Women of the Lens Film Festival
News : Commentary
News I Commentary
Can the
industry Just…
…make a pledge to employ people who know how to style and care for black women’s hair on set? It’s getting embarassing now for the industry. Verona Rose (via her podcast See You Next Lifetime) Shalita Grant (NCIS) and most lately the icon that is Viola Davis explains how she has to employ her own stylists for work to tend to her 4c curls.
Industry, if you don’t know where to contact said stylistst…holla.
The gorgeous Jodie Turner-Smith (Queen & Slim 2019) photographed by Ashley Pena for Vouge Magazine, Oct 2020.
Film director Amma Asante makes history by directing a James Bond advert.
We’re so looking forward to seeing Lashana Lynch bearing the 007 monocle (if only for a little while), though the film, No Time To Die, has not yet been released (due to Covid19 and lockdown implications).
We’re gonna have to make do with the advert for Nokia mobile phones for now.
Lashana is not the first black woman to be featured in this type of merchandising, Naomie Harris (as Miss Moneypenny) takes that spot. But, Amma Asante is the first woman linked to a Bond production in this way.
News just in: No Time To Die has been issued with a later UK release date in April 2021.
(image MGM)
Click the image to watch the commercial.
Really?
We like that Nia
Long
…is getting the work, but have you seen her current role aired on Netflix in Fatal Affair?
Ouch.
Representation
Matters
We see you Rolling Stone, Time Magazine, Vanity Fair et. al.
Yeah we know that…
…the reviews for Clemency starring Alfre Woodard are great (ours coming soon). But we just want a lil more Juanita (with lashings of Blair Underwood). Pretty please Mandalay Pictures?
Gina, Gina, Gina
Are you on the road to directing a major superhero film with a woman as the lead?In the words of Star Trek’s ‘Captain Jean-Luc Picard’, “make it so”.
Representation Matters
Black women’s images have been in the forefront of a number of high-profile publications since the Black Lives Matters movement of protest. There has been much outrage since the killing of George Floyd. Yet the ‘face’ of the protest and outrage is that of the image of black women in ‘sistah soldier warrior’ mode.
We’re not saying that black women cannot sit in ‘warrior’ spaces, but when that image is repeated again and again, it becomes a problem that can have real life consequences. Part of the reason why this platform was created was to push hard against stereotypcal images of black women, if only becasue other races of women have better samples of their whole personas. We equally want to see the entirety of black women as human beings, not just as ‘faces’ of ‘struggle’, especially when they’re repeatedly the images of the dark-skinned, 4c hair-typed woman (insert roll eyes emoji).
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You don’t have to be a black woman to engage with us. We look forward to linking with you. Whomever you are, you do have to be invested in making changes that repairs the career chances and images of black women. Simples.