Unconvincingly and ineptly written by brothers Robb Cullen and Mark Cullen (TV’s “Lucky” and “Las Vegas”) and chock full of buddy-cop clichés, it’s a lame imitation of “48 Hours” with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. Independent filmmaker Kevin Smith has never before helmed anyone else’s script. And it shows. Back when Smith spent $27,500 making a crude, black-and-white comedy called “Clerks,” set in downscale New Jersey, he created an obscene cult sensation. Since then, he’s made seven less-memorable movies and this is his first major studio film. It could also be his last. It’s that bad.

Smirking Bruce Willis phones in a by-the-numbers performance, collecting his paycheck, while comedian Tracy Morgan must have fervently wished he were back on “Saturday Night Live.” On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Cop Out” is a grossed-out 2, filled with disgustingly graphic poop jokes

AWFJ Women On Film, Releasing February 26, 2010

Jennifer Merin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:41:25 +0000

AWFJ Women On Film highlights films made by and about women:

Friday, February 26

Prodigal Sons - First Run Features, 86 mins., limited - In her autobiographical documentary, filmmaker Kimberly Reed chronicles her family and high school reunion in the rural Montana town where she grew up as Paul, a football star and the younger brother of Marc.

Toe to Toe - Strand Releasing, limited NY, with subsequent roll out to other cities - Emily Abt wrote and directed this drama about high school girls on a lacrosse team.

A Prophet - Sony Pictures Classics, 155 mins., limited

Cop Out - Warner Bros.

The Crazies - Overture Films. 101 mins.

Formosa Betrayed - Screen Media Films. limited

The Yellow Handkerchief - Samuel Goldwyn Films, limited

The Art of the Steal - Rainbow Media, 101 mins., limited

Defendor - Sony Pictures Entertainment, 101 mins., limited LA

AWFJ Women On Film - The Week In Women, February 20, 2010 - MaryAnn Johanson

MaryAnn Johanson — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:02:01 +0000

Why do women pay to see crappy movies? Where is the networking and support for female filmmakers? And

GIRLS JUST WANNA SEE CRAP? AWFJ member Monika Bartyzel puts into words the conundrum female filmgoers face when we want to see a movie about women:

While I can’t fathom forgiving all of the flaws of [Sex and the City] on the big screen, forgiveness is an essential part of the experience for any moviegoer eager to see real-life women. There are, quite simply, too few films that are interested in reaching beyond the typical stereotypes, and even when they do, bothersome cliches usually sneak in. We are part of a cinematic landscape where The Bechdel Rule still runs strong. “The Rule” is simple: Find films where two of the characters are women, who talk with each other about something other than men. Jette Kernion struggled to find even a handful of solid examples when she wrote a Cinematical Seven on The Rule. I spend a long time staring at my many DVDs when I want some intelligent and real female fare — especially when I add further qualifiers like little to no romance and no-heart-wrenching drama.

This is why so many terrible movies featuring female characters do so well at the box office: Women are simply desperate to see women on the big screen. I, however, long ago can up forgiving these terrible movies their flaws, and now Bartyzel ask other women to do the same:

But at some point, we have to stop forgiving everything. As much as we all have dramatic lives that need release with fluff fare and mediocre cinema, we can’t keep paying into the system that perpetuates crap.

Take Valentine’s Day: It earned the #1 spot at the box office this weekend, grabbing over $56 million. Regardless of the holiday ties, this overly cliched, embarrassing excuse of a rom-com just made a ton of money and already has a sequel in the works, once again “proving” that the women of Valentine’s Day are the kind of females moviegoers want to see on the big screen — the sweet-as-pie grade school teacher, the airhead blonde high schooler, the perpetually single girl who wallows in candy and panic attacks, the rich wife who tries to ignore her husband’s infidelity… (Not to mention the film’s treatment of minorities, and other cinematic atrocities, which might get outlined in another post.)

If you pay to see films like this, and buy them for your shelves, because maybe you like Emma Roberts’ spunky teen, or love Jennifer Garner’s sweetness, or Anne Hathaway speaking in a Russian accent, every cent that goes to these movies decreases the chance of finding anything better on the big screen. Studios don’t see the success of Garry Marshall’s latest, or the cash raked in from SatC, as an example of moviegoers wanting more diverse and awesome women on the big screen, or more women in general. They see it as a simple equation: Romance + sexy women + comedy = Goldmine. Female friends + fashion + money = Goldmine. Women obsessed with men = Goldmine.

Studio Goldmines = Smart Moviegoer’s Hell

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. There are other entertainment options for women who want to see smart stories about women: they’re on cable TV, they’re in indie and foreign movies for rent or on demand. I, too, wish more women would seek them out instead of giving in to whatever latest rom-com junk Hollywood is pushing. It’s not that hard. And until mass women audiences simply stop financially supporting bad films about cartoonish women, the torrent of them will not end.

THE MOVIES WOMEN AREN’T MAKING. Artist and filmmaker Miranda July — who gave us the wonderful Me and You and Everyone We Know a few years ago — spoke to DazedDigital.com this week about her work. And she touched on something that doesn’t get a lot of play when we talk about why there aren’t enough women in power positions in Hollywood (not that July is powerful, alas): mentoring and networking and other forms of professional and creative support from other women filmmakers. About her 1990s project Joanie 4 Jackie, July explains:

I wanted to create some sort of feeling that girls were making movies because I was too nervous to. It was a simple idea, any woman who sent me a short movie, I would send her back a tape with her movie and nine others. I did that for many, many years and I would tour, often doing something interactive, like making a movie with the audience. It would feel really special that you were a part of that night. There was almost an aesthetic of revolution that was empowering, and it still is. Especially if you’re really poor and keep getting fired from jobs and you’re basically a kleptomaniac… umm, not anymore.

The Web site at Joanie 4 Jackie currently has a notice stating that it’s undergoing a redesign: here’s hoping that project, which originated on VHS, will be reborn for the digital era. The Google description of the site says it’s a “free, alternative distribution system for women movie makers, all of them. Every woman who submits her tape is accepted.” While anyone — male or female or other — can upload a movie to YouTube, it’s all too easy for movies to get lost there. A new iteration of Joanie 4 Jackie would be wonderful.

July’s enthusiasm for the project and how helpful it was for her as an artist is clear in this minidocumentary about Joanie 4 Jackie:

Joanie 4 Jackie from Miranda July on Vimeo.

July hits on the importance of women filmmakers supporting one another at the end of the video: What movies aren’t being made, she wonders, when women aren’t making movies? That question is rarely even broached, and the answer is depressing to think about.

QUICK PICKS

• Irin at Jezebel notes that cable network Showtime:

has a solid track record of shows that not only feature complex, unconventional roles for women — among them, The L Word, Weeds, The United States Of Tara, Nurse Jackie — but often have a woman (or several) in charge behind the scenes. And taking a look at what Showtime has in the pipeline indicates that they don’t intend to change that.

• A female playwright will, at long last, be featured Shakespeare’s old stomping ground, London’s Globe theater, reports Mark Brown at the Guardian:

It has taken more than 400 years but a female playwright will finally have a work performed at what is now Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, it was announced today.

Nell Leyshon’s Bedlam is a fictional portrait of the Bethlem – the London hospital for the insane – set during the mid-18th century gin epidemic.

Leyshon said it was a “great privilege” to be the first woman to have a play staged at the Globe. “It’s a challenge and I’m quite aware of the fact,” she said. “I have to be honest, it fed my writing; I thought I can’t write a flabby play. I wanted to prove that women can do conflict, that they can write big structures, big stories because I’ve heard it too many times that women aren’t as good at that.”

OPENING THIS WEEK. Women are literally missing in Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, a thriller about two U.S. Marshals (Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo) who investigate the disappearance of a female patient at a remote mental asylum. DiCaprio’s cop is haunted, too, but the memory of his wife (Michelle Wlliams), who died before the film opens but does, at least, get to appear in his nightmarish flashback-y hallucinations.

Women at least have supporting roles in The Ghost Writer, a thriller about a journalist (Ewan McGregor) who gets caught up in political intrigue when he agrees to write the “auto”biography of a disgraced British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan): Kim Cattrall as the PM’s executive assistant and Olivia Williams as the PM’s wife do not, however, have much to do that isn’t par for the course for mainstream films. The film brings the additional complication of it being the latest from Roman Polanski, who has been a fugitive from justice for the past 30 years after admitting to raping a child. Whether one can separate his crimes from his art — and this truly is an excellent film — is up to the individual to decide.

For more, see the AWFJ’s regular weekly rundown of new releases.

AWFJ Women On Film - “Shutter Island” - Cynthia Fuchs reviews

Cynthia Fuchs — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:07:45 +0000

Burning women, bloody women, women waifish and sensual, emaciated and menacing. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is haunted by all of them in “Shutter Island.” Read more>>