Wellywood Woman

There’s so much discussion about the Bechdel Test now (see links below for some examples). I love it all, am interested that men are writing about the test. AND I relate to @marnen’s tweet today: "I'm feeling snarky enough to propose the Laibow-Koser test: can 2 female writers have a conversation that doesn't mention Bechdel test? :)". And then this morning on FB, Scarlett Shepard from the San Francisco Women’s Film Festival (@sfwff) provided the link to an Indiewire article, Summer Box Office Report: Women Rule The Art Houses , by Peter Knegt. Peter Knegt explains that men directed every one of the 22 summer 'Hollywood' films that earned more than $50m, and women actors received top billing in only five, including the three that women ‘flocked’ to: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse , Eat, Pray, Love and Sex & the City 2 . But in the ten top-grossing ‘specialty’ releases* "women dominated: in audience seats, in front of the camera, and, perhaps to an un...

TAKE 100 The Future of Film 100 New Directors Where did I learn about this book? Not sure. Anyway, Phaidon, the publishers kindly sent me a BLAD, so I can admire a sample of the book’s beauty, and do a gender count. And it looks like a beautiful book, even has excerpts from scripts, which I love to see. But, of the 100 directors (one, Taika Waititi, a New Zealander) only 17-and-a-half (one director is a mixed gender couple!) are women. Nine of the book’s eleven ‘curators’ are men, two of the men joint curators, and all past and present directors of major film festivals. Azize Tan, the solitary woman, is director of the Istanbul International Film Festival. And the women are (druuuummmmm roooollllllllll): Maren Ade, Andrea Arnold, Sophie Barthes, Aida Begic, Anna Boden (the half), Valeska Grisebach, Mia Hansen-Love, Miranda July, Farah Khan, So Yong Kim, Liu Jiayin, Lucrecia Martel, Shirin Neshat, Asli Ozge, Sarah Polley, Kelly Reichardt, Axelle Ropert, Esther Rots. I’ll be look...

I’ve been excited about Western Australian women this week. First, there was Sue Taylor’s article about making Julie Bertuccelli’s film The Tree . Fascinating for any woman who wants to make a movie, and anyone who wonders about gendered problems women filmmakers face. Sue Taylor at left here with director Julie Bertuccelli, & actor Zoe Boe, at The Tree 's premiere at Cannes, in May Then, following a link about a conference, from ScreenHub , I found Larissa Sexton-Finck’s PhD thesis, Be(com)ing reel independent woman: an autoethnographic journey through female subjectivity and agency in contemporary cinema with particular reference to independent scriptwriting practice . It sounds a bit turgid, in the title, and in the abstract that you’ll see when you click through. But it isn’t. I think—as someone who isn’t very academically inclined—that it’s glorious, a fantastic read. Long, & I haven’t finished it. But I will. It includes a feature screenplay, Float . ...

Erica & I are creating a new business plan for Development -the-movie, taking into account all we've learned over the last year. It's involved a lot of research, to be sure we're up-to-date. Often we have to try to reconcile conflicting information, and wish we had more access to people in other parts of the world whose knowledge and experience would make us better informed. So it was very useful to see this interview with Terry Lawler, executive director of New York Women in Film & Television, which has a special resonance for us, working away under our charitable umbrella (thank you, Victoria Foundation ). We feel that we can trust Terry's conclusions. Especially when we know, for instance, that Arwen Curry has 'a long way to go' with funding for her film about Ursula Le Guin , which will have a huge audience. And when we see that Afia Nathaniel's Neither the Veil Nor the Four Walls , a thriller set in Pakistan, an exciting non-profit project...

I always enjoy Luci Temple's blog Yet Another Struggling Writer . I love her close-and-careful analysis of feature projects that experiment with transmedia, with new kinds of investment, audience engagement and distribution. I learn more from her blog, every time, than from any other blog that addresses similar issues. So when I was thinking about the Aussie women feature filmmakers doing so well as contenders for the AFI awards (yep! 42%), and puzzling about Martha Coleman's statement as Head of Development for Screen Australia (" there is a shortage of young women writers and directors putting their hand up to work in the mainstream ”) and preparing to write Aussie Sequel 1 , I tweeted her, then emailed: When I was re-reading your blog and came across your response to a comment about your own work and saw that you were having difficulty attracting state funding I was curious about your project: what it is, where it’s up to, where you perceive ongoing challenges and w...

I've amended this post slightly since I first wrote it, as a sequel to an earlier post which celebrated the high proportion of women-directed features that were in contention for the Australian Film Institute's annual awards. We share a name, Aussie and New Zealand women, though I don’t hear it often now: we’re Sheilas. According to my dictionary, ‘our’ Sheila came from shaler , of unknown origin. But I look up shale, defined as soft finely stratified rock that splits easily, consisting of consolidated mud or clay and I think earth mother, split . And I see all those immigrant men engaging with the earth of their new lands. With few women around. And I go AH. Jan Chapman producer of Bright Star —one of the films in contention for an AFI award—with  director Jane Campion But Australian women filmmakers have a very different history than we do. Renowned producer Jan Chapman summarised their early feminist years in her Longford Lyell Lecture in 2002. There was a Sydney Fi...

It was one of @melsil's tweets, there at the side of her Women & Hollywood page. This is what it said: "Another project about women at Sony. We should track these. Girls Like Us is looking for a writer http://bit.ly/9rFqGW". OH, I thought: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon-- Then, "I can do this. And I want to." First, I wrote to one beloved US contact "How would I try for this? Is it crazy even to consider? I guess I believe I could do this wonderfully, partly because I'm the same age as these women. Am I too far away, too inexperienced, too un-agented?" "No clue,"she responded. "But if you can pursue it, pursue it." Then, I jumped on the Sony Pictures Entertainment website to find the producers, Amy Pascal and Elizabeth Cantillon. Sent an email to the address on SPE's Employment Opportunities page. Figured out Amy Pascal's address and emailed her. Neither email bounced back. (No response though. Ye...