WMC News & Features
The Fox Disconnect
As part of a Women’s Media Center campaign demanding that Bill O’Reilly apologize for his personal, sexist attack on the legendary White House correspondent Helen Thomas, Courtney Martin, a member of the WMC Progressive Women’s Voices program, appeared on The O’Reilly Factor this week to drive the message home. Here is Martin's account of the experience and its aftermath. (The WMC also received hundreds of hateful, profanity-laced, sometimes threatening emails and calls after calling for O’Reilly’s apology)
WMC News & Features
Of Slumdog and Loveleen
The author, a filmmaker herself, considers what the woman with the title of “co-director” contributed to the remarkable success of a leading contender for both best director and best picture at this year’s Oscars—and what the controversy means for women filmmakers.
WMC News & Features
February 13, 2009 | Melissa Silverstein |
Arts and culture
Frozen River: Oscar's 2009 Cinderella Story
A small budget movie breaks every conventional rule for success, and its writer and director, Courtney Hunt, is riding high—whether or not her film wins awards next week.
WMC News & Features
February 02, 2009 | Marianne Schnall |
Arts and culture,
Feminism,
Health,
International,
Politics,
Violence against women
Turning Pain to Power
Women and girls in eastern Congo suffer sexual atrocities that are tactics of war in the region. Playwright Eve Ensler has joined with Dr. Denis Mukwege to ask us to imagine the unimaginable, to empathize and join together to end the terror.
WMC News & Features
Battling to Rebuild New Orleans
For her Frontline documentary, airing Tuesday evening on PBS stations, the author documented the determination of a family that refused to give up on their city. The struggle remains daunting for th...
WMC News & Features
NBC Looks Backward with “Meet the Press” Pick
Another white male journalist is about to join the TV networks’ Sunday morning lineup—and it’s not as though there were no women, or men of color, to choose from. NBC demonstrates, at the very least, a surprising lack of imagination in this year of diversity.
WMC News & Features
November 24, 2008 | Hamedah Hasan, Melissa Mummert |
Arts and culture,
International,
Media,
Politics
Concrete Bed
As a result of Draconian federal sentencing laws imposed since the 1980s, the author, caught on the edges of her cousin’s cocaine-selling operation, remains locked up despite what her trial judge called her “extraordinary rehabilitation.” While we seek out family during this holiday season, she longs for her three daughters and hopes that a documentary about her case will influence judicial policy makers.
WMC News & Features
The 2008 Women's Conference: Californians Turn Out For an Idea Fix
Celebrities, coping advice, products and services are lavishly available to thousands of women at this annual event hosted by Maria Shriver. Backing up the show is a well-organized network of state organizations offering women and girls support and connection throughout the year.
WMC News & Features
Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones
Words matter. From caregivers to teenagers to journalists, use of biased language, often unconsciously, can cause measurable harm, new studies show. The Ad Council, with PSAs featuring Hilary Duff among others, addresses one part of the problem in a campaign launched today.
WMC News & Features
Keeping Hold of Your Vision—the Making of Hounddog
One of the dirty secrets of the film business is that it takes women directors a long time to get their films made. The Women, which opened recently, took Diane English 14 years to bring to the screen; other examples include Tamara Jenkins award-winning The Savagesand Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss, which took 10 years each. Writer/director Deborah Kampmeier joins this illustrious club with her own decade long trek to see her filmHounddog starring Dakota Fanning finally released in theatres.
WMC News & Features
September 05, 2008 | Carol Jenkins |
Arts and culture
Firaaq or “The Quest”—A Woman Filmmaker at Telluride
If you have had the exquisite pleasure of seeing the films Earth and Fire ( the last of the trilogy is Water) by the genius Indian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, then you know the celebrated actress Nandita Das. Now Das has followed in the footsteps of Mehta, described as “Canada's most internationally renowned woman filmmaker," by directing her first feature.
WMC News & Features
Women Film Critics: An Endangered Species?
Mainstream media paid scant attention to Martha Lauzen's "Thumbs Down: Representation of Women Film Critics in the Top 100 U.S. Daily Newspapers" when the report was published on July 28 by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists (AWFJ), although the posting was supported by simultaneous distribution to 500 entertainment media and movie industry A-listers.
WMC News & Features
Isabel Allende, Loung Ung and the Power of Memoir
It’s mind-numbing. Four hundred thousand dead and 2.45 million displaced in Darfur; 5.4 million dead in fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1998; epidemic levels of violence against women and children. With the constant repetition of such statistics of devastation, what can move us to action?
WMC News & Features
Women Ahead of the (Blog) Curve
Four years ago Lisa Stone, Jory des Jardins and Elisa Camahort Page wanted to settle the annoying question they were constantly hearing: where are the women bloggers? So they put out a call, on their blogs of course, asking women if they would come to a conference, and, as Elisa says, the "response was immediate, passionate and positive.” Today Blogher has exploded from the 300 early attendees to 1,000 women (and a couple of guys) who just spent two days in San Francisco networking, learning and creating community around the act of blogging.
WMC News & Features
June 24, 2008 | Joy Harjo |
Arts and culture
Her Pueblo Round Place-A Remembrance of Paula Gunn Allen
It was the summer of 1973 when I first met Paula Gunn Allen, the teacher and poet who was destined to create on her own terms a scholarly framework for native women’s culture. I was hugely pregnant,...
WMC News & Features
June 18, 2008 | Melissa Silverstein |
Arts and culture
Doc Film Makers Keep Women's Issues on the Agenda
The news regarding women directors of fictional films in Hollywood continues to be bleak: in 2007, only 6 percent of these films were directed by women. But the non-fiction film world is a whole dif...
WMC News & Features
June 02, 2008 | Melissa Silverstein |
Arts and culture
A Women's Cultural Moment
Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last week or so you know that the women from the TV show Sex and the City are back this time on the big screen. Four years after we said goodbye to Carrie, Mi...
WMC News & Features
May 13, 2008 | Peggy Simpson |
Arts and culture
"A Walk to Beautiful"—The Power of Women's Stories
It’s hard enough to get U.S. audiences to watch international news, let alone news about women, let alone news about a medical tragedy that has made two million women in Africa and South Asia pariah...
WMC News & Features
Pakistani Filmmaker Captures the Lives of Iraqi Refugee Children
Award-winning journalist Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is touring the United States with her latest film, “The Lost Generation,” a documentary on Iraq’s refugee children produced for Great Britain’s prestig...
WMC News & Features
Eve Ensler's Spectacular Celebrates New Orleans Women
“I’ve been trying to free myself of Katrina’s grasp... With what I’ve gone through I should be just stark raving mad by now, but I’m able to go on.” These are the words of Herreast Harrison, Upper N...
WMC News & Features
February 19, 2008 | Sara Voorhees |
Arts and culture
Geena Davis Forum-Searching the Cells for Girl Mice and Ninjas
Geena Davis was watching preschool TV shows and children’s videos with her two-year-old daughter when she began to wonder: where were the girls? Where were the animated girl mice, the girl ninjas, ...
WMC News & Features
From Superdome to SUPERLOVE—V-Day at 10
In 1996, when Eve Ensler premiered The Vagina Monologues at a small performance space in downtown New York, she received the type of response playwrights dream about: critical acclaim, an Obie award...
WMC News & Features
Have You Seen a Woman Director Lately?
It's that time of the year again when most of Hollywood and the New York film world decamp to cold Park City, Utah, to feast on the latest indie fare at the Sundance Film Festival. This year seems a...
WMC News & Features
Persepolis—Iranian Feminist as Subversive
It's been a very difficult fall at the box office for political films, especially for those about the Iraq war. But the most interesting political film this fall comes from the most unlikely source—...
WMC News & Features
Oprah & Hillary—No Last Names Necessary
The gladiators have moved into the amphitheatre. And who would have guessed such a spectacle would debut in Des Moines, Iowa, on a Saturday afternoon nearly a year before the presidential election? ...