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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Cross-Post: Oscars 2011: Single Fathers and the Vanishing Mothers

One of the threads running through this year’s Oscar race is the single father who must pull things together for the sake of his kids. This is especially poignant in three films – Moneyball, The Descendants and We Bought a Zoo. It’s even funnier that it happens to be George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, the Oceans gang, but also the Sexiest Men Alive troika. Remember how Clooney and Pitt were campaigning for Damon?

Another thing they have in common, other than caring for their children – all three have daughters, only Damon has a son — is that they cry. Both The Descendants and We Bought a Zoo, those tears are brought on by their personal relationship. In Moneyball, the tears are more about happiness, disbelieving happiness that things worked out, for once, in Billy Beane’s life. Of all three of these characters, only Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane is digging himself out of failure. Clooney and Damon have suffered blows — leaving them to raise their children alone. But Pitt isn’t raising a child so much as he’s trying to, finally, making something of himself.

Women don’t figure in much to any of these three odes to fatherhood. They only figure in as influences, forces to be reckoned with, but they are gone. The men are left to fend for themselves. This year’s Oscar race is not really about women. Only one film, The Help, is about women. And thus, it stands in stark contrast to the themes offered up in the Best Picture race thus far.

By Sasha Stone
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November 28, 2011 11:33 AM
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4 Comments