FYC: Lulu Wang for Best Director

by Cláudio Alves

With the advent of Awards Season, we have to contend with the disappointment that always comes hand-in-hand with the excitement and the joy. No matter how much great work is nominated and rewarded, there's always a snub to point out and cry over. The recent Independent Spirit Awards nominations perfectly exemplify such dynamics. This year, they decided to spread the wealth and ignored the Siren's call of just nominating Oscar-viable titles. All in all, it's a wonderful collection of honors and achievements, but even here there is cause to complain about the dreaded snubs.

Why didn't Lulu Wang score a nomination for Best Screenplay or Best Director? How can The Farewell be up for Best Feature and not for either of those awards?...

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Honorary Oscars 2019 - The Speeches

by Nathaniel R

Our dream is to one day attend that invite only Honorary Oscars / Governor's Awards. The ceremonies aren't televised but for clips for YouTube and such but everyone who is anyone in Hollywood is there with an emphasis on Hollywood's golden history which we here at The Film Experience have always appreciated. Sites that only cover new releases -- what are you doing with your lives?!?

Here are the speeches and some notes from the special night.  First up Geena Davis, Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award winner who shares that it was really Thelma & Louise (1991) that changed her life (you and me both, diva!) and set her on the path that she's now being honored for. Her face when Tom Hanks says her name... ❤

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Lina Wertmüller's History-Making "Seven Beauties"

The Governors Awards (Honorary Oscars) will be held on October 27th, 2019 with director Lina Wertmüller, actress Geena Davis, director David Lynch, and actor Wes Studi celebrated. We'll be discussing each of them before then.

by new contributor Camila Henriques

In Seven Beauties, Lina Wertmüller is not interested in sparing the audience. That becomes clear in the first minutes of the film, when we’re presented with a myriad of images of the Second World War: Hitler, explosions, destruction. In the background, a voice over speaks with a hint of melancholy and irony about “the ones who keep going and going just to see how it will end”... 

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Love & Anarchy: Lina Wertmüller's unruly tragedy

The Governors Awards (Honorary Oscars) will be held on October 27th, 2019 with director Lina Wertmüller, actress Geena Davis, director David Lynch, and actor Wes Studi celebrated. We'll be discussing each of them before then.

by Cláudio Alves

Lina Wertmüller's films always feature great faces. They're not classically beautiful, but rather interesting to look at, like the visages sculpted by shadow in Caravaggio's paintings. In Love & Anarchy, Giancarlo Giannini is a storm of freckles, his green eyes lighthouses guiding us through the waves into his soul. Contrastingly, Mariangela Melato is a spectacle of powdered pallor, a vampiric Jean Harlow or perhaps a tarted-up marble statue, gorgeous and obscene in equal measure...

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Oscar's International Race Pt 1 - The Female Directors

The Academy has officially announced list of 93 contenders -- an all time record --  for this year's Best International Feature Film Oscar (submission chart here). So let's dive in! 

Last year's sole female nominee for Best International Feature, Nadine Labaki (Capernaum) is in front of the camera this time for Lebanon's new submission "1982"

by Nathaniel R

We've been tracking the just renamed foreign-language film race for so long that we love to dig in to stats a bit. You may recall that last year 20 of the 87 pictures were directed or co-directed by women. This year 28 of the 93 contenders are -- that's 30% of the list which is easily an all-time record! Here's another promising note for the future in regards to gender parity: female directors made only 2 of the nominated foreign-language films in the first quarter century of this category but things opened in the 1980s with four nominees from female directors, there were four again in the 1990s, and then seven in the 2000s. Though the 2010s have only seen five thus far, the trend is still promising; in the past four consecutive years one of the nominees has come from a female auteur:

2015 Mustang (France) by Deniz Gamze Ergüven
2016 Toni Erdmann (Germany) by Maren Ade
2017 On Body and Soul (Hungary) by Idilko Enyedi
2018 Capernaum (Lebanon) by Nadine Labaki

Will the trend continue this year? Here are the 29 women who will be trying to make that happen.

The 29 Women Competing in the Best International Feature Race
* means they co-directed their film

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