Series

“The Profession is Crowded Now”

“The Profession is Crowded Now”

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After a halcyon decade of growth and promise for women in Hollywood, patriarchal, hyper-capitalism closed like a vise around the industry. With this second series installment, Kerry McElroy explores Los Angeles in the 1920s. Women migrating west in large numbers represented an exciting cultural phenomenon but also a social problem that needed to be regulated. Just as the “casting couch” was becoming an entrenched industrial practice, a notorious rape trial shocked the industry and re-victimized women. In the midst of these grim developments, a few actresses did manage to become global, superstars, amassing real wealth.

Hollywood Was a Matriarchy
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Hollywood Was a Matriarchy

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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.

New Series: Bette, Marilyn, and #MeToo
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New Series: Bette, Marilyn, and #MeToo

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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.

The Global Screen: Joe Cruz

The Global Screen: Joe Cruz

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In this third installment of The Global Screen, Joe Cruz discusses diasporic and nationalistic contestations emerging in Puerto Rico’s guerrilla cinema. In a way, films belonging to this movement articulate a somewhat transgressive view of Puerto Rico’s national identity. Although the century-old colonial rule continues to draw criticism, no longer is the island territory’s rural past romanticized. Instead, new cinematic discourses concerned with exploring Puerto Ricans’ national identity through the lens of current en masse migration to North American metropolis seem to be taking shape. 

Woman

Women in Film Portraits: Lauren Atkins

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In this installment of Women in Film Portraits, Lauren Sowa profiles Lauren Atkins, creator of the award-winning web series My Friends Think I am Funny. Atkins founded NYC Web Fest after recognizing there were several festivals showcasing digital series on the west coast but nothing in New York. After a successful launch in 2014, NYC Web Fest continues to gain in size and momentum, with guests flying in from around the world. Here Atkins talks with Sowa about her creative influences and her approach to challenges.