Women and Hollywood

Melissa Silverstein is the founder and editor of Women and Hollywood, one of the most respected sites for issues related to women and film as well as other areas of pop culture. Women and Hollywood educates, advocates, and agitates for gender parity across the entertainment industry.

She is also the co-founder and Artistic Director of The Athena Film Festival. The 4th annual festival will take place from February 6-9, 2014 at Barnard College in NYC.

Melissa recently published the first book from Women and Hollywood, In Her Voice: Women Directors Talk Directing, which is a compilation of over 40 interviews that have appeared on the site.

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Blog Roll

The Status of Women's Film Festivals

Blogs

One of the reasons I went to Colgone to the International Frauen Film Festival was to be a part of a dialogue on the status of women's films festivals. The festival invited Skadi Loist a researcher from the Media and Communications Studies Department at the University of Hamburg who has done research on film festivals throughout the world. She is also the co-founder of the Film Festival Research Network.

By Melissa Silverstein
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April 30, 2012 12:30 PM
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1 Comment

Blogs

The Guthrie Theatre is one of the most prestigious regional theatres in America. Next year it will be celebrating it's 50th anniversary season. Joe Dowling, the 7th Artistic director of the theatre (which by the way has never had a female artistic director) recently announced the program for this very important upcoming season and there is not a SINGLE female playwright on the list for the main stages. (I also just consulted Wikipedia and the Guthrie also had no female playwrights in the 2011-2012 season.) And not only are there no women, there are also no plays by any people of color. So their whole celebratory season marking this seminal anniversary will be populated completely by white men.

By Melissa Silverstein
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April 30, 2012 10:11 AM
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2 Comments

Blogs

Here are my impressions of the film from the Toronto Film Festival. The film opens in NY and LA today with a nationwide release it follow.

By Melissa Silverstein
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April 27, 2012 10:30 AM
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2 Comments

Video

Film Opens May 4

By Melissa Silverstein
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April 27, 2012 9:57 AM
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0 Comments

Blogs

I just am back from Germany where I attended the International Frauen Film Festival, a truly wonderful environment where you can hang out with women working in the film business that you otherwise would never meet. We also had a couple of great meetings of women who work at women's film festivals (more on that later.)

By Melissa Silverstein
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April 26, 2012 1:28 PM
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0 Comments

Video

What do you think about this one. It opens in the slot in August where movies targeted at women like Julie & Julia and The Help have been quite successful. It's directed by the same guy who did The Devil Wear Prada. After watching the trailer I'm not so sure about this one. Tommy Lee Jones just doesn't do it for me. But I'm sure I will see it.

By Melissa Silverstein
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April 26, 2012 11:45 AM
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0 Comments

Blogs

Just wanted to make sure that you saw the pieces that I wrote this week for The Washington Post and the NY Times' website Room For Debate.

By Melissa Silverstein
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April 26, 2012 10:04 AM
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0 Comments

Trailer Watch: Romeo & Juliet in Yiddish Directed by Eve Annenberg

Synopsis: Eve Annenberg's gritty, funny new feature stars predominantly non-actor twenty somethings who grew up speaking Yiddish as a first language in Brooklyn. This is possibly the first narrative film acted by both men and women in this much spoken, colloquial Yiddish in over seventy years.

By Melissa Silverstein
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April 26, 2012 9:40 AM
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0 Comments

Blogs

While I am not usually that interested in boycentric blockbusters, I am very into seeing The Avengers. I want to see how an open feminist man like Joss Whedon makes a big budget Hollywood film. Will the women be more than window dressing? Too bad The Avengers only has one female lead -- Scarlett Johansson -- and she wears a skin tight suit, but hey maybe she has some good lines and kicks ass like Whedon's Buffy.

By Melissa Silverstein
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April 25, 2012 11:09 AM
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118 Comments

Video

Looks like this will be Pixar's one shot at a film about a girl because they released the list of the next couple of movies and NONE are about women and NONE are directed by women.

By Melissa Silverstein
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April 25, 2012 9:32 AM
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4 Comments

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