Wellywood Woman

Writing buddy 1B sneaks in through the kitchen door. I don’t hear a thing. A little later, she slides down the hall, pauses in the doorway of my work space and, because she’s like that, she poses , grinning at me over the top of my screen. –Kare, she says, throwing her arms wide. Jug’s on. Off your nono. A cuppa and a double feature at the Cuba Lighthouse. If we get going, there’s Florence Foster Jenkins followed by Hunt for the Wilderpeople . I don’t move. –It’s ten o’clock on a weekday morning, I say. I have to finish this. And I’ve seen Hunt for the Wilderpeople. –So? You like watching movies a second time. With a mate, particularly avec moi and a shared pot of tea. –One more viewing of a man-directed New Zealand movie with a male protagonist will kill me. She shakes her head, beckons. –I’ve been six hours on the road. Com’on, girl, a cuddle at least. –I didn’t know you were coming. –Because you don’t answer your ******* phones. Because you send out-of-t

Natalie Wreyford has a unique perspective, as an academic who was deeply embedded in the UK film industry for many years and is also politically very active. She held a senior role at the UK Film Council; commissioned one of the first reports into the lack of women screenwriters; read, advised on and script edited hundreds of film scripts; and worked with Academy Award-winners and those trying to get their first break. Natalie is now  Research Fellow on Calling the Shots:Women & Contemporary UK Film Culture , at the University of Southampton, where she co-authored Calling the Shots: Women working in key roles on UK films in production during 2015 (2016), and is the author of ‘ Birds of a feather: informal recruitment practices and gendered outcomes for screenwriting work in the UK film industry ’. Her PhD thesis, The gendered contexts of screenwriting work: Socialized recruitment and judgments of taste and talent in the UK film industry  is online here . A couple of ye