SHAKUNTALA DEVI – Review by Mythily Ramachandran
Shakuntala Devi is a spirited tale of India’s mathematical genius. Vidya Balan completely owns the titular role while bringing alive this rags to riches story in director Anu Menon’s film.
Read MoreWhistler Film Festival Interview: Katia Shannon on STANDSTILL
Katia Shannon’s Standstill is about a young woman who arrives at an intersection in her life. On the way to starting a new life with her boyfriend, Amanda gets stuck in traffic. Her fight to get through the gridlock turns into a fight for survival as her body comes to a standstill. With panic mounting, Amanda must face her deepest vulnerabilities in order to survive. Standstill has been nominated for an EDA Award at Whistler Film Festival 2019. Here’s what Shannon has to say about her deeply personal short film.
Read MoreWIDOWS – Review by Marietta Steinhart
Steve McQueen has created masterful dramas about men and their torment. Gillian Flynn is notorious for her compelling thrillers about traumatized women. Together they’ve made a smart heist movie with a feminist twist. Last year, Widows, was one of the most intriguing films with and about women.
Read MoreWhistler Film Festival 2018: Lara Zeidan, director of THREE CENTIMETRES
In Lara Zeidan’s nine-minute short film is a dense and claustrophobic drama in which four teenage Lebanese girls go on a ferris wheel ride to cheer one of them up after a breakup. They find their friendships put to the test while they are suspended high above Beirut, as secrets are revealed and tensions rise. The drama culminates in an unexpected confession.
Read MoreMOHAWK — Review by Hope Madden
How many Westerns are told from the perspective of the American Indian? None, basically. When First Nation filmmakers (Chris Eyre, Sydney Freeland, Neil Diamond, Sterlin Harjo, Adam Garnet Jones, among others) create, they seem to ignore the genre that has, for most of Hollywood’s history, defined them in popular culture. Jim Jarmusch’s brilliant Dead Man comes closest, as Gary Farmer’s character Nobody informs William Blake’s (Johnny Depp) journey. Though Farmer’s not the lead, it is his character’s perspective of the West that guides the film. For co-writer/director Ted Geoghegan (We Are Still Here), that’s not enough. Mohawk, his latest film, spins a far more typically Western story: battle lines drawn between Mohawks and new Americans, each trying to secure a piece of American soil.
Read MoreNew Zealand’s Maori Women Talk WARU — Gill Pringle reports from TIFF
Told from the viewpoint of nine female filmmakers, Waru is the first feature film from New Zealand to be made by Maori women since Mereta Mita’s Mauri almost 30 years ago. Eight female Maori directors each contributed a ten minute vignette, presented as a continuous shot in real time, that unfolds around the tangi (funeral) of a small boy (Waru) who died at the hands of his caregiver. The vignettes are all subtly interlinked and each follows one of eight female Maori lead characters during the same moment in time as they come to terms with Waru’s death and try to find a way forward in their community. In Maori, waru means 8.
Read MoreMeet Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, director of ‘Nil Battey Sannata’ (‘Zero Divided by Zero’) and ‘Bareilly Ki Barfi’ (Bareilly’s Candy) — Interview by Mythily Ramachandran
Indian director Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari’s first film, Nil Battey Sannata,’ (Hindi for Zero divided by Zero), released last year, was so successful she had to do a second version in Tamil. She premiered her second film, a hilarious romcom titled ‘Bareilly Ki Barfi’ (Hindi for ‘Bareilly’s Candy’) last month. Both films are femme-centric and, as Indian film critic andjournalist Mythily Ramachandran reports, Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari is here to stay. Read Mythily Ramachandran’s interview with Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari
Read MoreMeet Soundarya Rajnikanth, director of VELLAI ILLA PATTADHARI 2 — Interview by Mythily Ramachandran (Exclusive)
A career in films was inevitable for Soundarya Rajnikanth, the youngest daughter of Rajnijanth, the Tamil actor who is fondly nicknamed ‘Superstar” in India. Soundarya stepped out of her father’s shadow in 2014 to direct her first film, Kochadaiiyaan, an animated period film with her father in the lead. This film, shot with motion-capture technology, is a first in the history of Indian cinema. Director Soundarya returns with her second feature, the live action Vella Illa Pattadhari 2 (Unemployed Graduate, in Tamil), the sequel to the blockbuster, Vella Illa Pattadhari, which was released in 2015.
Read MoreAWFJ EDA Award @ DOXA 2017 Filmmaker Interview: Justine Harbonnier on ANDREW KEEGAN IS MOVING
Filmmaker Justine Harbonnier takes us to Montreal, where the city’s oldest house is being moved to make way for posh modern condos. Her profound and poetic film reflects her questions about how such moves impact a neighborhood and its residents, and others who pass by without even noticing these changes that effect the future of their city. Read what she has to day about making the film and her future plans.
Read MoreAWFJ EDA Award @ DOXA 2017 Filmmaker Interview: Julia Hechler on LES CLOYS
In a particular Parisian neighborhood, residents have devised a means of establishing their own cultural identity and reclaiming their person power through the creation of a slanguage they call Verlan (back to front). American filmmaker Julia Hechler captures their trending tongue on film. Read what she has to say about the importance of language, getting to know your subjects and her next career moves.
Read MoreAWFJ EDA AWARD @ DOXA 2017 Filmmaker Interview: Yan Su Chun on DROKPA
Filmmaker Yan Chun Su’s gorgeous observational film captures life on the Tibetan Plateau. The last of Tibet’s drokpa (nomads) lead herds of yak and sheep over hilly grasslands. No longer limitless and free- ranging, they move across sections of pasture, now allotted to them by the Chinese government. Read what Yan Chun Su has to say about the changing environment, nomadic life, organic filmmaking and her career.
Read MoreAWFJ EDA Award @ DOXA 2017 Filmmaker Interview: Clara van Gool on VOICES OF FINANCE
Dutch filmmaker Clara van Gool’s short dance documentary takes us to London’s bleak financial district, where traders, bankers, and hedge fund managers describe an atavistic society, blood red in tooth and claw. As they move through the city streets, bodies become a metaphor for the extremity of an industry that twists and bends human nature into torturous form. Read what Clara van Gool has to say about making the film, dance as metaphor and her career.
Read MoreCady McClain on making SEEING IS BELIEVING: WOMEN DIRECT
Cady McClain has traveling the globe, speaking to female directors and documenting their stories for her serialized documentary, Seeing is Believing: Women Direct. Not yet complete, the documentary is intended to elucidte the skills and tools needed to succeed as a woman in the directing field . Here, McClain writes about her own filmmaking process, why she’s making this documentary series and what she’s learning from doing so. Read on…
Read MoreAWFJ EDA Awards @ IDFA 2016 Filmmaker Interview: Mette Carla Albrechtsen and Lea Glob on VENUS
Danish filmmakers Mette Carla Albrechtsen and Lea Glob explore the subject of young women’s sexuality by setting up an open ‘casting call’ at which they interview the film’s subjects about their sexual experiences and attitudes towards sexuality and their bodies as they develop from adolescence to womanhood. Through this compilation of interviews, the filmmakers contemplate their own attitudes towards sex, and offer the opportunity for women who see the film to do as, as well. Read the interview
Read MoreEBERTFEST 2016: WOMEN IN FILM PANEL — Report by Shalayne Pulia
“How can you make an Oscar worthy film with one tenth of the budget? It’s an uneven playing field to begin with,” Darrien Gipson said in addressing the amazing disparity between the stats regarding the numbers of women compared to men from the very start of the hierarchical ladder to achievement in noviemaking. Gipson was a member of EBERTFEST’s Women in Film panel, moderated by Chaz Ebert. Read more>>
Read MoreAWFJ to Present EDA Awards @ SLIFF 2015 – Michelle McCue Reports
The Alliance of Women Film Journalists will present juried AWFJ EDA Awards @ St Louis International Film Festival 2015 (SLIFF) for Best Female-Directed Narrative and Documentary Feature Films. The 24th Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival takes place Nov. 5-15. This is the third year AWFJ partners with SLIFF to recognize outstanding achievements of women filmmakers. Read on…
Read MoreDigging deeper into Toronto festival films – an overview by Janice Page
Toronto International Film Festival was overrun with big movies about and by Bostonians. While headlines were grabbed by predictable awards-season contenders, there were just as many smaller films worth noting. A number of them were femme-helmed and femme-centric flashes of genius. Think Laurie Anderson, Julie Delpy, Charlotte Rampling, Sarah Silverman and others. Read more>>
Read MoreMichael Sheen on FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD and Female Focus in Film – Jennifer Merin interviews (Exclusive Video)
In Far From The Madding Crowd, Michael Sheen portrays one of three male suitors to the fiercely independent Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan), and he’s played opposite strong leading female characters in other films, as well. In this exclusive, uncut interview, Sheen talks about the female focus of Far From The Madding Crowd, the need for balance and complexity in women’s roles in movies and a living female icon he’d like to see portrayed on screen. Watch the video…
Read MoreSundance Female Filmmaker Initiative: New Stats for Women Directors
New research shows films by women and men are equally likely to receive distribution out of the Sundance Film Festival U.S. Dramatic Competition, but gap widens from there. Industry perceptions of a gendered marketplace, scarcity of talent pool, lack of ambition, as well as gender imbalance among gatekeepers, help explain broken pipeline for female filmmakers. The new study was conducted at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, Read on…
Read MoreSusanne Bier on Directing in Hollywood and Other Challenges – Interview by Julide Tanriverdi
Susanne Bier’s In A Better World won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2011, putting the Danish filmmaker into that very small circle of women who’ve won Oscars for directing. It also won her a place on Hollywood’s A-List and an invitation to move from indies to studio films. But transitioning from Copenhagen to Hollywood has been challenging. Here’s what she has to say about it. Read on…
Read MoreNegotiating Unfamilar Places: Girls Respond to Programming @ Berlinale 2015 – Essay by Monty Majeed
The magic of movies lies in the fact that they evoke in children — girls and boys, alike — a horde of emotional responses to onscreen images. Young women, in particular, are profoundly influenced by films that follow girl protagonists whose stories transport them to new cultures, environments and character circumstances outside of their personal experiences within their familiar realm. As Indian critic Monty Majeed discovered while interviewing girls at Berlinale 2015, this year’s festival’s expanded programming of films with young women protagonists projected horizon-broadening images that were as transformative and enlightening as they were disturbing. Read on…
Read MoreFlat Stats Indicate Hollywood is Still A Man’s World – Jennifer Merin Reports on Martha Lauzen’s Latest Study
Dr. Martha Lauzen, who heads San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Film and Television, has just released her latest study about on-screen representations of female characters in the top 100 grossing films of 2014. Dr. Lauzen has been tracking the disparity in roles for women for decades. Year after year, her exacting studies show that there is little change in the stats. Gain a few points one year, lose a few the next. Progress is flat, and that’s always the disappointing non-news. Read on…
Read MoreSalem Film Fest Honors Female Documentarians
Salem Film Fest, the docs-only festival that takes place annually in Salem, Massachusetts, has invited the Alliance of Women Film Journalists to present the EDA Award for Best Female-Directed Film at the 2015 festival, scheduled for March 5 to 12. Partnering with AWFJ for the fourth consecutive year, SFF programmers have nominated six outstanding female-directed films for EDA Awards recognition. Read on…
Read MoreAWFJ @ Whistler Film Fest Presents EDAs to Three Women Filmmakers — Jennifer Merin reports
Returning to Whistler Film Festival for the second year, AWFJ presented EDA Awards to women filmmakers represented in the 2014 program. Of the eight festival-nominated female-directed films, five were narratives and three were documentaries. Honoring the high quality of films in both genres, AWFJ decided to level the fic/nonfic playing field by combining the two categories, and assigning all jurors to vote on all films. That decision resulted in the selection of three EDA Award winners. Read on…
Read MoreCanada’s Women In the Director’s Chair Participants Celebrate Each Other’s Work – Filmmaker Rebecca Gibson Bears Witness
My name is Rebecca Gibson, and I am a filmmaker. A writer, director, producer, and actor. On November 25, 2014, I came from Winnipeg, Manitoba to Vancouver, British Columbia to join a group of eight carefully-selected female filmmakers from across Canada to participate in the nineteenth annual Women In the Director’s Chair program, an internationally respected Canadian professional development offering, specially designed to advance the skills, careers and screen projects of women directors. Read on…
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