Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
This whole thing started with a mission: support female led films on opening weekend whenever possible.* If you want to read more about why, you can read that post here.
If you caught the SAG Awards last weekend, or even just the speeches from the SAG Awards last weekend, you’ll notice that women had big, bold voices with big, bold messages. It’s a strange time to be a woman, in any profession, not just the entertainment profession. But if one thing can most certainly unite all of us - it’s the notion that women are deserving of the spotlight. The work women are doing is not secondary to the work of men - it’s primary. It’s worthy of attention. And it’s worthy of EVERYONE’S attention.
That’s why I have a new challenge for you this month. If you know a little boy, or even a young man, take him to a movie that was written by, directed by or starring a woman this month. Start to help him understand his role by making him open to the stories of women. That is how we make small changes. That is how we help to make women’s stories EVERYONE’S stories.
FEBRUARY 10:
A United Kingdom (Directed by Amma Usante and Starring Rosamund Pike)
Prince Seretse Khama of Botswana causes an international stir when he marries a white woman from London in the late 1940s.
Running Wild (Starring Sharon Stone and Written by Christina Moore)
The story of a young widow trying to save her ranch following her husband’s fatal car crash. She creates a convict rehabilitation program, working with a herd of wild horses that have wandered onto her property. She did not anticipate the greed, bureaucracy and vanity that she must overcome to heal the convicts, the horses and ultimately herself.
Kedi (Directed by Ceyda Torun)
A profile of an ancient city and its unique people, seen through the eyes of the most mysterious and beloved animal humans have ever known, the Cat.
FEBRUARY 17:
Everybody Loves Somebody (Directed by Catalina Aguilar Mastretta)
On the surface, the young and beautiful Clara Barron seems to have everything- a great job as an OB-GYN; a great house in LA; and a big fun-loving Mexican family. But, the one thing Clara doesn’t have figured out is her love life. Pressured by a family wedding in Mexico, Clara asks a co-worker to pose as her boyfriend for the weekend festivities - only to be caught by surprise when her ex- boyfriend suddenly shows up after disappearing from her life completely.
My Name is Emily (Starring Evanna Lynch)
A teenage girl runs away from a foster home with the boy who loves her. She searches for her visionary writer father who is locked up in a psychiatric institution. It is a story of redemption.
Lovesong (Directed by So Yong Kim)
When an emotionally neglected woman and her best friend go on an impromptu road trip, their bond deepens and intensifies until an abrupt farewell separates them.
American Fable (Directed by Anne Hamilton)
A dark, dreamlike mystery plays out amidst the expansive farmlands of the American Midwest in this wondrous, storybook thriller. With her family’s livelihood imperiled by the farm crisis of the 1980s, eleven-year-old Gitty loses herself in a world of fantasy and make believe. But she stumbles into her own fairytale when she makes a startling discovery: a well-dressed mystery man being held captive in her family’s silo. It’s the beginning of a labyrinthine journey that will turn Gitty’s world upside down and force her to question her loyalty to her own family.
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One additional note before I go: I am not able to tell you if these movies are objectively good or feminist friendly, as I have not seen all of them. The point of this list is to give you a place to start. The truth is that we don’t have a lot to choose from, but part of the battle is giving you the information. Information is power. However, shared knowledge is also key. So if you see one of these films or have seen an early screening, please let us know if you recommend it or not in the comments.
This whole thing started with a mission: support female led films on opening weekend whenever possible.* If you want to read more about why, you can read that post here.
I think I speak for all of us when I say: FINALLY, WE CAN SEE HIDDEN FIGURES. This month proves two things: women aren’t exclusively making movies about love, parenthood and being single. In fact, there isn’t a damn movie in the bunch that wouldn’t surprise you. The diversity of trailers here is a delight to witness, even if you just breeze through them.
With that, let’s all make it a priority to see more women in the movies this year. We won’t make things change - if we don’t show up. So, I’m gonna show up. Are you?
JANUARY 6:
Hidden Figures (Screenplay by Allison Schroeder and Starring Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monáe and Octavia Spencer)
Three brilliant African-American women at NASA – Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson – serve as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn (Glen Powell) into orbit, a stunning achievement that restored the nation’s confidence, turned around the Space Race and galvanized the world.
Underworld: Blood Wars (Directed by Anna Foerster and Starring Kate Beckinsale)
Death dealer Selene must fend off brutal attacks from both the Lycan clan and the vampire faction that betrayed her. Joining forces with allies David and Thomas, she embarks on a quest to end the eternal war between the two races, even if it means making the ultimate sacrifice.
JANUARY 13:
The Bye, Bye Man (Directed by Stacy Title)
People commit unthinkable acts every day. Time and again, we grapple to understand what drives a person to do such terrible things. But what if all of the questions we’re asking are wrong? What if the cause of all evil is not a matter of what…but who? When three college friends stumble upon the horrific origins of the Bye Bye Man, they discover that there is only one way to avoid his curse: don’t think it, don’t say it. But once the Bye Bye Man gets inside your head, he takes control. Is there a way to survive his possession?
20th Century Women (Starring Annette Bening, Elle Fanning and Greta Gerwig)
In 1979 Santa Barbara, Calif., Dorothea Fields is a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son, Jamie, at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women – Abbie, a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields’ home and Julie, a savvy and provocative teenage neighbor – to help with Jamie’s upbringing.
Claire in Motion (Written and Directed by Annie J. Howell, Lisa Robinson)
Three weeks after Claire’s husband mysteriously disappeared, the police end their investigation and her son is beginning to grieve. The only person who hasn’t given up is Claire. Soon, she discovers his troubling secrets, including an alluring yet manipulative graduate student with whom he had formed a close bond. As she digs deeper, Claire begins to lose her grip on how well she truly knew her husband and questions her own identity in the process.
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One additional note before I go: I am not able to tell you if these movies are objectively good or feminist friendly, as I have not seen all of them. The point of this list is to give you a place to start. The truth is that we don’t have a lot to choose from, but part of the battle is giving you the information. Information is power. However, shared knowledge is also key. So if you see one of these films or have seen an early screening, please let us know if you recommend it or not in the comments.
This whole thing started with a mission: support female led films on opening weekend whenever possible.* If you want to read more about why, you can read that post here.
This time of year is an awkward thing: it’s when we are reminded that women don’t win awards in al the big ceremonies - but it’s not because women aren’t making movies - they just aren’t making as many as men. How do we move forward? By voting with our dollars to support the very few films that do feature, star and are written and directed by women at a time when blockbusters are getting all the attention. With that, here’s your December with ladies opening the weekend:
DECEMBER 2:
Things to Come (Directed and Written by Mia Hansen-Løve)
A philosophy teacher soldiers through the death of her mother, getting fired from her job, and dealing with a husband who is cheating on her.
Jackie (Starring Natalie Portman)
Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy fights through grief and trauma to regain her faith, console her children, and define her husband’s historic legacy.
DECEMBER 9:
Miss Sloane (Starring Jessica Chastain)
In the world of political power-brokers, Sloane takes on the most powerful opponent of her career and will do whatever is required to win.
DECEMBER 16:
Rogue One (Starring Felicity Jones)
The Rebellion makes a risky move to steal the plans to the Death Star, setting up the epic saga to follow.
DECEMBER 23:
Julieta (Starring Emma Suárez and Adriana Ugarte)
After a casual encounter, a brokenhearted woman decides to confront her life and the most important events about her stranded daughter.
DECEMBER 30:
Toni Erdmann (Written and Directed by Maren Abe)
A father tries to reconnect with his adult daughter.
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One additional note before I go: I am not able to tell you if these movies are objectively good or feminist friendly, as I have not seen all of them. The point of this list is to give you a place to start. The truth is that we don’t have a lot to choose from, but part of the battle is giving you the information. Information is power. However, shared knowledge is also key. So if you see one of these films or have seen an early screening, please let us know if you recommend it or not in the comments.
Here’s a fact that will probably surprise no one at all: I have had some pretty mixed job reviews in my career. There has never been any doubt about my work-ethic, passion and commitment to my various jobs. Most of the critiques over the years orbited around my ability (or lack thereof) to “tone down my personality” or “be sensitive to other people” in my workplace.
I want you to try to put aside any thoughts of blatant or subliminal sexism today, so we can talk about just exactly how these kinds of comments shaped me for the better. And I also want to be fair to the people who gave me those good and bad reviews and say that they were all really incredible human beings who helped me reach my goals in my career under their leadership.*
Now that we have gotten all that pretense out of the way, all of this is to say that it would be easy to sit here and suggest it was all bullshit. That being told I was "bossy, harsh and aggressive” was all worthless. But since starting my own business and having my job reviews come in the form of happy or unhappy clients and joyful or disgruntled employees, well, my perspective has shifted monumentally. And that’s exactly what my first Ignite talk was about.
In five minutes, I manage to outline exactly how those negative job reviews gave me the fuel and the insight I needed to have positive, open and transparent dialogue with the people in my working cirlce today, whether they are peers, partners, clients, contractors, employees or vendors. I truly believe that the open dialogue we have built together has been the key to Mighteor’s success to date.
But what I want to talk about here today is something that was scratched from my Ignite talk because of time and because it just needed a little more depth and consideration than a slide and a 15 second sound bite. It’s this very challenging idea: Even the worst things ever said about us can serve as a mirror for discovering our best qualities.
The funny thing about living and working in an honesty vaccuum is that you can truly start to see yourself as a business person and as a leader with more self-awareness and more conviction. Authenticity is something I’ve explored at great length, in large part because I’m not impervious to negative comments, and I often find myself in something my best friends and my therapist call: “Liz’s Analysis Paralysis.” To quickly put a non-medical definition around the term: My particular breed of analysis paralysis usually involves me turning over a question or a problem over and over again in my head until it hardly resembles the actual issue at hand and becomes an amorphous blob of painful, debilitating confusion that is so large and so perplexing I’m literally incapable of making a decision or putting together a coherent sentence. In other words, I spend a lot of time in my head thinking about this shit.
The thing about being authentically aware of yourself is that you should be able to look at yourself with harsh realism and acknowledge when you could have been better. I am aware that my greatest flaws in my career have often coincided with my stubborn insistence that other people just needed to “check their feelings at the door” and focus on the task at hand. For example, I process my feelings deep in the quiet of my mind until I can’t move or speak. (Ahem, analysis paralysis.) Knowing that other people absolutely need to talk through things and emotionally process with others, out loud, has helped me to be a much more patient leader.
This came to a head and became something I need to face because of my employees. In one of my worst moments, I said out loud to an employee that “I didn’t care about his feelings.” It wasn’t true. I did care. But in that moment, all I could think about was solving the problem in front of us. From where I was standing, I could only see why we needed to fix it. I didn’t give enough thought to how we were gonna fix it. For him, part of that equation was processing the problem emotionally. I have been forced to learn how to be sensitive to that. It’s something I can honestly look back on now and say I heard when I was 22 years old in my job reviews, albeit in different forms. Talk about taking a while to change.
The fact of the matter is: Truly listening to someone or truly taking the time to hear something that is hard is not easy to do. But this act can be profound in its ability to make us better leaders. I’ve come to believe that listening is one of the most powerful forms of reflection. And since, it’s become one of my most intense areas of focus and growth over the last year. Coincidentally, I have also been accused of being an “over communicator” recently because I’ve tried so diligently to over correct.
It would be easy to just throw a “LOL. FML.” at that accusation. But the fact is, I’ll take it. I would so much rather be known as the boss who communicated too much instead of the boss that didn’t communicate at all.
In the Ignite talk, I asked: What would you learn? Whose trust would you earn? How would you grow? If you chose to listen. Today I would add: What hard, ugly, painful thing are you not listening to that could help you unlock your potential if you only chose to hear it?
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*And in case you were curious, my two worst job reviews ever both came from women who felt that if I “toned things down” - I would be considerably more successful. The issue of policing women’s personalities are never as simple as they seem.
This whole thing started with a mission: support female led films on opening weekend whenever possible.* If you want to read more about why, you can read that post here.
Summer movie season is here. That means blockbusters. Crazy expensive budgets. Huge marketing campaigns. And action movies and RomComs opening against each other. It also means a very thin month of options for stories about women by women and starring women.
JUNE 3rd:
Me Before You (Directed by Thea Sharrock and starring Emilia Clarke)
Young and quirky Louisa “Lou” Clark (Emilia Clarke) moves from one job to the next to help her family make ends meet. Her cheerful attitude is put to the test when she becomes a caregiver for Will Traynor (Sam Claflin), a wealthy young banker left paralyzed from an accident two years earlier. Will’s cynical outlook starts to change when Louisa shows him that life is worth living. As their bond deepens, their lives and hearts change in ways neither one could have imagined.
The Fits (Written and Directed by Anna Rose Holmer)
Toni trains as a boxer with her brother at a community center in Cincinnati’s West End, but becomes fascinated by the dance team that also practices there. Enamored by their strength and confidence, Toni eventually joins the group, eagerly absorbing routines, mastering drills, and even piercing her own ears to fit in. As she discovers the joys of dance and of female camaraderie, she grapples with her individual identity amid her newly defined social sphere.
JUNE 10th:
Diary of a Chambermaid (Written by Hélène Zimmer and starring Léa Seydoux)
A scheming servant works for a wealthy couple in France during the late 19th century. Part of a long-term three part series from the director.
Viktoria (Directed by Maya Vitkova and starring Irmena Chichikova)
Unwanted by her mother, Viktoria is being born with no umbilical cord and doesn’t need Boryana until the hardships of life bind them together. Premiered at Sundance in 2014, the wider release is also available online too.
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One additional note before I go: I am not able to tell you if these movies are objectively good or feminist friendly, as I have not seen all of them. The point of this list is to give you a place to start. The truth is that we don’t have a lot to choose from, but part of the battle is giving you the information. Information is power. However, shared knowledge is also key. So if you see one of these films or have seen an early screening, please let us know if you recommend it or not in the comments.
