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...

Look at these two! Our Prime Minister and our distinguished filmmaker and global advocate for women filmmakers meet, at last week's SPADA (Screen Production and Development Association) conference . Look at their pleasure in each other. Their body language.  Their close attention. AotearoaNZ Prime Minister Jacinda Arden meets Dame Jane Campion For me, this meeting is a significant turning point in the movement to gender equity in the allocation of public money for screen storytelling. The first one was at 2015's Big Screen Symposium, when Chelsea Cohen – with support from other Māori women – spoke out  about the need to allocate New Zealand Film Commission funding equally to women and men. Our first woman writer/director/producer to do this publicly. Her courage made it safer for others to follow her example. So: what might this Jacinda-And-Jane meeting mean? The new government has already announced its commitment to pay equity and I think we can now be confid...

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 —...