Wellywood Woman

I can't wait to read this new book. It will arrive in the mail very soon. And there's a Facebook page associated with it where—according to Sophie Mayer one of the editors— "we're going to try and gather and share lots of news and ideas about women's cinema and visual media":  (see her comment a couple of posts down, & the link to her site on the sidebar to the right here). Here's what the publishers say about the book: Following in the footsteps of the filmmakers whose work it features —including Miranda July, Janie Geiser, Tracey Moffatt, Sally Potter, Cindy Sherman, Samira Makhmalbaf, Sadie Benning, Agnès Varda, Kim Longinotto, and Michelle Citron— T here She Goes: Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond seeks to make trouble not only in the archives but also at the boundaries between artistic, industrial, political, critical, and disciplinary practices. Editors Corinn Columpar and Sophie Mayer have assembled scholarship that responds to women’s wo...

Here's Gaylene Preston on Screen Talk, talking about her life as a filmmaker. I think she's probably made more films—nearly forty—than any other New Zealander, an amazing mixture of features and docos. Gaylene has often made, as she says in the interview, "some of the invisible things visible", and those invisible things have often been about women's lives. And she's been very supportive of many women—as well as men—so it's not surprising that she says in this interview "There are still less women working in all sorts of areas in filmmaking than I would have hoped then (in the 70s)". I've had experience of Gaylene's generous support myself. She took me to Films de Femmes in Creteil (Paris) one year. And more recently when we met by chance she explained in great detail how I could use the Screen Production Incentive Fund , sketching out the details on one of the cafe's paper serviettes. I smile every time I see it floating in a file,...

Playwright and screenwriter Andrew Bovell ( Lantana , Blessed —directed by Ana Kokkinos, an interview with her here —and the forthcoming Edge of Darkness ) visited the Institute of Modern Letters the other day, a great place for treats-for-students. In a workshop, Andrew Bovell suggested that it's useful to look at what a main character first says and first does in a screenplay, and then at what she says and does at the end. "Is there a reversal, or a question answered?" If so, the writer’s done her job. And because I’d just finished my thesis, I wondered whether Andrew Bovell’s question would be useful there, too. In the thesis' Introduction, I described the evidence that shows a general problem—in New Zealand, it's more difficult for women to tell their stories as feature films than it is for men: From January 2003-December 2008, New Zealanders working in New Zealand produced at least seventy-five feature films. Women wrote and directed nine percent. The nati...

While I finished my thesis I didn't do much else for a few months. 404 unopened emails in one account, 791 in the other. And then I was done. And I discovered a short&sharp tweet from MadamaAmbi , sent back in June, in response to my Reading Women's Scripts post: "@devt internalized misogyny?" Then a comment I treasure, also in response to Reading Women's Scripts , from lisa gornick, the filmmaker whose film drawing site I love. Here's her latest drawing, girl at six : Lisa wrote: this is such hard but vital reading. it's like hearing your own mother be mean about you or something like that. it's so sad too. this is a great thing to air, to debate and for everyone not to be scared of discussing. there is probably some deep seated female self hating going on that causes all this to happen in an aggressive macho world of filmmaking and that with some quiet exploration and revelation we could unpick this and a new era of filmmaking could be born. 
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Another New Zealand feature with a woman director! This time, Rosemary Riddell. I love this project's blog, The Interminable Moon , from the writer/producer, Mike Riddell, who takes the reader through his amazing journey to get his story made. Shooting starts next month.

Between this, outside the window in July— —& this today (still no blue sky) I finished my PhD: "Opening space for New Zealand women’s participation in scriptwriting for feature films?" Hard yakka. But done.