WOMEN VS HOLLYWOOD:

Sub-titled 'The Fall and Rise of Women in Film', this fascinating polemic is a powerful and sobering page turner, peppered with humour. It is a call to arms from Empire magazine's Helen O'Hara who explores women's roles both in front of and behind the camera since the birth of Hollywood, and how those roles are reflected within wider society. Hollywood was born just over a century ago, at a time of huge forward motion for women's rights. With no rules in place to stop them, there were many women who forged ahead in many areas of filmmaking. Yet despite the work of early pioneers like Dorothy Arzner, Mable Normand, Mary Pickford and Alice Guy-Blaché, it soon came to embody the same old sexist standards. Women found themselves fighting a system that fed on their talent, creativity and beauty, but refused to pay them the same respect as their male contemporaries ? until now. The tide has finally begun to turn and a new generation of women in front of and behind the camera are making waves in the industry and shaping some of the biggest films to hit our screens. Helen O'Hara reveals the women largely written out of Hollywood's own origin story in her encyclopaedic, illuminating and passionate book. Her themes include how women fell silent before sound, how the auteur theory twisted film, movie brats and the fake gaze, and how to end the pay gap. 354pp.