Athena Film Festival

Athena Film Festival

Location	New York City, New York, U.S.
Founded	2011
Website	http://athenafilmfestival.com/

The Athena Film Festival is an annual film festival held at Barnard College in New York City. The festival takes place in February and focuses on films celebrating women and leadership. In addition to showing films, the festival hosts filmmaker workshops, master classes and panels on a variety of topics relevant to women in the film industry. The Athena Film Festival was co-founded by Kathryn Kolbert, Director of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies and Melissa Silverstein, founder of the Women and Hollywood blog and the festival's Artistic Director.^[1]

Awards

Each year, awards are granted to individuals who have made a significant impact in their industry over the course of their career. In 2012, The Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award was created in honor of the late Laura Ziskin, a noted producer and breast cancer advocate.^[2]

Winners

2011

Leslie Bennetts, contributing editor at Vanity Fair
Debra Martin Chase, producer
Abigail Disney, documentary filmmaker
Delia Ephron, screenwriter
Greta Gerwig, actress
Debra Granik, director
Tanya Hamilton, director
Chris Hegedus, documentary filmmaker
Gini Reticker, documentary filmmaker
Anne Rosellini, screenwriter and producer
Nancy Schreiber, cinematographer
Anne Thompson, writer
Debra Zimmerman, executive director of Women Make Movies

2012

Laura Ziskin, accepted by her daughter Julia Barry (Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award)
Nekisa Cooper, producer
The Fempire: Diablo Cody, Dana Fox, Liz Meriwether, and Lorene Scafaria
Rachael Horovitz, producer
Theresa Rebeck, author and playwright
Dee Rees, director
Julie Taymor, film and broadway director

2013

Gale Anne Hurd, producer (Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award)
Ava DuVernay, director and distributor
Molly Haskell, film critic
Rose Kuo, (former) executive director of Film Society of Lincoln Center
Pat Mitchell, president of the Paley Center for Media

2014

Sherry Lansing, former studio executive and philanthropist (Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award)
Callie Khouri, director and screenwriter
Kasi Lemmons, director
Keri Putnam, executive director of the Sundance Institute

2015

Jodie Foster, actress and director (Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award)^[3]
Sheila Nevins, president of HBO Documentary Films
Gina Prince-Bythewood, director
Cathy Schulman, producer

Athena List

In 2014, the festival announced the first edition of the Athena List, created to highlight finished, unproduced screenplays featuring roles with female leaders. The list is based on the concept of the popular Hollywood Black List, with a gender-conscious angle.^[4]

Selected scripts

2014

On the Basis of Sex by Daniel Stiepleman recounts Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s early years.
The Good Years by Rachel Feldman and Adam Prince, a biopic of Lilly Ledbetter.
The Sky’s the Limit: The Story of the Mercury 13 by Maria Burton, Gabrielle Burton, Ursula Burton and Jennifer Burton, a film about a group of female astronauts who were denied the chance to go into space
Audrey’s Run by Emily Abt, about an African-American woman running to become Boston's next mayor

2015

Dickey Chapelle by Margaret Nagle, about a war photographer known as “The Patron Saint of the Marines”
Highsmith by Eliza Lee, a biopic of Patricia Highsmith focusing on her struggle with alcoholism during the McCarthy era and the anonymous publishing of the iconic lesbian novel The Price of Salt.
What the World Will Look Like When all the Water Leaves Us by Jenny Halper, based on the prize-winning short story by Laura Van Den Berg about a female scientist and her teenage daughter as she fights to save endangered species

External links

Official website

References

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