Wellywood Woman

Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir’s track record is pretty impressive. She has written, directed and produced over sixteen films. One of Filmmaker ’s 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema and Variety’s Arab New Wave , two of her films have premiered as Official Selections in Cannes, one in Venice and one in Berlin. Annemarie’s short film like twenty impossibles (2003) was the first Arab short film in history to be an official selection of the Cannes Film Festival and continued to break ground when it went on to be a finalist for the Academy Awards. Her second work to debut in Cannes, the critically acclaimed Salt of this Sea (2008), went on to win the FIPRESCI Critics Award, and garnered fourteen other international awards including Best Film in Milan. It was the first feature film directed by a Palestinian woman and Palestine’s 2008 Oscar Entry for Foreign Language Film. Her latest film When I Saw You won Best Asian Film at the Berlinale , Best Arab Film in Abu Dha...

Jane Campion often speaks out at Cannes, where she's still the only woman to have won a Palme d'Or. Twice: once for her short, Peel , and once for The Piano . This year, as reported by Variety , she's spoken out again. 'We’re a long way from really understanding the female experience of being in the world', she said. 'There’s not enough female storytellers out there. We’ve been brainwashed a bit by the patriarchal experience of the whole way of being in the world.' And now it seems that she  and other prominent filmmakers like  Andrea Arnold – last seen dancing on the Cannes red carpet (I've been enjoying the Cannes feed on YouTube), and   Maren Ade  –  the director of Toni Erdmann , and a member of this year’s feature film jury at Cannes, are thinking about founding a  ‘wonder woman’ film school .   'It’s all about turn your aprons into capes,' Campion said. 'If all of us ladies that have done something strong and good got t...

photo: Jill Morley Cinefemme   was founded by women filmmakers, for women filmmakers, back in 2002.  It provides fiscal sponsorship to women filmmakers and artists, as well as peer-to-peer networking, mentorship, and strategy for project fundraising. By advancing women’s careers in film and the arts, the organisation empowers women’s voices to create gender parity in the arts and equal representation in the media.  Cinefemme goes from strength to strength. You can check out its many projects and partners  here . Its monthly  Dinner With Dames  is among Cinefemme's many thoughtful strategies for change. I love this initiative, because it aims to 'propel women to bigger & better career opportunities within studios & networks' and 'invites Hollywood to tackle the gender diversity issue by sitting down for dinner with up and coming female writers, directors, producers, and other skilled department heads. The hot topic of diversity in fil...

Corinn Columpar Sophie Mayer Remember   Corinn Columpar   and  Sophie Mayer 's book, There She Goes: Feminist Filmmaking & Beyond , back in 2009?  Corinn followed There She Goes with Unsettling Sights: The Fourth World on Film  (2010) and Sophie wrote Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema (2015) (WW interview here ) as well as The Cinema of Sally Potter: The Politics of Love . I love their activist writing and editing work about #womeninfilm, with its emphasis on intersectionality and rigour and its love of women's onscreen stories. Sophie-as-interlocutor in one of her many activist roles Now Corinn and Sophie are back together for a new collection,  Mothers of Invention: Parenting and/as Filmmaking Practice ! And they're calling for contributions. This is how they explain the ideas behind  Mothers of Invention  and what they're looking for– In 1983, E. Ann Kaplan famously called second-wave feminist film cultu...

Mathilde Dratwa with Leon & Christy Lamb with Parker Jean Christy Lamb and Mathilde Dratwa are American filmmakers with a revolutionary idea: to #BudgetTheBaby. Their non-profit Moms-in-Film has  a beautiful and highly informative website, and  at this year's SXSW  they trialled their Wee Wagon concept, a service for filmmakers on set and at festivals. And there's lots more! And lots more coming soon! WW  What gave you courage to propose that every shoot should #BudgetTheBaby and how does the Wee Wagon fit into this? Mathilde We are both filmmakers and relatively new moms. When I had my baby, I wrote a blog post about how difficult it was to be both. The response to that blog post was really phenomenal, so I decided to meet in person with the other moms who were commenting on it – or at least, those that were in New York, which is where I'm based. That was exactly a year ago, during last year's Tribeca Film Festival. Luckily for me, Christ...