Directed by Women Worldwide Film Viewing Party and Me

I love movies. I've loved watching films all my life. The movie theater was a good place for a babysitter to take us (bags of homemade popcorn in hand), and when we were older, my mother could drop us off for a whole afternoon. Two features, and sometimes we stayed to watch one again, if we had walked to the show. At Academy Award time, if we hadn't seen everything nominated we had a marathon weekend of watching. 1965, Ship of Fools year. 1976 Marathon Man year. 1980 - Atlantic City won that year. I read about filmmaking and learned about the early years of Hollywood when women made big money, were studio heads, scriptwriters, production designers, directors, producers. And then how it all went away when the money men from the east got to town. At the millennium, I got mad. It was clear that women, who had regained a small percentage of ground in the film industry, saw those gains eroded year to year. Women moviegoers began staying home in droves. What was there to look at on the screen? Buddy movies, bromances, comic book guys in tights, throwaway woman roles, stories with no soul or truth. I blogged like a lunatic, doing what I called railing against Bellus. Bellus is the planet that will crush the earth in the movie When Worlds Collide. Not much good to scream at an approaching obliterator.

In 2009 I met a young woman at AFI because I sent her a film noir doll I made to encourage her on a noir project. I told the friend who mentioned the student that she was in the belly of the beast. A woman +  >35 + smart + Hollywood and she was feeling alone. Right?

From that point, I was whinging louder. Didn't anybody get this? I tweeted, wrote, wailed, bellowed, banged my head against walls and every friend's head in my range. Made more doll art: women who had been forgotten by history, or worse, their story mulched into the male realm. There are few women cinematographers because cameras used to be heavy. It took some muscle to lift and carry. A woman can direct; women do, but their work is not on our local cineplex screens.

The journey of the AFI student through graduation to her first film I witnessed up close and personal. Written and directed by a woman. From 2010 to 2014. The film festival submissions, screenwriting submissions, submissions, submissions. And the names on the written by, directed by credits of films accepted. Percentages of women directors represented we then knew were real and disappointing.

Following women directors, and focusing tightly on women filmmakers, I read the intention of Barbara Ann O'Leary to watch a female-directed movie for every male-directed movie. Daunting, I thought, but my interest was snagged. I followed her journey for a year, and watched as many of the women-directed films as I could get my hands on. Barbara started what would become the Directed by Women Worldwide Film Viewing Party the next year: two weeks in September when we all celebrated the vision and the work of women directors around the world. By watching movies.

During the months before September 2015, Barbara Ann O'Leary devoted her own time to gathering women directors into a database that reached 6,000+ before the party, and now names 8,948 women directors. Bounty! Abundance!

She also changed my brain and retrained my heart. Focusing on lack gets more of the same back. I know this cognitively. But I don't practice this. We notice absence, and the hole stays empty. When I saw what transpires when attention is beamed at what is, and what we have, and celebrate that, my home life changed as well. All those overused contractions - don't, haven't, can't - became will, can, has. Loved ones around me benefit from what grows me.

I volunteered to help the party. I called on people I didn't know, made appointments to see anyone who would listen to the party invitation. Everything I did to celebrate women film directors brought a glow that comes from inside. I met people as thrilled to be a part of this appreciation as I was.

I'm volunteering again this year because joy keeps going, appreciation grows the love, and movies need voices and vision that must be heard and seen, especially women voices and vision. I love movies.

Everyone can contribute. Keeping the energy going requires administration, research, record keeping. There are 8,948 women directors on the Directed by Women site, and the list is now searchable. $1 donation to the Directed by Women Worldwide Film Viewing Party 2016 from that many interested people will keep the party going. I donated. You can, too. Keep the celebration alive. Please.

Directed by Women Global Viewing Party Genre Day

Today we celebrate favorite categories in cinema, on day 5 of the Directed by Women Global Viewing Party. Watch a movie directed by a woman in whichever genre is your fav. I like film noir, scifi, old romantic comedies, action adventure. I like story, which is not a genre. Every genre needs a good story to keep me interested, including documentary. But I also like the Fast & Furious franchise, which has close to no story at all. There is no flying car crash genre. I claim not to like thriller, but I have a couple favorites that are in that genre. Here is the genre dropdown menu on the Directed by Women website. Netflix has a category of drama with a strong female lead. Drama based on literature. And so on. Drama, comedy, documentary, western, thriller - however you sort or label or categorize there are wonderful films out there to watch directed by a woman. Now's the time to start, while the world is watching with you. Science fiction: Advantageous, directed by Jennifer Phang on Netflix. Animated short: Laika, directed by Avgousta Zourelidi, Vimeo Directed by Women channel. And This Forest Will Be a Desert, directed by Alana Simone, Carolyn Radio (Vimeo DbW channel.) Comedy: Mom Is Dead and I'm Broke, Gitgo Productions directed by Betsy Carson and Kate Kaminski. Drama: Breaking Night, directed by Yolonda Ross, Vimeo DbW. A good start on wildly celebrating women directors, and growing the love of film.

Welcome to the Circus Documentary

Welcome to the Circus, a documentary directed by Courtney Coulson, will premiere at the 2015 Portland Film Festival. The film covers one month during which the circus professionals from le Lido du Cirque Toulouse France, meet and train with the students from The Palestinian Circus School in Palestine. The goal is to be ready for a mobile circus tour for the children of Palestine. The mobile cirque will travel to several cities, ending with a final performance in Jerusalem. Only one student has a blue card, allowing travel in and out of Jerusalem. The rest will have to apply for permits. There are checkpoints from one city to the next: as one performer says, each can be different day to day, hour to hour. The film touches gently on the ongoing chaos that is the West Bank, using visual cues, and the scenery passing outside the bus as the performers move from Ramallah to the scheduled cities. We see through the eyes of circus students: eager to learn, embracing the physical and mental stretch that is circus performance. Coulson is the cinematographer and director, and she uses the final hours of preparation to convey the uncertainty of West Bank life. At 4 a.m., seven hours before the first staging, a juggling act needs revision. We see the troupe training for A Walk to the Moon, a choreography that becomes an analogy for all the performers actually getting to Jerusalem. Noor, a student of the School, begins as our guide to the overarching story: a tale of uncertainty, limits, glimpses of what could be possible if only: all with the energy of youth and determination and hope. Noor is studying to be an accountant because he knows there must be work as well as circus. The le Lido performers are our on-screen eyes, as they, like we, experience for the first time the West Bank through the hearts of young Palestinians who share the love of artistry and athleticism that is circus. Keep an eye on the comic genius of the chef at the school-priceless filming. Welcome to the Circus will be screening at the Lake Erie Arts and Film Festival later in September. Follow the documentary on facebook for more opportunities to watch this extraordinary film.

Directed by Women Email to Michigan Film Office

September 1-15, 2015 will be a Directed by Women Global Viewing Party, celebrating the voluminous work of women directors from 1896 onward. We invite your organization to appreciate the contribution of women directors, the history of the gender to the development of film and to just have a bloomin' good time watching movies directed by women, and encouraging others to do the same.

http://directedbywomen.com/en/

You are welcome to quit reading here. But.

Imagine the opportunities. Since the tax incentives ending crimped the influx of film companies working in Michigan, there is a lost horizon in encouraging film directors to come to our pristine, eclectic, diverse and filmic state.

It's indie film world, kids, with no financial juice. Michigan will never be on the radar without the tax incentives, except for desolation-themed pseudo scifi in used-to-be Detroit for blockbusters released first overseas. Detroit has a lot more to offer. Indie films aren't interested in car crashes, city streets closed for filming when those streets are already closed to trash collection and special ed bus routes, desolation porn, or, consequently, the Townsend Hotel filled to capacity. Unless the film gets distribution. Without the blockbusters and the tax incentives and Clint Eastwood and Drew Barrymore, Michigan as a film location is toast. Unless it's the never-ending Transformers franchises. Which, as you know, has moved to Singapore. Disregard.

We want all hotels filled in every filming location in Michigan. Put Detroit in the spotlight for other than desolation, as it has done for itself in celebrating growth. Detroit is alive! Celebrate the indie film world of other sites in Michigan, its diversity of location - the glacial moraines, UP settings identical to Baltic Sea terrain, the pristine shorelines that can substitute for ocean in any weather anywhere (keep in mind that the criteria in filming for ocean is the farther shore can't be seen - Michigan's got that full stop on every coast.)

The grit of Flint, the struggles of Ocean County, the history of Idlewild, the artistic communities of Interlochen/Benzonia, the dunes of Lake Michigan, the historically welcoming gay communities in Douglas and Saugatuck, the quaint and the elegant of the east coast of Michigan, from the Huron estuary to the charm of Charlevoix, the industrial grit of Flint/Bay City/Saginaw, the Civil War quaintness of untouched cities like Three Rivers and Constantine, the storied racial dichotomy of Benton Harbor/St. Joseph and its healing, the isolation of our offshore islands on any coast, and the historical and geologic significance of Drummond Island. Our upper peninsula is shouldered on the Laurentian Shield - the bones of earth, the oldest bedrock on the freaking planet. Think scifi. Think future film. Think women directors this September. Promote the locations. Michigan is diverse. Michigan is singular in her multitudinous filming opportunity. Think real estate. Location, location, location.

Think women. Think women directors in September. The box is closed for blockbusters. Be creative. Women filmmakers are.

Think Anatomy of a Murder, and how long overdue a significant indie-pushed award-winning film done in Michigan is.

Get involved. Attract the business that is growing, engaged, vibrant and economically profound for Michigan.

There are 7,231 women directors listed on http://directedbywomen.com/en/

Look at @DirectedbyWomen on twitter and discover why this is a good place to focus attention.

Approach every woman on this list and you've got your Michigan Film Office campaign for the next 10 years.

Get involved. Again.

Film Love

Light and shadow. Imagine night camp 50,000 years ago. The fire sparks and pulses as a storyteller rises to begin speaking the night's tale to the circle gathered. Perhaps the story tonight is the celebration of a birth. Or glorious victory in battle. A promised union happily joined; a quest begun this very day, the outcome unknown, inexperienced youth alone against a hostile world.

Your eyes widen, conjuring the marching legs of heroes in the smoldering logs, you hear the joyous cry of a new mother, see the triumphant arm of a youth raised to the sky as the sparks explode upward, touch the heat of passion with the palm of your hand outstretched.

Humans love story. Storytelling is how we identify ourselves, how we align ourselves with the cosmos, and the way we know what we know of human experience. For millennia the stories were mist and shadow; impermanent imagery except for the devoted storytellers who passed on oral tradition. Artist/storytellers drew scenes on rock cliffs and cave walls-early days of visual media.

Aristotle spoke of the camera obscura- sunlight through a tiny hole projected an inverted image on a surface in a dark room. Fast forward to 1545 when a drawing of camera obscura was published. 1558, Magia Naturalis is published describing a camera obscura with lenses and concave mirrors. 1816. Metal plates coated with chemical emulsion became Aristotle's darkened room.

1902-1906 Alice Guy Blaché directs over 100 phonoscènes, films made for Gaumont's chronophone, and the intriguing history of women peering through lenses to satisfy our intense ongoing hunger for drama, laughter, intrigue, pathos, chills and story, story, story through moving pictures begins with this remarkable pioneering woman's achievement.

The woman in the director's chair coordinates the collaborative forces that would animate the logs we saw in our prehistoric vision. She hires the youth with the raised arm, chooses and supervises the sound engineer who brings us the new mother's cry, guides the set designer for just the right number of stars in the sky and the correct angle of smoke, wrangles the producer, assigns the 1^st and 2^nd assists, all while seeing the screenplay's story and keeping her own vision true through to post production.

2015. We humans who love story will this year celebrate madly, wildly, lovingly that woman in the director's chair with the Directed by Women Global Viewing Party.

From September 1 through September 15, 2015 there is a party going on, and the world is invited! For those 15 days we will be celebrating women filmmakers around the globe by watching films, discussing filmmaking, and contributing to the knowledge base of women's roles in media historically and today. As of today there are 7,127 women directors listed on the Directed by Women website.

Engaging in this celebration can be as personal as watching a woman-directed film at home, hosting a viewing party with friends, texting afterward; posting photos on tumblr, instagram, Pinterest, facebook, tweeting films watched or film wish lists. Interviewing a woman director for your blog. On a community scale, coordinating events with your local library, school, college, film groups, cinemas. Talk about films directed by women, do some internet research, check out books from the library, encourage group discussions about the wonderful discoveries you make. Worldwide, you can find a viewing partner in a country you're interested in knowing more about and create an international film lovers' festival without leaving your house.

Directed by Women Global Viewing Party is a magnificent chance to awaken to and appreciate the voluminous contribution of women to film, visual media in all its storytelling glory. Let's make this year the beginning of the revelry, and rejoice in the synergy that brings together creative women filmmakers and their devoted global viewers.

Grow the Love Summer

Summer Solstice through my 40s was a party in my backyard. It was a pool party with the Gigantic Pool and No Yard. At my home in my 50s, it was in the Gigantic Yard with No Pool: one year there were 150 who celebrated the longest day. Next year 8. That's life. I switched to a Winter Solstice dinner and those 8 were the women who stayed with me. Summer Solstice this year in my mid-60s found us in a new house, my youngest sister undergoing back surgery, my beloved neighbor falling and now confused in a rehab center, my father wondering if this is actually the end of the repairs in the new house. Here's what's great: Directed by Women, my sister's speedy recovery and my father's adjustment to his new teeth and home, my brother's smile in his new room. It's Grow the Love Summer. I've claimed it as what life is about for decades, and it is this summer. I love movies, talking about, whinging, blogging, watching. Don't let my sister know, but part of being at the hospital at dawn was to sit with her husband and talk about movies. He's a geek. Bigger geek than me, which is going deep into film love. Mention a movie, he can name the composer, the cinematographer, the production designer and location trivia. This summer I'm about directors. Women directors. This piece of art was created to accompany whinges about the lack of women in film in all areas. This summer we'll talk about bounty. DirectedbyWomen has links to 6,815 women directors...and counting. And in September we'll be watching their movies in a global viewing party that begins September 1-15 and will never end. Never. So it's not only the Summer of Love. It's The Endless Summer.

Reality of Women and Movies in Dollars and Sense

Hollywood had a tank summer at the box office. We predicted this would happen because we watch and we hope: not for industry failure, but for the money/power brokers to get that leaving women out is a bad investment. Best example this year - Hercules vs. Lucy. Dwayne Johnson is a box office winner in action films, but Scarlett Johannson ate his lunch. Industry brokers credit the dismal women numbers in leadership creative roles in a dizzyingly wrong array. Women can't carry the overseas market where pre-sales (and investment $) are paramount. Wrong. Women films don't make money. Wrong. Even Amy Pascal, a studio co-head can't come up with a good answer - because they're wrong. All wrong. Statistics prove the lies (a recent 538 article covers the data well). Frozen, with Bechdel test-passing women in the lead roles, and Jennifer Lee as co-director, and screenwriter, may make the top 10 grossing movies of all time. What we need now is a better look at the money the big studios are missing. Grandmas take kids to movies. The older crowd in this country has more loot than it's had in decades. And they're staying home in droves, and keeping the younger potential audience at home with them. Playing with their apps. Movie money is being siphoned off by women gamers. Did we hear that? Women gamers will soon be half the market. The potential movie going audience of women outnumbers male moviegoers. There are more women than men in this country and within this decade, in the world. Women writers, directors, game coders, media professionals are not just underrepresented - they're missing on purpose. What's different this year; what's exciting and encouraging, is the numbers continue to prove the lie. Women can and do direct, write, code, put out a money maker, carry a film in a leading role. And we know how to call out the falsehoods that keep us out of any industry we are qualified to be in. Will it make a difference? Maybe. A Women in Media study (pg. 38) shows that where there are women in the film industry, those women are producers, and unfortunately, the more prestigious the producer, the fewer women creatives are on board. Check The Hurt Locker. Directed/produced by Kathryn Bigelow. Everyone else in a creative role is a man. Heaping praise on the people who are showing us reality, start with Barbara O'Leary's compiled lists of women directors, cinematographers which bury the lie that women don't want to direct or photograph. People who are publicly claiming what women don't want as an excuse for excluding females won't have much cover going forward. We know the truth, and now we've got numbers to prove it.

Like Me Fund Me

Talking with a filmmaker friend yesterday, we were enjoying the prospect of a new Alice Guy Blache documentary being produced. Be Natural: the Untold Story of Alice Guy Blache. Actually, it has been told, more than once; and brilliantly by Alison McMahan, but Madame Blache is not in the zeitgeist yet. There are players attached to the project - Robert Redford, ExP, Jodie Foster, narrator. And the researchers highlighted are topnotch. Well done backgrounding by PIC Agency codirectors. The film is a Kickstarter project. I'm an old bird-the crowdsourcing stuff was outside my range of vision. So, I educate myself a little more. The creators want $200,000 from you and me to complete the documentary. Robert Redford is Sundance, yes? Why do they need our money? Looking into project crowdsourcing this morning, I found this article from indiewire on the relative success (as can best be determined by squishy data) of indiegogo, Kickstarter, and newbie Seed & Spark. The big loot in filmmaking is focused on franchise film, overseas sales, and a dumb audience. Please no documentaries, dialogue, story or character. These stories are being left to us, the audience with little money, but a need to feed our brains and hearts. Will I give $$ to realize an Alice Guy Blache documentary? The big studio boys with the real money have zero interest in a story about the woman narrative film pioneer. Pull focus: do I want this film made? Yes. Will I change the dynamic of Hollywood financing by not helping this film be made? No. Do I have a big headache? Affirmative. Will logging in and clicking "confirm" cure it? Probably not, but I just did it. Ugh! Amazon! How much is that behemoth taking out of this? I'm wondering how far we are away from crowdsourcing all our creative - those projects in art, music, literature that keep us human. How far away are we from privatizing education and crowdsourcing teaching children? Log into Amazon, click confirm $K-12.

Movie Torture

Be careful what you ask for. I've written about women in film and the need for more. Linked below are a few blog posts about women in film. Filmmaking is a man's world, although it didn't start out that way, and needn't continue that way. Women have made some progress, and then that progress was squashed. It's uncommon to have a woman screenwriter, director, producer. Katherine Bigelow has directed two box office hits recently. Both involve war. The latest film riled people about torture as a means to an end.  I was looking forward to seeing Olympus Has Fallen. I like action adventure, hero journey epics, rescue operation movies. The reviews I read this morning changed my mind. I will not be seeing the movie. Torture is featured again. And a woman screenwriter is involved. Is this now what it takes for a woman to get a job in Hollywood? Some whacked version of traumatic bonding/Stockholm syndrome? WTF? And how do we fix this? Fairy Tale Princesses, Boomer Anxiety About Aging?!  Women and Film 2011: Sexual Violence. The Throwaway Woman Plot Device.

Movies Made, Seen and A Certain Age

Late Bloomers is a Julie Gavras film about coping with aging. Yay! Starring the real life cinema elders Isabella Rossellini and William Hurt, written by Olivier Dazat and Julie Gavras, translated by David H. Pickering. The film looks into the oppositional denial/engagement behavior of a married couple of retirement age. Marvelous, timely, real life and needed. I can't wait to see it. Reminds me of interviewing a financial planner as a married woman. When do you want to retire? he asked. Never, said the ex. Tomorrow, said I. Most importantly, the audience for this film is eager, has money and will spend it at the cinema. In 2011, movie attendance was down. Again. 2011 saw the smallest movie going audience in 15 years. Blame it on whatever you'd like, people aren't going to the cineplex. Google docs houses a pdf file of global theatrical market statistics through 2010. In recent years, women have been staying home more than men. Meanwhile, obtuse Hollywood is gambling on cash cow movies re-released in 3D despite the clear evidence that 3D attendance worldwide is going downhill fast. We have more women than men in this country. Women make over 80% of the purchase decisions for the family. We have an aging population worldwide, in bigger numbers every year. Mark Jenkins, in his review of Late Bloomers, casually tosses off the marketability of the film as not distinctive enough to draw viewers who haven't given much thought to aging. And so? It's a big, rich global crowd that wants films like this to pay to see. Perhaps the tide is turning. Women filmmakers globally are taking the next step, identifying the big bucks yet to be gathered, and employing excellent actors with maturity and skill to play characters of a certain age. Yay! to Julie Gavras and the women in film who make us cheer. And who are savvy and brave enough to detect coin in our pockets that most of Hollywood cannot discern.

Women & Film 2011: Sexual Violence

I love movies. Viewing, talking, researching, reading about movies. I like precode movies, screwball comedies, film noir, thrillers, westerns, sparklingly written film, studio, independent, animated, documentary, short, long, black & white, color. I have only walked out of one movie, and I have hit eject on two at home. That's it out of thousands of movies. I have enjoyed and rewatched movies that my feminist friends pan. There are cinematographers, production designers, directors, and acting talent I will watch repeatedly, and immediately see when a new movie is released. But there are fewer new movies I can choose to see. There are more schlocky films, juvenile films, weak franchise films, male buddy films featuring moronic losers and no soul. There are fewer strong male roles, and even fewer strong female roles. The newest feature plastic boobs and plastic brains, or depict women in violent and hysterical situations. Two new movies are particularly vile. The Twilight series is a cesspool of wrong-headed women characterization. Bella doesn't want to be herself. It's The Little Mermaid on steroids. The new installment, reviewed here by Linda Holmes, dehumanizes - literally and figuratively - the female lead, and adds sexual violence. Not surprising in the 2011 world of women as automatic commodities, Breaking Dawn made a pantload of money opening weekend. Dangerous Method is reviewed here. Freud as sexual predator, his victim a client diagnosed with hysteria. Hysteria. Trotting out all those 18th century ways of dismissing and abusing women because we don't have enough of that shit today, is that it? I am interested in Martin Scorsese's Hugo, although I'm not a Scorsese fan. Homage to film is enticing. I'll pay homage to Alice Guy Blache instead of Meiles in my head, and hope that some day really soon we stop plasticizing, ignoring, dismissing and torturing women in movies. I've had enough of this weak yang domination stuff, and it's about damn time we all abandon it forever.

2010 Black List Movies

The Black List, movie-modern era, is screenplays that are ready to film, but for reasons undiscovered, have not been produced, completed or handed to distributors. LA Times claims a midlevel executive named Franklin Leonard polls his colleagues for the list. There are murky rules, multiple "like"(s), but many of the voters probably were the very folks who turned down the deal. Another site claims a guy in Leonardo DiCaprio's production company Appian Way came up the idea. Fine. We do not know who the 300 people surveyed for the 2010 list are. That colleagues, Hollywood, executives are keywords tells me these are men. I counted 75 movies on this list at slashfilms. Writers credited for the screenplays: 82 men (including one movie written by three) and ready?... 5 women. F-I-V-E. Katie Lovejoy, Jenni Ross, Carrie Evans, Megan Martin, Katie Wech. The guys wrote movies like "Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch," and "F*cking Jane Austen." Although Carrie Evans cowrote "Boy Scouts vs. Zombies," and Katie Welch wrote "Prom" so I'm making no judgment on the literary quality of these scenarios. But 75 movies and five women is a pitiful ratio. The most votes went to current event, fact-based, CIA-tinged yawns. Are we all in for reality film just like reality TV? Nobody has to make stuff up, revise a second act, or break a brain sweat at all. Coming to a theater near you. We can do better than this. I wish I knew how.