This past weekend, Bushwick Film Festival marked its 10th year this past weekend, showing feature films, documentaries, and short films over the course of four days. Founded by Liberian-born New Yorker Kweighbaye Kotee, Bushwick Film Fest is far more diverse in terms of gender, race, and sexuality than just about any other film fest you can imagine — something particularly welcome in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. Here at BUST, we always want to celebrate women film directors, because they are so underrepresented...

  A singing/dancing/acting triple threat, Judy Garland made the leap from the vaudeville stage to Hollywood immortality in films like The Wizard of Oz and A Star is Born. Think you know how she got over that rainbow? Then take the quiz!Born on June 10, 1922 in Grand Rapids, MN, Judy’s birth name was _____.a. Norma Jeane Bakerb. Frances Ethel Gummc. Anna Mae Bullockd. Margarita Carmen Cansino When she was in her early 20s, Judy was forced to _____ by MGM Studios head Louis B. Mayer.a. divorce...

  Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is both less and more alluringly sexy than the trailers and promotional posters would have you believe. The sexiness is less overt in that there’s really only one sex scene proper amongst Professor Bill Marston, his wife Elizabeth, and his student Olive Byrne in the whole film. Set in the costume room in the backstage of a Harvard-Radcliffe theater, the tryst is dramatically lit for flair rather than intimacy, with Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” booming in the background, emphasizing...

In the 1950s, Jane Goodall was a young secretary in London with a dream of going to Africa to live with animals. Her family was not able to afford to send her to university, but her mother told her that she could achieve anything she wanted if she worked hard enough. From these humble beginnings, she went on to become one of the most famous scientists in the world and an inspirational role model for women everywhere (although she doesn't know what all the fuss...

  It was about eight years ago that a friend gave Angela Robinson a coffee table book on Wonder Woman. The director had been a lifelong fan of the female superhero, and it was a perfect gift for her. But what she found on those pages triggered an immense desire to make a film about the man who invented Wonder Woman. The Harvard educated psychologist William Moulton Marston hid a polyamorous relationship with his wife and mistress from the public, and therefore led a double life....

 The New York Times blew up the internet with a bombshell article exposing Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein as a serial sexual assaulter/harasser — and the dust has not fallen yet. It seems like every day more and more famous Hollywood movers and shakers are coming out to comment on Weinstein, accuse Weinstein, or sympathize with the women accusing Weinstein, as well as defend/explain/comment on Weinstein’s character. Campaigns like Alyssa Milano’s “Me Too” remind us all just how close to home this is. But Woody Allen needs...

  Agnès Varda has had a remarkable, 60-year career. As a leader in French New Wave — and one of the only women directors working at the time — Varda placed women’s voices front and center with films like Cléo from 5 to 7 and Vagabond. Now 89 years old, Varda has released a new documentary, in collaboration with 33-year-old French photographer and street artist JR – Faces Places, or Visages Villages as it’s called in French. In the film, we watch Varda and JR as they undertake...

  “Am I allowed to pick my life? Do I have to justify it for you?” asks journalist Chanel Dubofsky in a scene from Therese Shechter’s upcoming documentary, My So-Called Selfish Life. Shechter, friend of BUST, explores the choice of non-motherhood in a society, as Shechter describes, “where motherhood feels mandatory.” Taking the viewer through the history, politics, and popular culture of motherhood, the documentary visits a variety of people with all types of reasons for making the conscious decision to forgo having children. Among the subjects...

  Writer/Actor/Activist Danai Gurira does it all Best known for her role as Michonne on AMC’s The Walking Dead, and as the author of the Tony Award-winning play Eclipsed, Danai Guirira is at the vanguard of popular culture and ideas. And now that she’s nabbed roles in two of the biggest films slated for 2018—Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War—the creative powerhouse is cultivating an even larger platform for her impressive array of activist work. Currently, that includes involvement with the ONE Campaign (fighting extreme poverty and...

  Lynda Carter, who played Wonder Woman in the ‘70s TV series, is speaking out against James Cameron’s criticisms of the 2017 film version of Wonder Woman. ICYMI, last month, Cameron told the Guardian: All of the self-congratulatory back-patting Hollywood’s been doing over Wonder Woman has been so misguided. She’s an objectified icon, and it’s just male Hollywood doing the same old thing! I’m not saying I didn’t like the movie but, to me, it’s a step backwards. Sarah Connor [from Cameron’s movie Terminator] was not a beauty...