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.

Email Melissa

Purchase In Her Voice

Blog Roll

On the Road

I am heading to Bucharest, Romania to be on the jury of the Romania International Film Festival.

By Melissa Silverstein
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September 30, 2011 3:26 AM
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0 Comments

Guest Post: 10 Things I Have Learned Having Our Film CONNECTED In Theaters by Tiffany Shlain

1. CUTTING YOUR OWN TRAILERDon’t try this. Very dangerous. When you are running at full speed to complete your film on your way to your premiere, don’t fool yourself that you have the perspective to cut your own trailer. We thought we did. At that point we had totally lost perspective and were in no shape to edit the trailer. So after we got our breath we found someone else to cut it.

By Melissa Silverstein
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September 30, 2011 2:39 AM
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0 Comments

A Snow White Who Kicks Ass

Here is a cool shot of Kristen Stewart from Snow White and the Huntsman. She looks like she is ready to kick some serious butt.

By Melissa Silverstein
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September 30, 2011 1:59 AM
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0 Comments

The Bridesmaids Effect

Can one successful film about women really change Hollywood's mind about women? Could it be that Bridesmaids is really the movie to usher in a new era of change where the films that came before failed? We've seen multitudes of successful female films in our recent past -- one or two a year, lots starring Meryl Streep or Sandra Bullock like The Devils Wears Prada, The Proposal, Julie & Julia, Sex and the City...but they all pretty much became one offs. A great success that does not lead to more successes.

By Melissa Silverstein
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September 29, 2011 3:30 AM
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0 Comments

Roman Polanski In Our Faces Again

I don't know why I feel obsessed by this story, but I am. In some ways I feel it is my feminist duty to remind people every time this guy gets the adoring press he always does that he is a rapist.

By Melissa Silverstein
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September 29, 2011 2:30 AM
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5 Comments

Melissa McCarthy Covers The Hollywood Reporter

This brings a very big smile to my face. Fresh off her Emmy win, McCarthy will host SNL this weekend. This is really her moment. But it's not like it will be downhill for her. I think she is still really on her way up and she is such a great role model for all of us who don't look the way Hollywood says we should look.

By Melissa Silverstein
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September 28, 2011 4:44 AM
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2 Comments

Interview with Agnieszka Holland - Director of In Darkness

I was able to interview the Academy Award winning director (Europa Europa) Agnieszka Holland in Toronto at the debut of her new film about the Holocaust, In Darkness. In Darkness is Poland's entry to the Academy Award for foreign language picture.

By Melissa Silverstein
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September 28, 2011 4:10 AM
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2 Comments

Guest Post: Retro-sexism: What’s the Allure? by Emilie Spiegel and Sarah Bloodsworth

This fall’s crop of new TV series includes The Playboy Club and Pan Am, two shows set in 1960s, both centering on young women doing “glamorous” jobs and allegedly redefining what it meant to be a woman in mid-century America. Both shows infer that being a Playboy Bunny or Pan Am stewardess (respectively) could be a progressive opportunity for a young women—a chance to break out of the molds set by their mothers and to live out their own dreams in a freer society. In either case, the jobs themselves aren’t terribly liberating... in fact, all exclamations about “new breeds of woman,” and “choice” aside, the gigs are largely based on retro (even for the 60s) archetypal male fantasies of docile, servile, perfectly beautiful women.

By Melissa Silverstein
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September 28, 2011 2:15 AM
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8 Comments

Check out a Scene from Butter

Film will be released on October 21

By Melissa Silverstein
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September 28, 2011 2:00 AM
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0 Comments

Why Being Visible Matters

Who knew aside from folks on the inner world of documentary film that Ken Burns had an equal partner on his most recent epic documentary series?

By Melissa Silverstein
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September 27, 2011 3:38 AM
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1 Comment

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