A Gazette on Women in Film...

Hello everyone,

     I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus here but it’s time to discuss another female director… ME!

This post is not meant to be conceited, and I’m not going to give you my biography but I do have a worthy project in need of your help! I am finishing my last semester as a film production student at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, specializing in writing and directing. My thesis film has just gone through a rigorous selection process and has been chosen to be put forward by one of our most esteemed professors, director and editor Sam Pollard (Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever, The 25th Hour). We have a fairly large budget and NYU can only help so much. No donation is too small and even if you could spare $5 that would me amazing! 

Here is the link to the indiegogo fundraising page!

http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Ladys-Yes?a=429001

And follow us on twitter! @theladysyesfilm

Any further questions email theladysyesfilm@gmail.com

Thanks!

Hello everyone,

    This hiatus has been far too long. I’ve decided to stop promising deadlines, as my life is extremely hectic with school, work, and interning on top of being involved in some productions. However, now that I’m back on a regular schedule it should get better. Speaking of interning, this semester I am very fortunate to be interning at a company called Zeitgeist Films.

      They are a distribution company in the heart of Soho (for those of you that don’t know, a neighborhood in NYC - stands for “South of Houston”) that focuses on releasing and getting the word out about quality independent films. Now, I get to be part of their grassroots outreach team! So far it has been a wonderful experience and a big perk of working with this amazing staff (spear-headed by two brilliant women, I may add) is that I get to watch all of their films. One in particular caught my attention, as this is my new forté, and when I watched I was not disappointed: !Women, Art, Revolution!

    This film is a documentary by female artist Lynn Hershman Leeson about the feminist art movement. Perfect, right? It’s comprised of nearly 40 years of interviews with tons of groundbreaking female artists, including Lynn Hershman Leeson herself.

    Now, let me just say: I know of women’s struggle for equality, it’s something that I am reminded of day in and day out in my own field as well as the world at large. But, for some reason every time I hear more about a specific area of this inequality, it never ceases to amaze me. This documentary gives insight to 40 years of inequality. As recent as the 60s and 70s, women were protesting and fighting to be shown in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, amongst several other art museums in the city. With a certain exhibition, it made these women artists realize that there was really only men’s work being shown, and on top of that - white men. But what else is new? These incredible women held protests, handed out pamphlets, signed petitions, and even held their own guerilla-style exhibition projected outside the museum. 

    They were responsible for a promise that 50% of the artwork in this museum would be done by women, and half that by women of color. Progressive, right?

     In 1979, after nearly 5 years of work, Judy Chicago completed one of the most controversial art installations of the time: The Dinner Party. 

     I was lucky enough to see this exhibit in person my freshman year of college at the Brooklyn Museum (where it now lives permanently since 2007) and needless to say, it was amazing. It is a triangle table with 39 unique plate settings meant to look like (I’ll say it) vaginas, representing mythical and historical famous women.  And when it first toured the U.S. it of course had tons of protest from rich, republican white men in government. It was labeled as “pornography.” Right, cause showing beautifully sculpted and painted plates with the female sex organ on them, depicting no sex whatsoever is pornography. Cause there aren’t tons of phallic monuments and buildings and sculptures in this world. Right. I doubt they were ever met with protest and labeled as pornography.

    Anyhow folks, I highly encourage all of you to SEE THIS FILM! It will open your eyes in ways you wouldn’t have imagined and educate you on a topic you probably don’t know enough about. I know I didn’t. It represents female artists of every flavor. This film has already played in New York, but will be coming to Philadelphia at the International House of Philadelphia in February 2012! It was originally supposed to show this month, but there has been a delay. Check out the facebook page (which I am an admin of)! http://www.facebook.com/WomenArtRevolution

and check out Zeitgeist’s website to see if it’ll be playing near you!

http://zeitgeistfilms.com/

and for some fun, the imdb

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1699720/

     This week, I’ll leave you with a quote and a challenge: Can you name 3 female artists? And I’m talking without the help of google and not counting any I mentioned in this post!   

“When you’re a woman, it’s hard to tell that you’re being censored when you’re not in a museum to begin with.” - Hannah Wilke

Once again I hope to have enlightened, enraged and inspired you.

Until next time,

     Theresa

(Source: riciel)

     Well I’m back again after a mini-hiatus. Working full time is no joke. Anyway, I wanted to dedicate this week’s post to a very special lady whom I happen to know, (she taught a directing technique sub-class as part of Studio TV Production my Sophomore year and the blog title is a favorite quote from her). And she belongs to an even less known community than simply women directors: African-American women directors. This week’s post is dedicated to the talented, beautiful, and incredibly sweet…

 
Neema Barnette:

     Neema Barnette was born in the great city of New York (Harlem, to be exact) on December 14th, 1959 (although most online publications say 1949, which she is very angry about, they are off by 10 years) to a Jewish mother and African-American father.  She was always a creative spirit and got her start by taking an interest in acting. In her teen years, she attended the New York High School for the Performing Arts (the New York version of my high school!) as a theater major. When she decided to take on a theater project from the director’s later, a producer - Joseph Papp - was impressed by her attention to the visual and her extraordinary work and suggested she enroll in a Third World Cinema program to focus her path as a director.  

     She later attended NYU as a film student and during her time in and out of film school, she produced an “after school special” entitled To Be A Man, which got Neema her first Emmy award. This award led her on to several other groundbreaking projects, including a film she wrote, produced and directed at the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women, a dramatic special for NBC, and also for NBC, a documentary about domestic violence, getting her four Emmy nominations and an award for directing from American Women in Radio and Television. 

    Following these awards, in the mid-1980s, Neema was brought on to direct and episode of What’s Happening Now making her the first African-American woman to ever direct a TV sitcom, as well as earning her a NAACP image award nomination. From then on, she continued to direct a great number of TV shows, including several episodes of The Cosby Show, 7th Heaven, and Gilmore Girls amongst many many others. 

     But, she didn’t stop at TV shows. She also directed several TV movies and theater released films including Spirit Lost, Civil Brand (which earned several awards and selections at numerous film festivals), All You’ve Got, Super Sweet 16: The Movie, and most recently, Heaven Ain’t Hard to Find.  Along with directing films and TV shows, she also made time to teach in the masters film directing program at UCLA, and more recently in the undergrad program at NYU. She owns her own production company, and is member to several professional film organizations across the country.  This woman is an inspiration to all aspiring women directors everywhere, I don’t know how she does it all. And she is still very down-to-earth; one of the kindest women I’ve met. She’s taught me many tips on directing that I still hold with me in my endeavors and I know we will continue to see exciting things from her.

Once again I hope to have enlightened, enraged, and inspired you.

Until next time,     

     Theresa

P.S. Here are some great articles and interviews to check out more on Neema Barnette!

http://www.neoblackcinema.com/whosinview/ladiesbehindthelens/from-harlem-to-hollywood-and-back/

http://www.filmbug.com/db/36262

http://www.seeingblack.com/2003/x091203/neema_barnette.shtml

P.P.S. Check out my friend Matt’s kickstarter page for his recently shot Advanced NYU film, “Abigail.” He is in desperate need of help paying back his sponsors and any contribution would be greatly appreciated!  He is a very talented up and coming director and you could say you helped him when!  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1018843057/abigail

      Well, this entry has been extremely long over due. I’ve been thinking about doing it for weeks now, but became victim of the tempting summer pull of being unproductive and now am finally getting the chance, while at work lifeguarding for a day with no people at the pool. No more excuses, I’m going to get better at updating this and hopefully revamp and design the whole thing. Anyway, if any of you saw the quote I posted from Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar a few weeks ago, it was not only because I thought it was extremely relevant to how women have felt and still feel today about married life and what it means if that’s just not our path, but also because this latest entry will be dedicated to Philadelphia’s own

Nicole Kassell:

      She will be directing the film adaptation of The Bell Jar.  That is, if the project gets green-lighted. Currently it is in “pre-production” but unsure if it will see its way to production. This is a little tid-bit Nicole shared with my class herself when she came to speak at one of my final “Women in the Director’s Chair” classes of the Spring Semester. But back to business.

      Nicole was born in Philadelphia, PA (my very own hometown) in 1972 and raised here.  During high school, she spent a lot of time doing photography as a hobby, learning she was artistic and wanted to be a storyteller. For graduate school, she decided to the film school in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (where I currently am enrolled for Undergraduate) and made her mark there loud and clear. She got lots of recognition for the shorts she made in her time there. She made a short called Jaime, which got the 1999 DGA Best Female Filmmaker Award, and another short called The Green Hour, which won the Warner Bros. Pictures Film Production Award and was also chosen for the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. She had already accomplished such great honors just from her work at film school.

      After her string of awards, Nicole had a passion project she was working on. She had wanted to adapt a play entitled The Woodsman - about an adult male pedophile recently released from prison and starting his life over - by Stephen Fechter into a feature length screenplay to be made into a film. She took the idea on with full force and worked with the playwright Stephen Fechter to develop the screenplay. Upon finishing, she entered the screenplay into several festivals and ended up winning first place at the 2001 Slamdance Screenplay Competition. Through a string of luck after this award, which she told my class about upon visiting, Nicole Kassel got the opportunity to direct her first feature film, The Woodsman, thanks in large part to her producer, Lee Daniels (the now acclaimed Director of 2009’s Precious).  

      The two teamed together and ended up through a run-in type situation, getting Kevin Bacon signed on for the project. He read the script, loved it and played a large part in getting many of the other actors attached, including his real life wife, Kyra Sedgwick.  The film went on to get great critical acclaim and showed Nicole’s unique eye as a director and that women can direct films of all kinds of subject matter. She also happened to become pregnant with her first child while this film. Pretty impressive, huh? See, women can do more than just be mothers and be successful at it! Haha, but I digress. But she is now a dedicated wife, mother, and of course storyteller. She is now set to direct The Bell Jar (if the cards fall into place) and has made a successful living in directing TV.  I hope one day I, like Nicole, can be another successful woman coming from NYU’s pool of great directors. I encourage you all to check out her work, including The Woodsman starring Kevin Bacon. 
If you’re interested, check out these other articles on Nicole. There’s not a ton of info on her on the net, but there’s some good stuff here:
http://www.cinereach.org/tag/nicole-kassell

http://nymag.com/nymetro/movies/features/10751/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/feb/20/1

http://www.wsfilms.com/talent-nicole-kassell.asp

Once again, I hope to have enlightened, enraged and inspired you.

Until Next time,   

  Theresa