A new Twitter campaign is underway today with female directors tweeting pictures of themselves at work behind the camera. "Homeland" director Lesli Linka Glatter voiced her support for an equal playing field saying "it should not be harder for our daughters to direct than our sons". Aline Brosh McKenna, the executive producer of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend", was the originator of the campaign and hopes it will continue each Friday.

Jennifer Fox is a writer and director whose film "The Tale" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Starring Laura Dern and Jason Ritter, the film is an autobiographical account of how a woman recovers from the sexual abuse she endured as a teen. Look for "The Tale" to air on HBO soon.

Yesterday, Francis Ford Coppola and Paramount Pictures dedicated an office building to director Dorothy Arzner. She was a film editor in the silent era who graduated to directing and was the first woman to join the Directors Guild in 1938. Arzner taught film at UCLA and was one of Coppola's instructors. The Paramount dedication is an honor long overdue.

Actress Daryl Hannah has directed her first feature film, "Paradox", which will make its debut at the SXSW Fest. Netflix scooped up the distribution rights and will stream the film beginning March 23rd. "Paradox" will have a limited theatrical release. Hannah wrote the screenplay, as well, and chose rocker Neil Young to star in what she calls a "free-spirited tale of music and love".

Melina Kanakaredes is developing an independent biopic on the life of psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Kanakaredes is producing and co-writing the screenplay. Kubler-Ross wrote the now-classic text "On Death and Dying" and fought for the rights of end-of-life patients.

"You can have the most beautifully designed and lit and the most gorgeously shot film with the most exquisite use of music, but if the writing and the acting doesn’t work, you’re screwed. It’s all about performance, it really is. Obviously, I’m in love with cinematic beauty as much as the next person in every language of the cinema, but I really do feel like the actor is the center of it all. If the performances don’t come together, you have nowhere to go. You don’t have a film."

I absolutely agree with this attitude expressed by writer-director Lynn Shelton. Her latest film "Outside In", starring Edie Falco, opens this weekend.

“One of these days, men are going to get over the fool idea that women have no brains and quit getting insulted at the thought that a skirt-wearer can do their work quite as well as they can. And I don’t believe that day is very far off."

Writer/Director/Producer/Actress Cleo Madison in 1916

Madison directed at least 18 short films for Universal from 1915-1916. Unfortunately, only two of them have survived. Madison continued acting until 1924 when she suddenly quit the business.

Writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour has written a new film entitled "Blood Moon". Like her intriguing debut "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" (which I reviewed on the Drama Movie site), the pic features a female heroine with supernatural abilities. "Blood Moon" is set in New Orleans. Amirpour stated, “I thought that was an interesting place to set a story about a girl who has some disturbing abilities but who isn’t acclimated in any way to society, and learns to be with people in such a chaotic place.” Amirpour and her producers will be shopping the film at the Cannes Film Festival which begins this Tuesday, May 8th.

Haifaa Al-Mansour is a Saudi Arabian filmmaker now living in Los Angeles. She is the first female filmmaker from Saudi Arabia and was recently appointed to the board of Saudi Arabia's General Authority for Culture.

Regarding her reaction to the cultural restrictions placed on women, Haifaa Al-Mansour stated, “If you become consumed in anger it stops you from being productive. I want to make films. I want to move beyond that anger. I hope that if we are able to show people versions of themselves on screen and they’re able to laugh or listen to music, then mentalities will change. That is more effective in the long run than becoming angry. That will bring about deeper change in society.”

This week, I watched Claudia Weill's 1978 indie film "Girl Friends". Melanie Mayron stars as a photographer who has to adjust to a new reality when her best friend moves out and gets married. In an interview with critic Roger Ebert, Weill stated "I really don't care too much what I make movies about. I think I'd make a movie about anything, just so long as one element was there: I want to make movies about characters we're rooting for. I love to be on the side of the people in movies. I don't really care what they're doing. They could be escaping from China, discovering an important cure, getting married. If we get involved with them, that's a movie."

Writer-director Sofia Coppola's feature debut, "The Virgin Suicides" (1999), was released in a special edition DVD from Criterion in April.

Speaking about the film, Coppola said "I definitely was interested in femininity and a girly aesthetic because that is part of me that I’m connected to and enjoy, and also because I grew up in such a macho environment and I cling to that part of my identity. I think it’s something you don’t see too much in film… but, I just made what I liked."

"I am hard of hearing, I am 30% deaf actually. I was born that way so I’ve always been interested in feeling what I’m seeing if you know what I mean. I’ve always relied on visual stimulation and I don’t listen to conversation. So in the movie ["The Bad Batch"], there’s a lot that happens without words, and I guess it makes people uncomfortable if nobody is talking." Filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour - Her second feature film "The Bad Batch" is currently streaming on Netflix.

Writer-director Shana Feste has a new film, "Boundaries", in theaters on June 22nd. When asked what advice she would give female directors, Feste replied "I think the smartest thing I did was to work with other women. I’ve only worked with women producers and it has always been an amazing experience. So my advice to the women reading this would be to work with and support other women!"

"For me, it was really important to tie it together, so that there is a connection between the objectification of women, the commodification of human beings, the economic crisis, the materialism of hip-hop…all of these things are connected, as is the post-Communist world and how it has taken on the values of capitalism. So, for me it was very clear, but I realized that I first had to explain the connections. So I was in there, from the beginning, as a kind of narrator." Lauren Greenfield on her documentary "Generation Wealth" which will be in theaters on July 20th. Generation Wealth Official Trailer

Greta Gerwig is writing and directing a new version of "Little Women". The film is currently in pre-production but the star line-up is set: Meryl Streep, Emma Stone, Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, and Timothee Chalamet. Producer Robin Swicord, who wrote the 1994 adaptation of "Little Women" with Wynona Ryder and Susan Sarandon, thinks it"s time for a new take on Louisa May Alcott's classic novel. Swicord articulated the goal for this new adaptation; “It’s really taking a look at what it is for a young woman to enter the adult world. It’s a clear-eyed approach to the challenges women face as they try to bravely move into new situations.”

"I'm not interested in making a film for a niche audience. I want to make films about people who we don't usually see, but for a wider audience so they can all relate to it. So that might make me, as an outsider, tell it in a way maybe someone from the community might not like, but you're never going to satisfy everybody. " Filmmaker Chloe Zhao

Zhao's latest film "The Rider" will be released on DVD and Amazon Video on August 7th. The Rider Official Trailer

Jay Presson Allen wrote the scripts for "Cabaret", "Prince of the City", "Funny Lady", and "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie". In the following quote, she discusses Alfred Hitchcock and their collaboration on "Marnie", Allen's first feature film.


"He was wonderful to me. So was his wife, Alma. She was very influential in everything Hitch did. She had been a successful editor before they were married, and she contributed a lot to his films. She was around a lot, though not for script sessions. But it was all very easy and open. Alma was knowledgeable, more sophisticated than Hitch. We were together all the time and got along well."

"I do make peace with the fact that I make the kind of movies I make. I am stubborn about who I want to cast in the end. It’s all my choice; it really is. I have no reason to complain about anything, but sometimes it is hard. I think, 'Oh, I should try to have a bigger audience or make more money.' And then I just don’t go that way. Or it’s not offered to me or I pass on it. Sometimes I think, 'OK, I’m going to cast an A-list actor,' and then I just end up not wanting who’s on that list for this particular part. Ultimately, the process of making the movie I like is the most important."

Filmmaker Nicole Holofcener

Her latest release "The Land of Steady Habits", starring Ben Mendelsohn and Edie Falco, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival this week. It is now streaming on Netflix.

The American Film Institute Film Festival, known as AFI Fest, has announced its lineup for 2018. Included is the world premiere of director Susanne Bier's "Bird Box", a dystopian thriller starring Sandra Bullock. There will also be a screening of Karyn Kusama's crime drama "Destroyer", starring Nicole Kidman. The AFI Fest runs November 8th through the 15th in Los Angeles. "Bird Box" will be in theaters on December 21st and "Destroyer" opens on December 25th.

On Tuesday, Kino Lorber released a new six-disc DVD/Blu-ray collection entitled "Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers". The anthology includes films (newly restored) from Grace Cunard, Alice Guy-Blache, Dorothy Davenport Reid, and Zora Neale Hurston. Included is an 80-page booklet and audio commentary from film historians. Also, a number of Alice Guy-Blache's movies are streaming free on Amazon with a Prime membership.

"I still think it’s difficult for female directors to break through on certain genres, perhaps because they’ve been so male-dominated in the past. Women do love action and crime movies. These are things I love. It’s a question of proving oneself on set. Someone who can communicate clearly, that’s certainly the strength I bring to my job as director."

Director Karyn Kusama - Her new film "Destroyer", starring Nicole Kidman, opened on Christmas Day. The Alliance of Women Journalists has nominated Kidman for the Bravest Performance of 2018 and Kusama as the Best Woman Director of 2018.

The Cannes Film Festival opened yesterday and of the 21 films screening in competition, four are directed by women. The director of "Atlantics", Mati Diop, is the first black female to have a film competing at Cannes. Diop said, “From a symbolic point of view, this is major, and I can’t pretend it isn’t. I am well aware of the rarity of women competing in Cannes, especially non-white women. It’s sad and still hard to believe that a black woman has never been to the competition so far, in 2019, but here we are. This is both a bitter observation because it’s time that it should stop being an exception, and at the same time, it tells us that the lines are moving.”

You can check out a clip along with a synopsis of the film here. Atlantics Clip - Mati Diop

"The Farewell", starring Awkwafina, opens today. Here is a quote from the film's writer-director Lulu Wang.

"I don’t know how to make an Asian American film. You know what I mean? So as I’m approaching the writing and the directing, all I can say is I have to hang onto the textures of this family, of this life, of the locations that I know so well, but I’m not going into it thinking how do I make it more Asian, more Asian American, more American. I had to lose all of those labels and make it, as any filmmaker who’s making a film about family would, just about family, about humans, about a relationship between a granddaughter and her grandmother."