Women In Hollywood

MAKERS: Women in Hollywood

Film Review

The second film in the new AOL MAKERS series, MAKERS: Women In Hollywood will premiere on Tuesday, October 7 at 9pm ET/PT on PBS. MAKERS: Women in Hollywood showcases the women of showbiz, from the earliest pioneers to present-day power players, as they influence the creation of one of the country’s biggest commodities: entertainment.

Actress Geena Davis and filmmaker Deborah Hutchison attend AOL Makers: Women in Hollywood premiere

MAKERS, owned and operated by AOL, is a digital and video story-telling platform that aims to be the largest video collection of women’s stories every assembled. MAKERS brings together well-known figures such as Hillary Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Oprah Winfrey, with the trailblazers that need to be known such as Christy Haubegger, the founder of Latina Magazine, and Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon.

The film takes audiences on a journey, in women’s shoes, through Hollywood history beginning with the Silent Film Era when women like Mary Pickford, Lois Webber and Alice Guy-Blache were successful both in front of and behind the camera to the realities of today where women – particularly in films – still struggle to achieve gender equality as producers, directors and onscreen talent.

Onscreen interviews featuring legendary producers like Sherry Lansing and Paula Weinstein, and writers Gail Parent, Callie Khouri and Linda Woolverton expose the challenges scribes have faced in bringing complex female characters to the big screen, while pioneers like Marlo Thomas, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and Shonda Rhimes speak to their efforts to shatter television’s  traditional female archetypes of the perfect wife and mother, the good girl and the every-man’s-fantasy sexpot.

Particularly poignant moments in the film include actress Glenn Close’s discussion of the backlash she suffered from both men and women in the wake of her portrayal of successful executive-turned-stalker Alex Forrest in the Sherry Lansing-produced film Fatal Attraction, and Jane Fonda’s emotional recollection of the impact that her 1980 film 9 to 5 had in bolstering the burgeoning movement of female office workers.

The film boasts a veritable who’s who of Hollywood with additional onscreen interviews from veteran performers like Alfre Woodard, Geena Davis and Diahann Carroll,prolific hit-maker Judd Apatow and emerging stars like filmmaker Ava DuVernay and Lena Dunham.

Produced by Rory Kennedy with Producer/Director Linda Goldstein Knowlton. Narrated by Julia RobertsMAKERS: Women in Hollywood is a film by Kunhardt McGee Productions in association with Moxie Firecracker Films.

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