MacLaine honoured for film work

Shirley MacLaine has dozens of awards to her name, including an Academy Award, but an honour at the Santa Fe Film Festival topped them all, she said.

"Of all the awards I've gotten all over the world - and I have been in this business a long time - this means more to me because I'm being awarded this in a place that I seriously and deeply love," she told an audience of about 400 on Saturday night.

MacLaine's honour was bestowed by New Mexico Women in Film, which cited her career achievement and commitment to advancing the role of women in the industry.

The 73-year-old US actress, who has lived in New Mexico for a dozen years, said she's learned to balance her frequent time on the road with the spiritual solace of the Southwest, where she can get "reassembled and renewed and reorganised".

"With all the chaos out there, I find that returning home is a meditation - it's also a deep perusal of who I still am and still need to be."

Reflecting on her career, MacLaine praised the creative life and urged the audience, many of them independent filmmakers in Santa Fee for the 8th annual festival, to persist in their art.

"After all politicians and leaders and the generals and scientists ... after they are dead and gone, what will remain is art, and that's why I am so proud to be a part of this industry," she said.

"Art is man's attempt to preserve his imagination against time."

MacLaine is a five-time Oscar nominee who won best actress for 1983's Terms of Endearment.

Her other nominations were for roles in Some Came Running (1958), The Apartment (1960), Irma La Douce (1963) and the The Turning Point (1977).

She has authored numerous books, many with a New Age bent touching on topics like reincarnation and extraterrestrial life. Her latest, published this year, is entitled Sage-ing While Age-ing.

AP

Dorothy Arzner

One of the pioneering women of talking cinema--and once touted as the only female director of the 1920s and '30s, Dorothy Arzner is one of many dynamic and astounding women whose history in Hollywood isn't mainstream knowledge. The fact that her name doesn't readily come to mind in discussions of film--like Alfred Hitchcock's or Daryl Zanuck's--is particularly disappointing considering Arzner holds the record for having the largest body of work by a woman director in Hollywood to this day.

She was born in San Francisco in 1897 and raised in Los Angeles, where her parents opened a café frequented by silent film stars. When she was old enough, she headed straight to the one of the country's top film schools--University of Southern California--though ironically, she did not study film there, but rather medicine. She worked as an ambulance driver during college, but a fateful visit to a film set sold her on the idea of pursuing a career in film.
She found a job as a typist at Paramount, but within three years time, she'd become a writer and editor for the studio. She edited over fifty films as an editor, after she found a way to stretch the budget on her first project, 1922's Blood and Sand, by using both stook footage and original film.

Even with all this experience, savvy, and company loyalty, Paramount was still reluctant to place Arzner at the helm of her own film. When she threatened to take her talent to Columbia, the studio found itself convinced.
Her first directing gig was the silent feature, Fashions for Women, in 1927. Moviegoers flocked to see it. Two years later, she directed the studio's very first talkie: The Wild Party, with then A-listers Clara Bow and Frederic March.

Known for her strong female characters, one film that embodies Arzner's commitment to bringing well-rounded women to the screen is 1931's Working Girls, a story about female New Yorkers looking for work during the Depression.
Arzner was the first woman ever to join the Directors Guild of America and for years, she was the only female member. She directed a number of classic stars including Katharine Hepburn, Billie Burke, and Lucille Ball. She also shared a close friendship with Joan Crawford and directed Pepsi commercials as a favor Crawford's husband, Alfred Steele, then Pepsi Cola Company's Chairman of the Board.

Interview with the diretor of Women behind the camera

resarch methods

There are many different research methods but are devided in to two, primary data and secondary data.the two categories for research are quantitative and qualitative.

Quantitatvie research: a type of research usually based on tables, numbers, and statistics.that attmpt to meausre some kind of phenomenon and produce hard data.

Qualitative research: a type of resrach that attempts to explain or understand something and may necessitate much discussion and analysis of peoples attitudes and behaviour. it usually involves working with small gropus of people.

primary reseaRch: is original research acrried out by the individual posssibly ocndcuting interviews or doing their own content analysis.

secondary research: this is reserach which has already been caried out previously by someone else.

Alexis Krasilovsky

Writer/Director/Producer

Alexis Krasilovsky is writer/director/producer of the global feature documentary, Women Behind the Camera, which recently won the Accolade Competition’s Award for Excellence for Contemporary Issues/Awareness-Raising and the Insight Award for Excellence for Documentary Editing. The film is based on her book, also entitled Women Behind the Camera (Praeger 1997). Other films and videos written and directed by Alexis Krasilovsky include What Memphis Needs, Exile, Blood, and End of the Art World, which Artforum praised for its “quality of humor possible only with depth of understanding.” Her films have aired nationally on PBS and The Learning Channel and screened in museums and festivals here and abroad, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Viennale. At Yale University, Krasilovsky studied with film historian and compilation expert Jay Leyda. She received her MFA in Film/Video from California Institute of the Arts. In addition to the 2000 Roy W. Dean Video Award and the 2006 Women in Film Finishing Fund Award for Women Behind the Camera, Alexis Krasilovsky has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Brody Arts Fund, the Barbra Streisand Center, the Western Regional Media Arts Fellowship Program, California State University, Northridge’s Office of Research and Sponsored Projects, and the California N.O.W. Foundation. She is a Professor of Screenwriting and Film Studies in the Department of Cinema and Television Arts, California State University, Northridge.

Women in film major organisation in promoting women

History Of Women In Film Women in Film was founded in Los Angeles in 1973 by Tichi Wilkerson Kassel (former publisher and editor-in-chief of The Hollywood Reporter) and a group of women who represented variuos facets of the film and television industry. It was created to recognize, develop, and actively promote the unique visions of women in the field of communications.

The Central Florida Chapter of Women in Film (WIF/CF) was established in 1989 by a dynamic group of independent producers looking for camaraderie and support. In 1999, the chapter's name was changed to Women in Film & Television - Florida (WIFT-FL) to better reflect the chapter's membership and sponsor base. WIFT-FL's menbers are qualified women and men in a variety of categories - performers, producers, directors, writers, agents, publicists, photographers, and administrative and managerial personnel. WIFT-FL is part of an international network (Women in Film & Television International or WIFTI) of 40 chapters around the world. WIFTI's membership base exceeds 10,000 working professionals.

Lois Weber 1882-1939

The first American woman director was Lois Weber (1882-1939). Starting in 1908 she directed at least 40 feature films, often writing and starring in them. An ardent supporter of Margaret Sanger and a fierce opponent of censorship, she used her films to promote her ideals and philosophies. Weber opened her own studio and headed a group of women directors by 1920. Weber became the highest-paid woman director in the world.