“Watching the Academy Awards is always a difficult experience,” said Melissa Silverstein, the founder and publisher of Women and Hollywood, an online initiative that pushes for gender diversity and inclusion in the movie industry.
“There are so few female filmmakers nominated,” Ms. Silverstein said. “We still live in a world where we can count the amount of women nominated for best director on one hand.”
Gender parity in storytelling is Ms. Silverstein’s call to arms. She is also the artistic director and co-founder of the Athena Film Festival, which is dedicated to movies about female leaders. The 10th annual festival, at Barnard College, runs from Feb. 27 to March 1.
Ms. Silverstein, 52, lives in a two-bedroom house in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with a roommate and her 70-pound shepherd mix, Duke. When the awards season hoopla dies down, she will get back to her latest project: the invitation-only Girls Club, a networking group for creative women.
EVERYTHING’S FINE On Sundays I try to be a little more mindful, so I’ve started meditating with an app called Calm. It’s what I do first thing. You have to exit from the bed to do it. You have to sit up straight. It’s really good 10-minute meditations, not too much of a big commitment. The woman’s voice is really soothing. She tells you, “Everything’s fine, everything’s good.”
PLAY DATE Then it’s Duke time. He dominates my existence. Depending on the weather, we try to head up to Prospect Park. It’s a big walk, almost a mile. Sometimes I go with my friend Richard Berne who lives on my block. His dog, Max, is a golden. Our dogs love each other. On the way back I stop off at Blue Sky Bakery. It’s a great muffin place in my neighborhood, and a locally owned business, which I like. Plus they make some nice dog treats.
CATCH UP I do a little puttering on Sundays. I’m very good at puttering. I have some breakfast, or sometimes I’ll read. I use this app called Send to Kindle, so if there are articles I just can’t get to during the week, like from The New Yorker, I send them to my Kindle. Most of the stories are political.
TALK TO ME I’ve also become super obsessed with audiobooks. If I don’t go to the park with Richard, I’ll probably sit and listen to an audiobook. I just finished Elizabeth Gilbert’s “City of Girls,” which I loved. I still think about it. The best book I’ve done on audiobook is Michelle Obama’s “Becoming.”
MAINTENANCE I clean up a little. My house is very old, so a lot of things need to be WD-40’d. I’ll inevitably get on the computer. In this awards season I spend a lot of time responding to things going on with women and film.
LOCAL OR LONG ISLAND Duke is going to need another walk. Sometimes we’ll walk to Greenlight Bookstore. I get a discount because of my membership with BAM. It’s also very dog-friendly.
But we don’t go on the same walk all the time. You’ve got to challenge yourself. I might grab some lunch at Bergen Bagels, and then sometimes I’ll go over to BAM and watch a movie because it’s really close and they have great movies. Or sometimes I’ll take the train to Long Island to see my sisters and my parents. I grew up in Massapequa.
POWER DOWN I like my Sunday nights to be not crazy. If I have to go somewhere formal on a Sunday night I’m like, “Whyyyyyy?” I try to power down. I’ve been a little obsessed with making turkey chili lately. I’ve got a crockpot and a good recipe. But I’m not a cook. I don’t pretend to be a cook.
ABLUTIONS My bedtime ritual is not elaborate. It’s walk the dog and make sure I put some moisturizer on. Also this is very weird but I’m a big Waterpik user. I use my Waterpik every night because I have bad teeth.
TV IN BED I’ve got one of those new platform beds so I can watch TV in my bed. It’s the best investment ever. I try to be asleep by 10:30 or 11 at the latest, but if it’s an awards night I’m not going to be chilling. There are so few opportunities where people pay attention to things like this, where you see how much work we have to do to create an inclusive industry, that I’m 100 percent working.
Ms. Silverstein will be live-tweeting the Oscars this weekend @melsil.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
