Julie Dash has been making films and television for four decades, and is part of the LA Rebellion generation of filmmakers. Her feature Daughters of the Dust (1991) was the first full-length film by an African-American woman with general theatrical release in the United States. Dash is the [...]
Shahrbanoo Sadat is a 20 year old Afghan woman, scriptwriter and director. She is based in Kabul. She studied documentary film-making at the “Atelier Varan Kabul” a French Workshop. Her first short fiction “Vice Versa One” was selected at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2011. [...]
Desperate Optimists are Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor. Born in Dublin, Ireland, they studied theatre in the UK in the late 80s. From 1992 to 1999 they toured six internationally acclaimed devised theatre shows. Between 2000 and 2003 they directed a number of [...]
The Levelling receives its world premiere tonight at the Toronto International Film Festival. In our final diary instalment writer/director Hope Dickson Leach (HDL) talks to her husband Phil Miller (PJEM) about primary parenting, routine and freezers full of food. HDL: The [...]
Tonight, PREVENGE receives its world premiere at Venice Critics' Week. Below, in our third instalment of The Prevenge diaries, Alice Lowe talks us through the edit process with a tiny baby on her lap. I find that with films, as with [...]
Here's our second instalment from Alice Lowe's diary on making her first feature film, Prevenge, whose world premiere will open Critics' Week at the 2016 Venice Film Festival. Read the first instalment, about the shoot, here. It’s upsetting and sad that people put off having [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Esther May Campbell's debut feature LIGHT YEARS premieres at the London Film Festival on 14 October 2015. A self-taught writer and director, her short 'September' won the Best Short Film BAFTA 2009, and she has worked on the TV shows SKINS and [...]
Hope Dickson Leach's The Levelling diaries continues... “Oh and the cat’s shitting blood and might need to be put down.” “What?” “They’re fighting - I’ve got to go.” And so ends the conversation with my husband around bedtime on day 9 [...]
Helene Klodawsky is a veteran independent filmmaker – a passionate storyteller committed to portraying political and social struggles, as well as to exploring the documentary art form. Helene is known for poignant, daring films. Painted Landscapes of the Times (1986), Shoot and Cry (1988), Motherland [...]