Wellywood Woman

Still from Not Like Her, with Livy Wicks and Kate Elliott I’ve emerged (briefly) from researching the 1930s and 1970s. Freshly aware how quickly women writers and artists and their histories are lost. Not only in New Zealand. The other day art historian Griselda Pollock wrote about how England’s National Gallery is erasing women from the history of art. And I’ve noticed something similar myself, seeing how a New Zealand woman artist's feminism can be erased in just a few years, when an exhibition catalogue omits her participation in feminist exhibitions and a book about her explicitly denies her deeply valued contributions to the women's art movement. I'm re-motivated to make a formal record of women artists' work, starting here. So, in case her achievement is forgotten, warm congratulations to Michelle Joy Lloyd, whose Sunday just won Best International Feature at a major international women’s film festival, the Female Eye Film Festival in Toronto. Thanks

Another in my series about the  Activist Complex Female Protagonist.   To me, she's all those who work towards increased and more diverse representation of women in front of and behind the camera, globally.  I'm intrigued. It feels as though a sleeping giant is waking. Back in the 70s and 80s there were many activist women filmmakers in Australia, often making films by, about women and  for women. I've been reading about them (again) this week. There was even a state-funded Women's Film Fund that I'll write about soon, in a post about New Zealand's tentative new gender initiatives. But in the last decade or so, it's seemed very quiet over in Aussie. As the Screen Australia gender stats show , the situation's as bad there as it is anywhere. And similar to New Zealand's. These are very recent infographics. Yes, Sydney's  WOW is an annual festival, in its 21st year (no parallel event here in New Zealand). Yes, there's the Tasma