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

Final List for Foreign Films Being Submitted for Oscar Consideration

63 films have made it onto the list to be considered for the 2012 Academy Awards.

By Melissa Silverstein
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October 14, 2011 2:42 AM
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0 Comments

Good News: Many Films Directed by Women are Being Submitted for Academy Awards for Foreign Films

Something good is going on this year and I've been watching it for the last couple of weeks. The news is that many countries have submitted films directed by women for Academy Award consideration for best foreign film. Only two women -- both Europeans -- have won the foreign film Oscar, one was just last year, Susanne Bier for In a Different World and the other was Agnieszka Holland for Europa Europa. Last year a total of eight films directed by women were submitted.

By Melissa Silverstein
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September 22, 2011 2:01 AM
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2 Comments

Where Do We Go Now? Wins Audience Award at Toronto Festival

Where Do We Go Now? written and directed by Nadine Labaki was the first film I saw in Toronto. As I wrote last week, it's a strong symbol of women sick and tired of the men fighting over nothing trying to make the peace in their small town in Lebanon.

By Melissa Silverstein
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September 19, 2011 3:00 AM
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3 Comments

Interview with Nadine Labaki - Director of Where Do We Go Now?

Women and Hollywood: Congratulations. I read your film is going to represent Lebanon in the Oscars. How does that feel?

By Melissa Silverstein
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September 13, 2011 7:00 AM
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1 Comment

Images from Day 2

I'm going to try and take some pictures to help supplement my writings.

By Melissa Silverstein
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September 10, 2011 3:21 AM
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0 Comments

Toronto Film Festival - Day 1

It didn't look like I was going to make it this morning because the day started with a monsoon and my flight out of NY was cancelled which of course I wasn't notified about until I was at the airport, but everything worked out well and I made it onto a lovely Air Canada flight and arrived only one hour behind schedule. I also met a distributor Stuart Strutin of Panorama Entertainment on the flight and found out he is distributing Niki Caro (Whale Rider) film The Vintner's Luck. He also has a bunch of other female directed films that we discussed. He told me that he doesn't release a lot of his films in NYC because it is so expensive. Not the first time I've heard that from an indie distributor.

By Melissa Silverstein
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September 8, 2011 9:52 AM
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4 Comments