March 2006

I recognize Ryanne Hodson as soon as I enter the Lower East Side café—even though I’ve never met her before. After watching her video blogs, I feel as though I already know the pretty, engaging, 26-year-old artist, who is now at the forefront of a small but rapidly growing movement of video bloggers.

Dear Doc Doctor:
I’m a cinematographer, and I just found out that I’m pregnant. Should I tell people? I can’t afford to lose any jobs right now.

From time to time there is a banner year for female characters. A great fuss is made about how movie-land has changed, allowing women into a club that hadn’t previously given them more than a handful of meaty roles at a time.

Rosario Dawson was sleeping when I arrived on the set of Descent at Brooklyn’s Galapagos bar/gallery on a slushy morning in December. I had come to interview Dawson and her Trybe production company partner and longtime friend, Talia Lugacy. But Lugacy was busy directing the film’s “club scene,” and thus also unavailable, so I waited in the cavernous extras quarters next door.

Rachel Boynton produced, directed, co-edited, and recorded sound on her documentary feature Our Brand Is Crisis, a riveting political thriller that follows Jeremy Rosner, Stan Greenberg, Tad Devine, James Carville, and other US political consultants from the Greenberg Carville Shrum firm as they travel to South America to help Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (aka Goni) become president of Boli