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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Trailer Watch: The Patience Stone

Video

The Patience Stone was the movie in Toronto that two separate women told me I needed to see. And boy was it worth it. It is basically a monologue performed brilliantly by Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani to her husband who is lying in a coma after being injured in war. The woman is unnamed, as is the country, and she is a symbol of all women who are forced to marry young, bear children, and deal with men fighting and killing each other. She symbolizes the women whose own hopes and dreams are sublimated due to circumstances and restrictions placed on them just because they are women. They long for love and long for life but live with duty and in fear. It is a beautiful lament on the need for peace.