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

Sundance 2012: Advice for Filmmakers

Video

Chicken and Egg Pictures always has a great party at Sundance: delicious home-cooked food paired with a celebration of women filmmakers and the folks who support and nurture them.

By Therese Shechter
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January 26, 2012 12:25 PM
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Blogs

Kickstarter, called "the people's NEA" by The New York Times, recently sent out their 2011 round-up of success stories on their crowdsourced fundraising site, with women filmmakers taking significant applause on the roster, including Dee Rees' Pariah.

By Kathleen Sweeney
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January 20, 2012 9:48 AM
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Blogs

Most of you dear loyal readers and friends know that I am the artistic director of the Athena Film Festival at Barnard College. It is something very near and dear to my heart and keeps me quite busy this time of the year. The second annual festival will take place from February 9-12.

By Melissa Silverstein
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January 10, 2012 12:19 PM
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Dee Rees' debut film, Pariah, has rightfully been celebrated for its tender coming-out and coming-of-age story of a shy yet sexually curious 17-year-old African-American girl, Alike (Adepero Oduye).

An unprecedented black LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) success at the Sundance Festival in January, the film was immediately picked up by Focus Features for distribution and has since received two nominations for the Spirit Awards, which recognize independent film. In November, Rees was awarded breakthrough director of the year at the Gotham Awards.

Clearly, the movie's positive critical reception owes much to the brilliant dramatic performances of newcomers Oduye and Pernell Walker, veterans Charles Parnell and Kim Wayans, Bradford Young's beautiful cinematography and Rees' subtle yet sophisticated depiction of Alike and her middle-class African-American family's coming to terms with her lesbian identity.

By Salamishah Tillet
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January 3, 2012 10:40 AM
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Pariah opens in limited release tomorrow. I was able to catch it and the Toronto Film Festival. Here is my conversation with writer/director Dee Rees.

Women and Hollywood: Why did you start the movie off with the Audre Lorde quote?

Dee Rees: I started the movie when I was going through my own coming out process. I was reading a lot of Audre Lorde and listening to Nina Simone, but Audre Lorde was who I latched on to and followed her life journey. I could really relate to her experiences about fitting in and always being the “other.” The quote: “Wherever the bird with no feet flew, she found trees with no limbs.” For me, that means she has no place and there is no place for her and that’s how I interpret it. And that’s why I wanted to start the film with that because that’s what Alike’s journey is about. She feels like she doesn’t have a place.

WaH: You started the film as a short and then it progressed to a feature. Did you know you always wanted it to be a feature film?

DR: We actually wrote it as a feature, first. Then we took an excerpt and shot it as a short.

By Melissa Silverstein
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December 27, 2011 11:22 AM
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