Gender Watch: Circumstance’s Love Under Assault; Sisters in Hollywood

by Sophia Savage INDIEWIRE – August 23, 2011 Maryam Keshavarz’s Sundance dramatic audience award-winner Circumstance will hit theaters this weekend via Roadside Attractions and Participant. It’s one of those movies where the story of getting it made is as compelling as the film itself. The lesbian romance deals with Iran’s underground youth culture, teenage girls who adore loud music and each other, and drug use. Filming in Iran wasn’t an option, and shooting in Beirut had its own hurdles. Producer Karin Chien tells the NYT that it was the most challenging shoot in her career: ”“The political terrain was constantly shifting while we were there,..We went in thinking that explicit sexuality was the thing we were going to have to work around most, but it was the Iranian content, the fact that this was set in Iran, that we had to downplay.” Rookie director Keshavarz says that her film celebrates a tragic love, “because on every level every kind of love is under assault and ultimately compromised.” Trailer is below. The Coens, the Wachowskis, the Wilsons, the Scotts…the list goes on: there are many bands of brothers in Hollywood. The LATimes considers where the sisters are, and not the Kardashians or the Olsen twins. Rather, the sisters behind the cameras, from the Ephrons to the Todds, Goodmans and Burtons. With statistics like these—“7% of feature directors are women, 13% of writers are women and 20% of producers”—it’s no surprise that we don’t know these siblings as well as their male counterparts. “These women have learned to trust each other,” writes the LAT, “in a place where art and commerce collide and no one trusts anyone.” http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/2011/08/23/gender_watch_circumstances_love_under_assault_sisters_in_hollywood/