Kim Longinotto is a British documentary film maker, well known for making films that highlight the plight of female victims of oppression or discrimination. Longinotto has made more than 20 films, usually featuring inspiring women and girls at their core. Her subjects have included female genital mutilation in Kenya, women standing up to rapists in India, and the story of Salma, an Indian Muslim woman who smuggled poetry out to the world while locked up by her family for decades.
Debra Granik is an American filmmaker. She is most known for 2004's Down to the Bone, which starred Vera Farmiga, 2010's Winter's Bone, which starred Jennifer Lawrence in her breakout performance and for which Granik was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and 2018's Leave No Trace, a film based on the book My Abandonment by Peter Rock.
Kartemquin Films is a four-time Oscar-nominated 501(c)3 non-profit production company located in Chicago, Illinois, that produces a wide range of documentary films. It is the documentary filmmaking home of acclaimed producers such as Gordon Quinn, Steve James, Peter Gilbert, Maria Finitzo, Joanna Rudnick, Bing Liu, Aaron Wickenden, and Ashley O’Shay (Unapologetic).
Thomas Furneaux Lennon is a documentary filmmaker. He was born in Washington, D.C., graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1968 and Yale University in 1973.
Stanley Earl Nelson Jr. is an American documentary filmmaker and a MacArthur Fellow known as a director, writer and producer of documentaries examining African-American history and experiences. He is a recipient of the 2013 National Humanities Medal from President Obama. He has won three Primetime Emmy Awards.
Sisters in Law is a 2005 Cameroonian documentary film by Florence Ayisi and Kim Longinotto, portraying aspects of women's lives and work within the judicial system in western Cameroon. Following four separate cases, the film focuses on state prosecutor Vera Ngassa and judge Beatrice Ntuba as they attempt to bring justice for victims of gender violence.
Rough Aunties is a 2008 documentary film directed by Kim Longinotto about a group of 5 women of Operation Bobbi Bear who protect and care for abused, neglected and forgotten children in Durban, South Africa. It won the Grand Jury Prize in the 'World Cinema — Documentary' category at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.
Jennifer Abod is an American feminist activist, musician, journalist, and filmmaker.
Hannah Weyer is an American filmmaker and writer living in New York, who has written, directed and produced narrative and documentary films. Her films have screened at the Human Rights Watch, Sundance and the New York Film Festivals and won recognitions, including awards from LoCarno, Sundance, Doubletake Documentary and South by Southwest Film Festivals. Her documentaries, La Boda and La Escuela aired on PBS as part of the POV-American Documentary series. Screenwriting credits include work that premiered on HBO, including Life Support (2007), directed by Nelson George, and which earned a Golden Globe award for its lead actress, Queen Latifah. Other writing credits include a novel set in Far Rockaway, Queens entitled, On The Come Up, which was published by Nan Talese/Knopf in 2013. It received a 2013 Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers award and Weyer was a NAACP Image Award Nominee for Debut Author. Most recently, her short story, Sanctuary City, won the 2018 Danahy Fiction Prize and will be published in the Tampa Review's Fall/Winter 2018 issue.
Michelle Parkerson is an American filmmaker and academic. She is an assistant professor in Film and Media Arts at Temple University and has been an independent film/video maker since the 1980s, focusing particularly on feminist, LGBT, and political activism and issues.
Ariel Maria Dougherty is an American independent film maker, feminist media advocate and activist. She is best known as the co-founder of non-profit media arts organization Women Make Movies. In recent years she has written extensively about the intersections of women's rights and media justice and the need for increased support for both.
Dreamcatcher is a 2015 British-American documentary film directed by Kim Longinotto focusing on Brenda Myers-Powell, a former professional who runs The Dreamcatcher Foundation, a charity which helps women in Chicago leave the sex industry. The film won the World Cinema Directing Award in the documentary category at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Showtime Networks acquired the rights to the film on 23 January 2015.
Helen De Michiel is an American director, producer, media arts advocate, strategist and author whose work includes film, television, multimedia installation and digital transmedia.
The Athena Film Festival is an annual film festival held at Barnard College of Columbia University in New York City. The festival takes place in February and focuses on films celebrating women and leadership. In addition to showing films, the festival hosts filmmaker workshops, master classes and panels on a variety of topics relevant to women in the film industry. The Athena Film Festival was co-founded by Kathryn Kolbert, Founding Director of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard College and Melissa Silverstein, founder of the Women and Hollywood initiative and the festival's Artistic Director.
Women are involved in the film industry in all roles, including as film directors, actresses, cinematographers, film producers, film critics, and other film industry professions, though women have been underrepresented in creative positions.
Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami is a Sundance Award-winning Iranian documentary filmmaker who was born in Tehran. She has directed one full-length documentary, four short documentaries and one animated documentary.
Florence Ayisi was born in Kumba in Cameroon on 22 July 1962). She is an academic and filmmaker. Her film Sisters in Law won more than 27 awards and was short-listed for an Academy Award nomination in 2006. She won the UK Film Council Breakthrough Brits Award for Film Talent in 2008. Since 2000 she has taught film at the University of South Wales.
Jessica Edwards is a Canadian-American filmmaker known for her documentary Mavis! about musician and civil rights figure Mavis Staples.
Vivian Kleiman is a Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker. She has received a National Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Research and executive produced an Academy Award nominated documentary.
Debra Zimmerman is an American film distributor and lecturer. She has been the Executive Director non-profit media arts organization Women Make Movies since 1983.
