Guest Post – Page 2 – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

BROWNSVILLE BRED: Crafting Authentic Music – Elaine Del Valle comments

December 9, 2025December 9, 2025 Guest Post Brownsville Bred, budgeting music, Eddie Frente, Edward James Olmos, Edwin Vázquez, Javier Muñoz, latinx, Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival, Nathalia Lares, Puerto Rican artists, Seed of Faith, Semilla de Fe, the female gaze

Independent filmmakers rarely have the resources to buy the music their stories deserve. Yet music often carries the emotional weight of our films — especially when the work is autobiographical, culturally specific, or rooted in family memory. As the writer and director of Brownsville Bred — an auteur, coming-of-age, music-driven story based on my own childhood in Brownsville, Brooklyn — I learned early that music wouldn’t be an accessory. It would be the heartbeat.

Guest Posts

LICO JIMENEZ THE EBONY LISZT: Building An Audience – Julie Carmen comments

November 26, 2025November 29, 2025 Guest Post Chucho Valdes, cuban music, documentary, Father of Cuban Art Song, Isidro Betancourt, José Manuel “Lico” Jiménez Berroa, Julie Carmen, Lico Jiménez the Ebony Liszt, personal documentary

When you’re a first time documentary filmmaker whose passion project revolves around a fascinating but relatively unknown subject, how do you cut through all the current media noise to get recognition and support for your work? How do you create enough interest in your story to inspire hoards to leave the comfort of their cocoons and show up at your screenings? This awards season, there are 90 international Oscar contenders and almost as many studio films. all with recognizable names, as well as innumerable indie films made by friends and family. How can your passion project make a mark?

Guest Posts Reviews

ANXIETY CLUB – Review by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)

July 28, 2025August 10, 2025 Guest Post Anxiety Club, Aparna Nancherla, Baron Vaughn, comedians, documentaries, Eva Victor, guest post, Joe List, marc maron, Mark Normand, Tiffany Jenkins, Wendy Lobel, Yael Friedman

At first blush, Wendy Lobel’s Anxiety Club may seem like another straightforward exploration of individual comics battling their demons amid the broader questions about comedy and mental illness. Even Marc Maron, the OG of digging through emotional muck together, is on hand. Yet he is there as a sort of founding father passing on the torch to a new generation who have already internalized the power of vulnerability as critical to both their well-being and their comedy. They are so fluent and self-aware, seamlessly capturing their generation’s earnestness and their own keen ability for expression.

Guest Posts Interviews

Yael Melamede talks ADA: MY MOTHER THE ARCHITECT – Yael Friedman interviews (Guest Post)

May 15, 2025November 28, 2025 Guest Post Ada Karmi-Melamede, Ada: My Mother The Architect, architecture, Louis Kahn, My Architect, Salty Features, Sharon Yaish, Supreme Court of Israel, the female gaze, Yael Friedman, Yael Melamede

There seems to be an endless appetite for depictions of the lone genius architect, both as a mythological creature walking amongst us, and as a metaphor for just about everything. And yet one of the best movies about one may never get its due. Ada: My Mother The Architect, by Yael Melamede, about her mother, Ada Karmi-Melamede, one of Israel’s most celebrated architects, is an extraordinary film that addresses all the big questions while also portraying a human being who is very much mortal. Yael Mellamede chats with Yael Friedman about making the deeply personal documentary.

Guest Posts Reviews

E.1027 – EILEEN GRAY AND THE HOUSE BY THE SEA – Review by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)

May 8, 2025 Guest Post Beatrice Minger, docudrama, documentary, E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea, Le Corbusier, the female gaze, Yael Friedman

The erasure of women from the annals of history is usually figurative – they are overlooked, conveniently forgotten, somehow missing from the picture. But Eileen Gray (1878-1976), the pioneering modernist Irish designer and architect, was almost literally removed from the architectural record by one of its most looming figures – Le Corbusier himself. A lovely new docudrama, “E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea,” by Beatrice Minger, revisits a chapter that sounds like a parable of how the great men of history can ensure they alone receive credit for shaping it

Reviews

ADA: MY MOTHER THE ARCHITECT – Review by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)

April 23, 2025May 17, 2025 Guest Post Ada Karmi-Melamede, Ada: My Mother The Architect, architecture, documentary, israel, mother daughter relationship, the female gaze, Yael Friedman, Yael Melamede, Zionist idealism

Essays Guest Posts

HORROR’S WARNING ABOUT IGNORING WOMEN – Essay by Stephanie Malone

April 11, 2025April 17, 2025 Guest Post CARRIE, guest post, hereditary, horror, promising young woman, rosemary;s baby, Stephanie Malone, the babadook, the female gaze, the lodge

A chillingly common thread in many iconic horror movies is the refusal to believe women when they voice their fears, their suspicions, or their trauma. This narrative mirrors a grim reality rooted in history: women have long struggled to have their experiences, especially those regarding mental health and abuse, taken seriously. The implications go beyond mere storytelling. Statistics from organizations like the National Network to End Domestic Violence reveal that over 70% of domestic violence cases are never reported, often because survivors fear that they will not be believed or that they will face retribution. Let’s dive into some unforgettable horror films where disbelief in a woman’s voice escalates the terror.

Essays Guest Posts

A REAL PAIN, Holocaust Tourism & Gaza – Essay by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)

March 26, 2025May 6, 2025 Guest Post A Real Pain, Gaza, guest post, Holocaust tour, jesse eisenberg, Jewish roots, Kieran Culkin, lithuania, Poland, the female gaze, vilna, vilnius, Yael Friedman

A Real Pain utilizes the familiar tourist trip as a convincing canvas. Nailing down the charmingly Bohemian Benji (Kieran Culkin) by booking a conventional tour by the more conventional cousin David (Jesse Eisenberg), made sense. It was a perfect vehicle for allowing their dynamics, personalities, the themes of memory and trauma tourism, to unfold. The exposition in this screenplay was a master class, even though the actors are laying versions of themselves, or because of it. It’s a neat sleight of hand to turn a character you think you know into one entirely invented. As fun as Benji was and as envious as the more straitlaced and neurotic David got, the tragedy of Benji’s character pierced deeply. He endeared and broke and enraged you in equal measure. We never really find out why Benji has been cast adrift in life, and we don’t need to. We meet him where he is and worry for what is next. Just enough is given to make it real and utterly palpable.

Essays Guest Posts Reviews

DAHOMEY – Essay by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)

January 24, 2025May 6, 2025 Guest Post art restitution, benin, dahomey, documentary, guest pst, international oscars, Malkenzy Orcel, mati diop, mubi, Wally Badarou, Yael Friedman

Dahomey, the new beautiful documentary from director Mati Diop, addresses the forces that wrested history from its original owners, and interrogates what it means to try and recompense for the past. The film plays witness to an unprecedented moment – the return by France of 26 objects (26 out of many thousands) to Benin – the once Kingdom of Dahomey (1600-1904). It is the first such return of the cultural heritage colonial powers plucked from their African vassal states. The Europeans carved up a continent and removed its sacred objects (among other sins), sending them across the Atlantic to sit in sterile vitrines in grand galleries, tourists strolling by once-mighty gods.

Festivals Guest Posts Interviews

Payal Kapadia, first Indian to win the Cannes Grand Prix – Mythily Ramachandran interviews (Guest Post, Exclusive)

June 12, 2024June 20, 2024 Guest Post All We Imagine As Light, cannes 2024, Cannes Film Festival 2024, Chhaya Kadam, Divya Prabha, Grand Prix, Indian filmmakers, Kani Kusruti, Mythily Ramachandran, Payal Kapadia, Thomas Hakim

At the recently concluded Cannes Film Festival, Indian director Payal Kapadia etched her name for eternity in the annals of cinema history by winning the ‘Grand Prix.’ Kapadia’s debut feature All We Imagine As Light, was singled out among 22 entries. Her contenders included Andrea Arnold, Francis Ford Coppola, Jia Zhange-Ke, Paolo Sorrentino, Sean Baker, and Ali Abbasi. Kapadia is the first Indian woman filmmaker to win the coveted prize. No other Indian director had ever competed for the honour nor bagged it. Thirty years ago, Malayalam director Shaji N Karun’s Swaham‘ qualified at Cannes for the competition category in 1994. Kapadia’s magic moment happened when AWIAL received a standing ovation for eight long minutes after its Cannes premiere.