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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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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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 - written and directed by Dee Rees

Most of this review was written after screening the film at the Toronto Film Festival. It has been augmented.

The movie is just so good. Well written, well acted, emotional, devastating and liberating. I gotta say that Dee Rees is the real deal. The film tells the story of Alike an African American high school senior who is struggling with how to make her family come to terms with her being a lesbian. Ailke played with fierceness and vulnerability by Adepero Oduye knows she's gay but she lives two lives. One where she wears t-shirts with sparkles and earrings to please her mother, and one where she wears a baseball cap and baggy shirts. She's two different people but as she is growing up and becoming more comfortable with herself, she doesn't want to play the game anymore. She doesn't want to wear the pink sweater her mom bought because it's not her. But she' s also not comfortable being the hard ass dyke that seems to be the other side of the coin. She's trying to make her way in a world with very few role models for her. [SPOILERS BELOW]

By Melissa Silverstein
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December 28, 2011 10:25 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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This is the week when Pariah starts to roll out and I can't say emphatically enough that when this film comes to your town, you must see it.

I was able to speak with the star of the film Adepero Oduye last September at the Toronto Film Festival. Here is our interview.

Women and Hollywood: How did you get into acting?

Adepero Oduye: I was in college and pre-med on track to be a doctor and I realized I didn’t want to do that anymore. I thought about what I wanted to do and I took an acting class my senior year and loved it. It was the kind of thing where it was challenging but I still wanted to do more. I graduated and was like I’m going to be an actor. My mother did not understand. It was as if I was an entirely different person.

I didn’t know anyone who was an actor so I just started looking at Backstage. My first audition was an open call and I had no picture and no resume – that’s how clueless I was. I just thought I could show up. Slowly but surely I gathered information and just learned and did a lot of things to get experience.