The Other 50%

Rachel has Directed many hours of television as well as films, and is currently developing the Lilly Ledbetter story for a feature film that she will also direct. Having been in this business since she was the voice of Lucy in the Peanuts cartoons, she has an important perspective on this business and where we are headed – for women in particular.

She has been directing television since Doogie Howser, and has logged more than 60 hours.

Nicole is an Actor who also wrote and produced her webseries called The Broken Hearts Division. You can find it here: www.brokenheartsdivision.com. It hilarious, with a brilliant premise. There is a division of LAPD that prosecutes crimes of the heart. At least, there should be.

She came up through theatre and also advertising and marketing. All of her skills came together in producing the pilot to her series and launching a crowdfunding campaign.

Alexia is a filmmaker, and a serious go-getter. She has made 10 films, including Adventures in Plymptoons!, Ginger Girls: The Secret Lives of Redheads, and Little Fishes. She is currently working on her new film called Fantastic Santa Monaco.

She started an art and film festival while she was still in college. She taught me a lot about social media. She is incredibly generous.

And she has the coolest car in the world.

You can find her and her projects at www.alexiaanastasio.com.

Alexandra is an Actor, Writer and Producer. She has two production companies – Mirror Tree Productions produces Horror Films and Mustard Seed Entertainment produces Family Faith-based Films. Because there is room for both.

She moved to Albuquerque and started producing and distributing independent films, which kept growing in size and budget as she got bigger and better deals.

And this – your poster is way more important than you think.

Jen McGowan directed the shorts Confessions of a Late Bloomer and Touch, and the feature film Kelly and Cal, which is a delicious movie that you can see on the streaming platforms. This film won the Gamechanger award at SXSW. She is currently finishing Rust Creek.

Jen is also the founder of the amazing group for women in this business called Film Powered – which she tells us all about.

And this: As long as women don’t get to tell the stories, we will have no control over our destiny.

The day started out with Geena Davis. The Geena Davis Institute for Gender in Media Studies has provided a heap of data surrounding women and girls in media. She presented some data on the day, and as usual, representation of women on screen and behind the scenes are still dismally small.  There are some very easy fixes however, and this is a point that really resonated with a lot of people.

She told us that Media can actually fix the problem is has created.

Director of Audience and Social Media at Tribeca Enterprises which runs the Tribeca Film Festival. She came up through social media marketing and communications before landing this, her dream job.

Consuming content is part of her job and she is passionate about it. We are living in these times of a constant national conversation, which we should use for good. She is doing her part for diversity, inclusion, and representation while sometimes being the only person of color in the room.

This week I was a guest on someone else’s podcast! “The Ladies Who” podcast is a show out of New Orleans hosted by three lovely ladies, Christa, Beth and Bishop – who also, it should be noted, work in Entertainment. They invited me into their Red Tent for a chat.

We talked about the origins of The Other 50% and what is going on in the zeitgeist about women. We talked about #metoo, raising kids, and the themes that have come up during the run of The Other 50% - a Herstory of Hollywood.

Sasha and Inbal are filmmakers who have made a documentary called I Clown You. It’s a film about clowns that work in hospitals in Israel. Clowning is a beautiful art that is taken quite seriously and is respected as a legitimate occupation in the medical system.

This is more than a film, it’s a mission - to explore and to bring awareness to healing and liberating powers of professional medical clowning and to spread the clown spirit of kindness and mischief.

Karie was born on Halloween night, has two different colored eyes and appears very much like she is from an entirely different era. One of her jobs is as the Tour Guide at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery – a job she created when she saw there wasn’t one. Karie also created and runs the website Film Radar and has recently added Film Radar – Reel Women, which catalogs where and when to go watch films made by women.