The Women Film Critics Circle has announced its 2O16 awards for the best movies this year by and about women, and outstanding achievements by women, who get to be rarely honored historically, in the film world.
The Women Film Critics Circle is an association of 80 women film critics and scholars from around the country and internationally, who are involved in print, radio, online and TV broadcast media. They came together in 2004 to form the first women critics’ organization in the United States, in the belief that women’s perspectives and voices in film criticism need to be recognized fully. WFCC also prides itself on being the most culturally and racially diverse critics group in the country by far, and best reflecting the diversity of movie audiences.
Critical Women On Film, a presentation of The Women Film Critics Circle, is their journal of discussion and theory. And a gathering of women’s voices expressing a fresh and differently experienced perspective from the primarily male dominated film criticism world.
BEST MOVIE ABOUT WOMEN
Hidden Figures
BEST MOVIE BY A WOMAN
13TH
BEST WOMAN STORYTELLER [Screenwriting Award]
13TH, Ava DuVernay
BEST ACTRESS
Natalie Portman, Jackie
BEST ACTOR
Casey Affleck, Manchester By The Sea
BEST YOUNG ACTRESS
Hailee Steinfeld, The Edge Of Seventeen
BEST COMEDIC ACTRESS
Kate McKinnon, Ghostbusters
BEST FOREIGN FILM BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
The Handmaiden
BEST DOCUMENTARY BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
13TH
BEST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Hidden Figures
WORST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Neighbors 2
BEST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Loving
WORST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Dirty Grandpa
WOMEN'S WORK/BEST ENSEMBLE
Hidden Figures
SPECIAL MENTION AWARDS
COURAGE IN FILMMAKING
Ava DuVernay, 13TH
COURAGE IN ACTING [Taking on unconventional roles that radically redefine the images of women on screen]
Rebecca Hall, Christine
*ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women
American Honey
*JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: For best expressing the woman of color experience in America
Hidden Figures
*KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For best exemplifying a woman's place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity
Hidden Figures
*THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD: [Performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored]
The women of Hidden Figures
BEST SCREEN COUPLE
Loving
BEST FEMALE ACTION HERO
The women of Ghostbusters
Anne Sutton, Nocturnal Animals
BEST LINE IN A MOVIE:
"I believe the characters we read on the page become more real than the men who stand beside us." - Jackie
ACTING AND ACTIVISM AWARD:
Emma Watson: UN Goodwill Ambassador, tells the UN General Assembly that universities need to be a safe space against campus sexual and racial assault, for women and people of color.
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Annette Bening: For taking on roles that go against the grain of conventional female 'objective' beauty.
BEST EQUALITY OF THE SEXES
Loving
BEST ANIMATED FEMALE
Moana
BEST FAMILY FILM
Queen Of Katwe
WFCC Hall Of Shame
Women Dating Their Rapists In Movies:
Elle
**ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: Adrienne Shelly was a promising actress and filmmaker who was brutally strangled in her apartment in 2006 at the age of forty by a construction worker in the building, after she complained about noise. Her killer tried to cover up his crime by hanging her from a shower rack in her bathroom, to make it look like a suicide. He later confessed that he was having a “bad day.” Shelly, who left behind a baby daughter, had just completed her film Waitress, which she also starred in, and which was honored at Sundance after her death.
**JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: The daughter of a laundress and a musician, Baker overcame being born black, female and poor, and marriage at age fifteen, to become an internationally acclaimed legendary performer, starring in the films Princess Tam Tam, Moulin Rouge and Zou Zou. She also survived the race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois as a child, and later expatriated to France to escape US racism. After participating heroically in the underground French Resistance during WWII, Baker returned to the US where she was a crusader for racial equality. Her activism led to attacks against her by reporter Walter Winchell who denounced her as a communist, leading her to wage a battle against him. Baker was instrumental in ending segregation in many theaters and clubs, where she refused to perform unless integration was implemented.
**KAREN MORLEY AWARD: Karen Morley was a promising Hollywood star in the 1930s, in such films as Mata Hari and Our Daily Bread. She was driven out of Hollywood for her leftist political convictions by the Blacklist and for refusing to testify against other actors, while Robert Taylor and Sterling Hayden were informants against her. And also for daring to have a child and become a mother, unacceptable for female stars in those days. Morley maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She passed away in 2003, unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.
CONTACT: Criticalwomen@gmail.com
