In honor of Women’s History Month, NYWIFT looks back at some of the remarkable women who have shaped the film, television and digital media industries through the decades.
By Mellini Kantayya
In 2000, writer, director, and past NYWIFT Writers Lab mentor Gina Prince-Bythewood blazed a trail with her film Love and Basketball. Not only was the film a critical and commercial success, it won the Humanitas Prize and an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature. The film was produced by Spike Lee with a $14 million budget. According to Indiewire, “it was – at the time – one of the largest scale and most high profile projects yet undertaken by a black woman.”
Amongst many other projects, Prince-Bythewood went on to write and direct The Secret Life of Bees.
Love and Basketball was included on the NYWIFT blog’s #SummerHours series celebrating Women in Sports movies and 45th anniversary of Title IX.
Mellini_Kantayya
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