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

To The Academy: Consider the Women

Blogs

It's that time of year, The Academy Awards, the "Super Bowl for Women." It's the night where we all get catty about whose dress doesn't work, who's got a new boyfriend or girlfriend, and who looks like they haven't eaten all month.

By Melissa Silverstein
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February 23, 2012 10:54 AM
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11 Comments

Hollywood Reporter Acknowledges That The Industry is Sexist

The Hollywood Reporter in the wake of their complete dismissal of women in both its writer and director roundtables has done a 360 and put together a whole cover on the lack of women directors and other women in power in the business. While the package is interesting (while not saying anything we didn't already know), I just wish that this didn't seem like such a fix up for their earlier ridiculousness.

While we might want to celebrate the successes of women in Hollywood cause it is so much more fun than talking about all the work that needs to be done (trust me, I know), we must continue to push and make people aware of the disparities. Part of the problem is that no one wants to believe that things are so bad. But it is bad. In their piece, Why the Odds Are Still Stacked Against Women in Hollywood, a couple of women who have the clout give some quotes along with Martha Lauzen who tracks women working in Hollywood at San Diego State and all those quotes are extremely depressing but real.

By Melissa Silverstein
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December 13, 2011 11:02 AM
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7 Comments

Blogs

Yesterday, the Hollywood Reporter roundtable on directors made me crazy, but it also made me think. While I will give them no leeway on the ridiculous comment asking the directors to name a major movie directed by a woman this past year, I thought it would be good to look at ALL the movies directed by women this year in order to get a decent assessment of where we are going on two years after Kathryn Bigelow won the best director award.

By Melissa Silverstein
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November 18, 2011 10:49 AM
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21 Comments