Chinese Actress Liu Xiaoqing on Playing Empress Wu

Liu Xiaoqing as Empress Wu Zetain

In the pantheon of great Chinese actresses, few names come as revered as Liu. The star of more than 60 films and TV shows, Madame Liu, as she likes to be called, has a résumé that includes four marriages, once being China’s richest woman and a jail term for tax evasion. Now 61 years young, she is keen to discuss her latest role over dinner at Beijing’s Four Seasons Hotel. It's a role she has already played four times over.

“The tale of Empress Wu is like jade,” she tells TIME, dressed in a black tee bearing the slogan ”Little Cutie” over a green military-style shirt. “We’re on a treasure hunt for this most precious of treasures, unraveling the mysteries of that period and person.”

That person is Wu Zetian, the only woman to have ever ruled China, and that period is the Tang Dynasty (AD618 to 906). Liu is due to reprise the role in a 14-part series entitled Empress, due to hit American screens late next year.

Empress Wu is legendary in China for using her wit, intelligence and cunning to eclipse all rivals and rise from her position as Emperor Taizong’s favorite concubine to the very apex of court life. She also had scores of lovers, ruled through 72 prime ministers, and is believed to have killed her own daughter. “Only after I acted as Empress Wu did people start thinking positive things about her,” says Liu.

read more here

@ Time

@ Broadway World

@ Variety

@ Women & Hollywood Blog

The Innocence of Joan Little

Will Packer ~ ~ ~ Joan Little

Will Packer is getting ready to develop a miniseries adaptation about the landmark case of Joan Little, called The Innocence of Joan Little, reports Shadow and Act.

Little’s case in 1974 drew national attention to a jail in Beaufort County in Washington, North Carolina, after Little was found innocent for killing a jailer who attempted to rape her. It was a landmark case, not only the first in United States history to recognize a woman’s right to kill a potential rapist in self-defense but also a case that acknowledged the rights of prisoners in the United States. She was found not guilty by a jury of six whites and six African-Americans.

Little was the first woman in US history to be acquitted under the defense that she killed 62-year-old Clarence Alligood, her would-be rapist, in self-defense. Her case set off a wave of support from civil rights, feminist, and anti-death penalty movements at the time as well.

Will Packer’s Will Packer Productions as well as Paulist Productions are on board to develop and produce the miniseries, though no network is yet attached, and there has been no word on casting. The series will be based on the book by author James Reston Jr., “The Innocence of Joan Little: A Southern Mystery.”

The historical heroines you've never heard of

From Boadicea of the Iceni to Queen Victoria, there is no shortage of women who have made their mark on history.

But for every Eleanor of Aquitaine or Elizabeth I, there have been many more whose efforts have gone unrecognised, largely because of their sex.

Now a new BBC series, the Ascent of Women, aims to change all that and shed light on the forgotten heroines of the past.

From the start, says presenter and historian Amanda Foreman, men have 'conspired' to control speech while women, lacking the educational opportunities of their male peers, have failed to realise that 'speech is power'.

But not everyone has been content to remain silent. From the Celtic warrior queen who kept the Romans from her door to the Sumerian priestess who invented literature, meet the women who deserve to be remembered.

read about these amazing women here @ The Daily Mail

Interview: Irene Bedard

From Indian Country Today Media Network:

Since portraying Mary Crow Dog in the Television production of Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee, depicting the Wounded Knee Standoff, Golden-Globe winning Alaska Native actress has appeared in a vast segment of Hollywood’s finest productions. From her beloved character Suzy Song in Smoke Signals to her voice work in Disney’s Pocahontas, Bedard has proven that a Native actress can make it to the big screen and then some.

In July of 2012, Bedard co-starred in Colonial Williamsburg’s production of “The Beloved Woman,” with actor Wes Studi. During a rehearsal break, she took a few moments to speak with ICTMN about working with Studi, working as a Native actress and what’s to come in the future.

The Blue Angel

Having seen glimpses of the original German movie, I was overjoyed when SBS in Australia put forward this documentary: "The Blue Angel: Birth of A Legend".

"The Blue Angel is based on Professor Unrat (literally Professor Garbage), a 1905 novel by German novelist Heinrich Mann [1871-1950]. The novel was adapted for the movie, titled 'Der blaue Engel', by German screenwriters Carl Zuckmayer, Karl Vollmöller, and Robert Liebmann, along with Austrian-American film-maker Josef von Sternberg (who also directed the movie). Both the novel and the movie were banned in Nazi Germany in 1933 as being 'contrary to the German spirit.' (Source: Blue Angel FAQ @ IMDb)

See also: 

* The Blue Angel from wikipedia

* The Blue Angel from IMDb

* Marlene Dietrich from wikipedia

Fear Of Reprisals Over "Saving Face"

From LINK:

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy made history earlier this year when she won Pakistan’s first Oscar, feted across the country for exposing the horrors endured by women whose faces are obliterated in devastating acid attacks.

Her 40-minute film focuses on Zakia and Rukhsana as they fight to rebuild their lives after being attacked by their husbands, and British Pakistani plastic surgeon Mohammad Jawad who tries to help repair their shattered looks.

When “Saving Face” scooped a coveted gold statuette in the documentary category in Hollywood in February, campaigners were initially jubilant.

The Acid Survivors Foundation Pakistan (ASF) had cooperated on the film but some survivors now fear a backlash in a deeply conservative society — and are taking legal action against the producers.

Hysteria or The Invention of the Vibrator

From the Examiner:

Hysteria deals with a rather dark period in women's history, and especially that of the medical profession. Set in 1880 Victorian London, where doctors still rely on blood sucking leeches as a regular form of treatment, medical science was even more clueless when it came to the care of women. It didn't help that health care was basically an all boy's club, and that guys knew even less about females than we do now, which is still extraordinarily little. Women were thought to be joyless, sexless creatures. It was either that or they were promiscuous lunatics needing to be institutionalized. There was no middle ground. So when it came to women dealing with common issues like depression, anxiety, or discontentment, guys just conjured up a catch-all by labeling it "female hysteria".

See also: Female Hysteria from wikipedia and The Victorian Era website.

Thirty Performances That Remade Women's History

From Paste Magazine:

Paste is celebrating with a look back at two decades worth of films and 30 talented female leads whose roles re-told and re-wrote key moments in history. The performances are not ranked (they appear chronologically) and the list is in no way all-encompassing, although we have tried to include a bit of everything and everyone—no actress appears more than once (we’ll make a separate list for Meryl Streep later).

As we’re sticking to biopics and female-centered period pieces, many great performances by many brilliant actresses do not appear, and it must be said that performances by women in comedies, thrillers, and other genres have also worked to re-make history. Similarly, many women who have played alongside male leads have been left out (like Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line or Laura Linney in Kinsey) but surely will—and do—appear on other lists. It also pained us to leave out Alanis Morissette’s unforgettable cameo as “God” in Dogma, probably the greatest, most accurately cast role ever.

Apache Chronicle

From Indian Country Today Media Network:

When documentary filmmaker Nanna Dalunde contacted Douglas Miles (San Carlos Apache/Akimel O’odham) of Apache Skateboards, he was skeptical. Dalunde wanted to make a film about the female skateboarders associated with Miles’s skate crew — to investigate why they skate and why they create. The problem? Dalunde is from Sweden. Like many Natives who’ve seen skewed visions of their people on screen, Miles was wary of yet another non-Native filmmaker (even a well-intentioned one) who might depict American Indians from an outsider’s perspective. He wanted to ensure that the skaters would retain rights to how they were represented, and that they would hold partial rights to the documentary as well.

The solution was both unconventional and simple: Miles stepped up to assist and facilitate the project as a co-director.

The result is Apache Chronicle, a 41-minute look at the lives and artwork of five young Native American female artists and skateboarders. It’s a remarkable perspective that we rarely see in documentary film: the young Native female perspective.

The "Real" Iron Ladies

From the Chesterfield Post:

A group of women who were the 'Real Iron Ladies' during the Miner's strike have taken part in a protest outside Chesterfield Cineworld this lunchtime - rallying against what they say is the misrepresentation of former PM Margaret Thatcher by scriptwriters in the newly released film 'The Iron Lady'

However Margaret Thatcher's time in power is not remembered so fondly locally and around 30 'Women’s Action group' ex-activists led the protest this morning, and received support from politicians and council leaders who were also in attendance.

"Hollywood is not the place to sentimentalise what is a difficult period in Britain's history. The women here today are the real Iron Ladies, who stood by and supported their men during the strike."

By the Winter Sea

From Skegness Standard:

CAMERA crews are set to pop up all over the local area in the coming days after work got underway on a new short film about the life of an Anderby Creek land girl.

Wartime Lincolnshire and the experiences of ‘Ada’, who worked a Lincolnshire coastal farm during World War Two.

“The 10 minute film entitled ‘By the Winter Sea’, is being made on behalf of the Lincolnshire Coastal Country Park project by Red Dog Film,” said a spokesperson for Lincolnshire County Council.

“It shows how London city girl Ada found the rural life and hard physical work a shock initially, but she gradually overcame her inexperience and grew to love her life as a land girl.

“The film is based on actual events – director Phil Stevens discovered the story in a book called ‘Lincolnshire Women at War’.

“The book is a compilation of letters from women who came from all over the country to work in Lincolnshire during WWII,” they added.

Maids In America - The Help

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The Help is already a big success. Having blitzed the US box office, it looks like making more money than the Meryl Streep hit Julie & Julia.

Much of the magic has been worked by its pedigree. It's an adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's bestseller about a group of black maids working in the households of Mississippi's middle class in 1963, one of the most volatile years of the civil rights movement - although the clamour and ferocity of the movement's battles with southern racism is heard only as distant thunder. Here, the front line is in the kitchen, the nursery - and the bathroom. Especially the bathroom.

The trouble begins when Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard), the bossiest and most brittle of Jackson, Mississippi's, fashionable young matrons, decides her black maid is to have a toilet of her own - or rather, an outhouse - so as to protect the family from any exotic diseases she may be carrying. And since Hilly is a trendsetter, the outhouse becomes a neighbourhood feature.