Wellywood Woman

Many cross-border conversations about #womeninfilm take place on Facebook now, rather than in blog comments or elsewhere online. This week, several of those conversations were about Geena Davis’ participation, as one of five executive producers and the ‘star’, according to imdb , of Tom Donahue’s Untitled Geena Davis/Gender in Media Documentary . And the conversations were notable for their rich diversity of viewpoints, because there’s now a rich diversity of #womeninfilm activists (including some men), many of us also filmmakers. And as I enjoyed the debate, I recalled Ally Acker’s project, Reel Herstory, with Jodie Foster and wondered if she had asked Geena Davis to participate in any way. I also recalled that this year at Cannes, one of the few features directed by women was The Women Who Run Hollywood / Et la femme créa Hollywood , by sisters Julia and Clara Kuperberg. Clara and Julia Kuperberg Time for an update, I thought. Just a little one. ‘Nothing too long or

Because of the news about Geena Davis' involvement in Tom Donahue's project about women directors, and the very interesting Facebook conversations it stimulated, I'm collecting info about women-directed docos about women directors. Some are finished. Others are in progress. Each is to be treasured. What have I missed? On the list so far– Ally Acker's Reel Herstory   Amy Adrion's Half the Picture   Another Gaze's   ( Dorothy Allen-Pickard  &  Daniella Shreir's)   In Conversation   With   Beti Ellerson's Sisters of the Screen   Cady McClain's Seeing is Believing: Women Direct Caroline Suh's The 4%: Film's Gender Problem   Julia & Clara Kuperberg's   The Women Who Run Hollywood / Et la femme créa Hollywood   Jennifer Dean' s  The 2d Sense & the 7th Art   Louise Hutt's Online Heroines     Yvonne Welbon's Sisters in Cinema   (thanks for the headsup on this one, HerFilm) Yvonne Welbon's

So Alison Maclean's  The Rehearsal will have its international premiere in New Zealand, at the New Zealand International Film Festival, in July. It goes on general release in New Zealand in late August and then off round the world, I hope. The Rehearsal  is Alison's  third and long-awaited feature. She also wrote the script, with Emily Perkins, from Booker Award-winning Eleanor Catton’s first novel. It is produced by her long-time collaborator  Bridget Ikin , with Trevor Haysom. “I wanted it to be an intimate, authentic experience of what it’s like to be a young person in New Zealand now,” said Alison, according to the festival’s announcement. Alison also made the classic Kitchen Sink, that debuted in Cannes in 1989 and won lots of awards. In the early 90s, after making her first feature, Crush, which played in Competition at Cannes, she disappeared to the northern hemisphere, where she made a second award-winning feature, Jesus’ Son ; and directed lots of commerci