Wellywood Woman

In Aotearoa New Zealand we're keen on movies with women protagonists, in a variety of genres. At the box office last time I looked,  seven out of the top ten had women at their centre. But women wrote and directed only  two  of them. Just two more had women as co-writers– *1. Ocean’s 8 $746,780 (dir Gary Ross, wr *Olivia Milch, Gary Ross; distr Roadshow) 2. Solo: A Star Wars Story $220,207 (dir Ron Howard, wr Jon Kasdan, Lawrence Kasdan; distr Walt Disney) 3. Deadpool 2 $207,067 (dir David Leitch, wr Drew Goddard, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick; distr Fox) *4. Hereditary $130,750 (dir/wr Ari Aster; distr Studiocanal) *5. Tea With The Dames $106,154 (dir Roger Michell; distr Transmission) 6. Avengers: Infinity War $75,320 (dir Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, wr Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeeley; distr Walt Disney) *7. The Bookshop $62,748 (wr/dir *Isabel Coixet from novel by Penelope Fitzgerald; distr Transmission) *8. Veere Di Wedding $47,967 (dir Shashan...

This year #WomenInFilm ‘how-to’ talks have flourished. The speakers aren’t the first to share, nourish and inform, of course. But until this year, there was just one standout for me: Ava DuVernay’s  Film Independent Forum keynote   in 2013. She brilliantly argued that filmmakers should abandon despair about not having access to what we need and move on from depression about what makes our work difficult: a ‘wrong’ gender, a ‘wrong’ race or culture, no film school training, no money, no mentors, no advocates, no time. Instead, ‘Create work’, she said. ‘Look at what you have and work with that’. She’s also argued that ‘It’s not about knocking on closed doors. It’s about building our own house and having our own door’, and that has resonated for many women filmmakers. installation, National Museum of African American History & Culture (Smithsonian) In the three years since, lots of women have followed her advice — or come to a similar conclusion independently —...

Jane Campion's Top of The Lake This week I read Ava DuVernay’s script for Middle of Nowhere , the feature for which she won Best Director in the US Competition at the Sundance Film Festival last year. Middle of Nowhere hasn’t reached New Zealand yet, but the elegant, powerful script touched my heart. It has an intriguing woman protagonist, a diverse group of women characters and can be read – like Sally Potter’s The Gold Diggers – as an extended metaphor for significant elements in women’s filmmaking. It’s great to see Middle of Nowhere mentioned often as a contender for various categories at the Oscars. And now that Sundance has announced its 2013 US Dramatic Competition selection, and women directed eight of the sixteen films chosen – the highest ratio ever – it’s possible to imagine that next year they too will do well in awards. The Sundance announcement hit the headlines and delighted many women. Change at last. But the reality is that the change is limited to th...