Wellywood Woman

Afia Nathaniel I love the Raising Films site and the women who created it. Raising Films is visionary and absolutely necessary, building a frank-and-fearless community discussion around Family vs Film and developing a rich archive of illuminating and useful information for women filmmakers everywhere. Among other synergies, Raising Films is now associated with the European Women's Audiovisual Network and the Parents in Performing Arts campaign.  And  the makers – some of them mothers – provide an excellent model of being activists while also getting on with their individual work. The women who run Raising Films are– Hope Dickson Leach, now shooting her first feature, The Levelling , funded by the iFeature programme (BBC Films, BFI and Creative England); Line Langebek, co-writer of  I'll Come Running among other credits and a screenwriting teacher at Regent's University; prolific producers Nicky Bentham and Jessica Levick; writer Sophie Mayer whose Political...

Merata Mita Aotearoa New Zealand (mostly 'Aotearoa' in this post) held its annual Big Screen Symposium in Auckland last weekend, focusing on 'strengthening our collaborative spirit'. It's run by Script to Screen, a trust whose mandate is to develop 'the craft and culture of storytelling for the screen in Aotearoa New Zealand'. Many women participated on panels. Jane Campion took a masterclass and spoke with her Top of the Lake producer Philippa Campbell in the final session. I was catching up at home, so followed as well as I could via tweets and tumblr posts. ( If I've missed something vital, please let me know?) In his 'state of the nation' address, Dave Gibson, the chief executive of the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) referred to the NZFC's gender policy. Big sigh. According to the latest figures I've seen, women are already in Aotearoa's industry: 44% of those who work there. The 'female' issue is ...

Mary Dore and Nancy Kennedy's feature about the birth of the American women's movement, She's Beautiful When She's Angry , screened at the New Zealand International Film Festival this year. Afterwards, I got a group email from someone who wrote– The younger ones wanted to know if there is a similar account of the NZ second wave of feminism.... can anyone give us a reference? Since then, I've become aware of Australian women's filmmaking in the 1970s and 1980s  and I've kept my eye out for films from and about the women's movement in New Zealand in those years. But the woman-made moving image record of New Zealand activities of those times, from those times, seems to be tiny. I’ve searched in the Nga Taonga Sound & Vision collections and I now know, for instance, that there were at least three films made in 1975: Meanwhile with a crew that included Annie Collins, Deidre McCartin’s Some of My Best Friends Are Women ; and You Wanna Talk Fe...

Chantal Akerman (image: Liberation ) Chantal Akerman's Death I tried to write about why I felt so deeply sad about Chantal Akerman's death, then read a post from poet Ana Božičević , who got it just right for me– No one knows for sure why a woman takes her life but that Chantal A might have done so in part because her No Home Movie – about her mother Natalia an Auschwitz survivor, which was grueling to make – was booed...really breaks my heart this morning. I wonder always, who cares, as in provides care, for the women artists who go to deep dark uncommercial places? Which intimate understands the skill, of craft and emotion, necessary for the work that they do? I wrote in some napkin or tweet once 'they only love the Sylvias after they are dead'. Give care to the woman artist in your life even and especially when she does the hard depth work that challenges the mind and body, yours and hers. And if you are that woman, thank you today & every day. Thank yo...