Women in Entertainment

“I expect to be told yes,” says Ane Crabtree, the woman who created costumes for shows like Justified, Masters of Sex and the seminal, Golden Globe-winning The Handmaid’s Tale, which has inspired women around the world to take on the red Handmaid’s uniform as a sign of resistance and overthrowing oppression. “I’ve spent a lifetime being told no, so I don’t take no for an answer.

“I’m a pusher,” says Pamela B. Green, director of the documentary: Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, the first director-male or female - to introduce the concept of fictional storytelling to moving pictures, and who went on to become the first woman studio head.

The opening moments of Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool catch Annette Bening as a woman on the edge. She plays a late career Gloria Grahame, in what is a beautiful film about Grahame's love affair with Liverpudlian Peter Turner (Jamie Bell).

“I believe a (Director of Photography’s) job is to empathize and visualize human emotion. Things women are inherently very qualified for, so I've never understood why there aren’t more women in the camera and cinematography departments.

Dany Garcia’s philosophy is to change the way the game is played. As the CEO & founder of the Garcia Companies and co-founder of Seven Bucks Productions – producers of the box office hit Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and the HBO series Ballers, to name just few - the middle child of Cuban immigrants demonstrates how and why she is successfully creating the world she wants.

"I am the same person that I would have been if I was going to be the 4th-grade teacher that I was going to be. I would have been a dynamic 4th-grade teacher, I would have won the teacher of the year award for sure, (laughter) but I am the same person.

A power panel of producers got together at SCAD Savannah Film Festival for what turned out to be a master class on producing. The crowd packed into a standing-room-only event entitled Wonder Women, made up of Alison Owen (Suffragette, Harlots, Saving Mr.

“There's nothing inherently gender-specific about the work that I do,” notes Riva Marker, co-founder of Nine Stories, the production company that has a first-look deal with Bold Films and which producer the Jake Gyllenhaal starrer, Stronger. Jake also happens to be her producing partner, and the two are spearheading a drive both to bring intimate, more character-driven movies to the screen, as well as strong portrayals of women.

It’s hard to understand that such a seminal event as Billie Jean King, the number one Women’s Tennis player at the time, taking on a man and beating him at the height of the woman’s movement, has faded from popular culture to such an extent that many young women are unaware who this iconic figure is. Battle of the Sexes, a new movie about King's life at that time should put her and the event back into the public zeitgeist.

Lena Waithe is so fly and so swaggy. That she also happens to be the first African-American woman to win an Emmy for outstanding writing for a comedy series, which she shared with Aziz Ansari for the Thanksgiving episode of Master of None, based on Lena’s real life when she came out to her family, is payoff for a life of stepping up.