About Women Make Movies
Women Make Movies champions women filmmakers and their stories.
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ABOUT US
Women Make Movies has a 50-year history of supporting women filmmakers and distributing artistically significant films to audiences with an intentional focus on uplifting the voices of underrepresented women and enriching society. With a mission of increasing gender equity in the film industry, we support women filmmakers with production assistance and tailored distribution strategies. We have a long history of supporting women of color, differently abled women, LGBTQIA people, and other communities too rarely represented both on-screen and behind the camera.
Filmmakers who have worked with Women Make Movies have gone on to achieve the highest levels of artistic excellence, including Emmy®, Peabody, and Sundance nominations and awards. Our films are regularly broadcast on PBS, HBO, and other cable channels. Films or filmmakers from our programs have won or been nominated for Academy Awards® for the past 17 years.
In the last five years alone, we’ve helped women filmmakers raise more than $22 million in production funds for their projects. In tangible ways, we’ve increased the diversity of the non-fiction film industry and assisted thousands of filmmakers in creating films that inspire social change.
Women Make Movies leverages our expertise and funding access to help powerful voices create thought-provoking films and multi-media projects on urgent issues. Our core programs work within the wider field of impact filmmaking, providing diverse women with the necessary stepping stones to get from the first film concept to a full career.
Distribution Services: Our acclaimed collection of almost 700 films is used by thousands of cultural, educational and community organizations across North America and throughout the world. We work in collaboration with international film festivals, national broadcasters, and local community groups to deliver media that enriches public dialogue and changes lives. Our long-standing commitment to diversity shows in our catalog, more than half of which is produced by women from different cultures, as well as by LGBTQI women, older women, women with disabilities, and women of color.
Production Assistance: We accelerate film production through a tailored program offering professional development, nonprofit tax-exempt status, consultations, and workshops, all based on industry expertise and supported by our funder connections. We offer more than 20 webinars and workshops each year which are attended by hundreds of emerging and established filmmakers from across the US and around the world.
Founded in 1972, by Ariel Dougherty and Shelia Page with Delores Bargowsky, Women Make Movies spent its first decade fulfilling a mission to teach women to become filmmakers, successfully training hundreds of program alumna. Our Distribution Services began during this time, as well as our first screening programs and film festival partnerships, both of which were designed to respond to the lack of distribution and exhibition opportunities available for women’s films. Our first Production Assistance program began in 1988.
In the decades since, this early work has grown into a flourishing suite of international partners and programs, a catalog of more than 700 films, and a renowned roster of alumna including Jane Campion, Julie Dash, Sally Potter, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Lourdes Portillo, Tracey Moffatt, Valie Export, Kim Longinotto, Pratibha Parmar, Ngozi Onwurah, and Ulrike Ottinger.
Past highlights for our organization include a retrospective organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in honor of our 25th anniversary. For our 30th anniversary, we launched a record-breaking ten films at the Sundance Film Festival, including Special Jury Prize winner SEÑORITA EXTRAVIADA by Lourdes Portillo.
Beyond these major milestones, we are deeply proud of our smaller, but no less important, annual victories: Hundreds of local and national partners, special series, conferences, and festivals; dozens of partnerships with local women’s organizations in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East to support new women’s film festivals internationally; thousands of women filmmakers from diverse backgrounds who are lifting their voices and creating a more just and representative world through the art of film. As we look ahead to our 50th anniversary, we remain committed to elevating women’s voices in a changing industry and a challenging world.
We are a social enterprise and a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. We have a 92% earned income revenue stream, thanks to the health of our Distribution Services. We further serve as a funding partner for governments and corporate and private foundations, thanks to our long history and success rate in identifying and supporting new filmmakers in their most crucial and difficult early stages. We are deeply grateful to the visionary funders, including government, corporate, and private foundations—for their continuing commitment to women’s independent media:
- National Endowment for the Arts
- New York State Council on the Arts
- New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
- Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
- The Educational Foundation of America
- Fund for the City of NY
- Mayor’s Fund for the City of New York
- The Friends of Women Make Movies
- Reavis Parent Lehrer LLP
- Julian Price Family Foundation
- Alperin Family Foundation
We are especially grateful for the Electronic Media and Film Program of the New York State Council on the Arts which funded the development of this website and has supported the work of Women Make Movies for almost 30 years.
