Kelly O'Brien is an independent filmmaker and mother of three who lives in Toronto. Her film “Softening” won the grand jury prize in the shorts competition at the 2013 DOC NYC festival and appeared in the New York Times online. She recently exhibited [...]
Joeli Brearley is founder of the project and campaign Pregnant Then Screwed, a place for women to tell their stories of pregnancy and maternity discrimination to expose this systemic problem and make a case for recognition, change and respect. She writes about [...]
Making a film is hard. Making a film and having a baby is a lot harder! Back in 2006, I was a busy freelancer working on popular factual shows for broadcasters like the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery, travelling the world and [...]
As a young producer’s assistant, then script editor, then head of development, I was too busy working and chasing the next bit of development funding to think about kids. But by 30, I’d built up enough regular freelance script editing clients [...]
Men and women are different. Whether because of our genes or conditioning. We experience, at home and on the street, playground or onscreen, different qualities prized in females and males. Big cinema stories internationally exported most obviously in the superhero franchises, [...]
We are Co-Directors, Co-Writers and Co-Parents. Oh yeah, and we’ve been married for nearly a decade. Not that we have much time to think about such trivial things like love. We shot our first feature, THE WHITE KING, in Hungary last [...]
I have recently come to three realizations about being a filmmaker and a parent. The first is that everything comes down to money. The second is that the challenges facing parents in the industry disproportionately affect women. The third is that [...]
Maja Borg was born in Norrköping, Sweden, in 1982. She is an Artist and Film Director, additionally working as Director of Photography and Editor. In 2005, Borg’s ‘To She In Me’ was selected for the Culture Bound 7, East Wing Collection at [...]
Penny Woolcock is a writer and director with a background in radical theatre and the trade union movement. She has worked across film, television, radio, and live opera, and made both fiction films and documentaries. She is best known for the [...]
In 2010 when my son was a week old my friend Corinna McFarlane came to meet him. She also wanted to tell me that she was going away for a while, to write a script about her unknown ancestors in Scotland. [...]
Sometimes I feel like an Uber driver in Los Angeles. I’ve moved to a city where my skill is necessary and much valued, but comes with no job security. And definitely no tips. I’m a freelance Archive Producer, which involves footage [...]
This week we had our first informal Raising Films gathering, to discuss Shooting Away From Home. A room of parents gathered to share their experiences, or to find answers to questions that were worrying them. Some people were shooting away from [...]
The VFX industry, as I know it, is not a 9-5 existence, quite often we work late to meet deadlines, or to take calls from state side clients. Also, when on shoots, VFX related shots often get shunted to the end of [...]
I get home back to Edinburgh on Halloween. My children are out guising, and the house is empty and dark. I drag in my muddy welly boots and collapse. The doorbell rings and there are a group of children offering me [...]
Born in Dublin in 1969, and now living in Canada, Emma Donoghue is a screenwriter, novelist, playwright and literary historian. Most recently she was nominated for an Oscar, Golden Globe and Bafta for her screen adaptation of her novel ROOM. She [...]
Kate McLarnon's and Sky Neal's documentary Even When I Fall launches its crowdfunder for the final shoot and edit today, International Women's Day 2016. I found out I was pregnant the day before I set off for an ethnography shoot in New [...]
This is the first instalment in a series of diaries from Alice Lowe on the making of Prevenge. It's mid-December 2015 and I’ve got a month to work on the edit of Prevenge before I give birth. We shot a month [...]
The average wage in the creative industries is £16,575. The average cost of a full time nursery place in London is £14,750 (Creative Blueprint via PIPA) That's why Parents in Performing Arts (PIPA) are crowdfunding to hold public meetings and lobby theatres to [...]
Tomorrow we start our final week of principal photography which means this time in a week I’ll be home. I can’t pretend I’m not loving shooting this film, because honestly there’s not much in the world that I have loved doing [...]
My daughter was born four months ago, I've spent my maternity leave, as many people do, hanging out with other new mums in coffee shops and generally wondering where the time is going. I've got used to seeing other people's slight [...]