To understand the current #MeToo/Time’s Up moment, we must reckon with a century of Hollywood’s mistreatment of women. With this first series installment, Kerry McElroy takes us back to the industry’s earliest decade in Los Angeles. This was a time of surprising feminine power. Cinema emerged alongside the New Woman, utopian promises of California, the stunt queen, and global female celebrity. It took time for capitalist forces to reassert a gendered order.
Kerry McElroy announces a timely and compelling series that will run bi-monthly this fall at The Independent. The series titled, “Bette, Marilyn, and #MeToo: What Studio-Era Actresses Can Teach Us About Economics and Resistance Post-Weinstein,” highlights Hollywood legends (including Olivia de Havilland, Louise Brooks, Marilyn Monroe, and Elizabeth Taylor) who all carved out spaces of autonomy in a decidedly male-controlled film industry at the height of its exploitative powers. McElroy will reveal, through analysis that spans seven decades, what these actresses have to teach us in this contemporary moment of feminist reckoning.
As virtual reality develops into a viable technology for immersive storytelling, today’s filmmakers are witnessing the birth of a new, perhaps more inclusive, form of cinema. Reporting on VR from this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Rebecca M. Alvin, explores how the doors are open for a much more diverse group of creators and a wider range of stories to tell.
Mike Sullivan describes the years-long process filmmakers Jessica Barnthouse and Stacy Buchanan undertook in making their first feature documentary, Something Wicked This Way Comes. The film featured at this year’s Boston Underground Film Festival. A revised version of the doc, titled The Man in the Mask, will be showing at festivals later this year.
This fall, the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, Massachusetts ran a retrospective of Adrienne Barbeau’s major cult films. Mike Sullivan attended the final event—a screening of The Fog and presentation of the Coolidge Corner Theatre’s “After Midnite Award” to Barbeau. Sullivan spoke briefly with Barbeau just before the screening and also attended the robust Q&A.
The continued rise of streaming platforms has had reverberating effects in online film communities. Every company, regardless of size and scope, must complete to find, maintain, and build online audiences. Courtney Sheehan shares news of new streaming services after speaking with industry reps at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
Mike Sullivan profiles Washington D.C. Filmmaker Daniel Lombroso on his path toward becoming a documentarian. Lombroso recounts the making of several documentaries including 2014’s Mountain of Servants and his most recent film, Church Militant: A Right Wing Empire in the Making. Lombroso is an Associate Video Producer for Atlantic Studios, the video division of The Atlantic magazine.
Filmmaker Søren Sørensen recounts what prompted him to explore the Vietnam War’s impacts on his father, other veterans, and us all.
Editor’s note: Our friend Randy Steinberg sent along an essay he originally wrote for Scriptshadow and we asked if we…