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WEEK IN WOMEN: Catherine Hardwicke says ‘there’s still a lot of work to do’ to bring gender parity to Hollywood – Brandy McDonnell reports

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A decade after Catherine Hardwicke shattered records for female directors with the global success of the fantasy franchise-launching romantic drama “Twilight,” the director says there’s still not enough women working behind the camera.

“There’s still a lot of work to do because we’ve got to get to both sides of the camera; we’ve got to get more representation in all the categories,” Hardwicke commented at the 45th Student Academy Awards ceremony at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.

With its $69.6 million opening weekend, 2008’s Twilight boasted the biggest opening take ever for a film directed by a woman, and the adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling novel went on to gross nearly $400 million worldwide.

After Hardwicke dropped out of the sequel New Moon over scheduling disputes with the studio, she has said she didn’t get as many filmmaking opportunities as she expected given her record-breaking Twilight success and actually took a pay cut for her next helming gig, the 2011 horror fairytale Red Riding Hood. Continue reading on THE WEEK IN WOMEN.

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Brandy McDonnell

Brandy McDonnell writes features and reviews movies, music, events and the arts for The Oklahoman, Oklahoma's statewide newspaper, and NewsOK.com, the state's largest news Web site. Raised on a farm near Lindsay, Okla., she started her journalism career in seventh grade, when she was elected reporter for her school's 4-H Club. Taking her duties seriously, she began submitting stories to The Lindsay News, and worked for the local weekly through high school. She attended Oklahoma State University, where she worked for The Daily O'Collegian and earned her journalism degree with honors. She worked for three years at small Oklahoma dailies The Edmond Sun and Shawnee News-Star. In 2002, she joined The Oklahoman as a features reporter, writing about movies, the arts, events, families and nonprofits. She moved to The Oklahoman's entertainment desk in 2007. In 2004, she won a prestigious Journalism Fellowship in Child & Family Policy from the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Along with her membership in AWFJ, she also is a founding member of the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle. Brandy writes The Week In Women blog for AWFJ.org.