Ramona's (Indie Film) Book Club
Two Great Summer Reads
It’s time for summer reading. My son left for camp last week, and I have a stack of books I plan to get through (including Mark Harris’s biography of Mike Nichols, whom I met once and found to be all the things people said of him, aka a mensch.)
I am really excited about these two new books on film: Kevin Smokler’s collection of interviews with female filmmakers, Break the Frame, and Melanie La Rosa’s Contemporary Post.
I recently heard the phrase “live human signposts” (on Krista Tippett’s podcast, quoting Civil Rights activist Vincent Harding) and haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. There really are people who, through example and experience, light the way, telling us where we are and what’s possible. Smokler’s book is full of such women. While some of the greatest achievements in films of the past decade have women to thank for their success, in 2023 women still only directed 12% of the top 250 movies in America. Therefore, Smokler (who is also the author of a book I devoured, Brat Pack America) set out to identify and amplify the stories of some of the trailblazers. I particularly loved his interviews with Julie Dash (whose Daughters of the Dust was everything), Amy Heckerling, Tiffany Shlain and inspirational fellow playwright Tanya Saracho whose work and very presence thrills me (I mean, come on, Vida!?) I am also a huge fan of Alice Wu (I’ve been teaching her film The Half Of It) and was pleased to see her in these pages.
Smokler writes, “I spent three years researching, watching and speaking to the brilliant minds behind life-changing art and entertainment made by women. It was the honor of my professional life to do so.”
Following Break The Frame, I dug into Contemporary Post-Production. Melanie La Rosa, a documentary filmmaker and longtime professor at Pace, starts with some history, then breaks down workflow and ways to approach the craft of editing while sharing interviews with contemporary editors. If you’ve heard me talk about my wish list for the next two films (Drama Club and Major Minor Details) it is mainly this: more time and money to devote to the post process. With Ramona, we were on an incredibly tight budget working with freelancers who despite their talent and generosity often found our limits challenging. (Bless you, Michelle Botticelli, editor extraordinaire, who despite great limitations and odds elevated our movie in every way.) I wish I’d had Melanie’s book three years ago, and I’m super-grateful to have it now.
And the history is fascinating! LaRosa writes “In the earliest days of filmmaking, there was a freedom that can only be compared to the earliest days of YouTube and other social media. No one really knew exactly how they wanted to use this exciting new invention … but they kept trying and found ways to engage with audiences. Perhaps more important than what was created was who created it… I believe their work should be embedded in every text … Alice Guy-Blache essentially invented sync sound and introduced special effects she developed in France to American filmmakers, and Oscar Michaux [the country’s first Black filmmaker] had to recut his films to meet the requirements of censor boards,” La Rosa aptly points out that we need their stories more than ever as we forge a path forward.
La Rosa created a YouTube channel specifically for the book HERE which includes clips from the interviews with the four editors in her book.
Melanie La Rosa is an award-winning filmmaker and film professor. Her most recent documentary, "How To Power A City" (2024) explores renewable energy projects in six U.S. and Puerto Rico locales. She is the author of "Contemporary Post-Production: Create, Cut, Collaborate, Color, Deliver" (Routledge, 2025), and a Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis with the OpEd Project and Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Her films have screened worldwide at special events, festivals, conferences, aired nationally on PBS, and are used in college courses. Her writing appears in NACLA, The Progressive, and other national publications.
Kevin Smokler is a writer, documentary filmmaker and event host focused on our relationship as human beings with pop culture. His most recent book BREAK THE FRAME: CONVERSATIONS WITH WOMEN FILMMAKERS contains 24 career-retrospective conversations with directors behind box office phenomenon like Captain Marvel, Oscar winners like Free Solo and the filmmakers who launched actors such as America Ferrera, Paul Rudd, Ryan Gosling and Jennifer Lawrence. His previous books, BRAT PACK AMERICA is a love letter to teen movies of the 1980s. His 2013 essay collection PRACTICAL CLASSICS is a 50 book attempt to reread one’s high school reading list as an adult. His feature length documentary film VINYL NATION on the American renaissance of the vinyl record, won ten awards and screened at 50 film festivals worldwide. His new documentary MIDDLE GROUNDS, about coffee shops and civic dialogue will be released this year.
ON ANOTHER NOTE ENTIRELY: This week, over 150 or so artists gathered at Playwrights Horizons in New York City to discuss the recent announcement of both that theater and Williamstown Theater Festival’s ridiculous 2025-2026 seasons, each of which includes exactly zero plays written or directed by women. I have thoughts on this subject but attendees at the Town Hall had way more interesting and cogent thoughts than mine, and I’m going to publish a few of them tomorrow. But for right now, today, let me leave you with a quote from playwright Theresa Rebeck, “We are at a crisis moment in American history. We need all hands on deck. Telling women to step aside and be quiet is not just unkind. It is dire in its lack of wisdom.” AMEN!
Stay hydrated. Read a book. Show up for female-identified writers and filmmakers. Demand to see our work. Speak up when we’re left out.
Love,
Brooke
Guys I think it's time that we take a page from the political playbook. CALL YOUR THEATERS. Or Email. Tell them that you will not be buying tickets to plays by and about men. Tell them you know there are great plays out there by women that need to see the light of day, and you don't want to go back to a time when the theater was only and always about men. We are told that these phone calls and emails make a difference!
wow Brooke thank you for this lovely write up! Also excited to learn about Kevin’s book - I’m always looking for great texts that feature women in film for my classes. I find so few i decided to write my own! 💪🏼📙🤩Appreciate you including me in this newsletter!