The Creativity And Humor Of Women

Women Laughing Documentary Update!!!!

Until fairly recently, the number of women who practice the art of cartooning has been a lot fewer than the number of men. I wrote a book about it, and now I have produced and directed a documentary on the subject! It’s all about the women cartoonists at The New Yorker, now and then, called Women Laughing!

The film has been so fun to make. I loved collaborating with my colleagues, be they cartoonists or filmmakers. We just finished filming, but we still need post production funds for the color/sound correction, and archival licenses, and today we launched a second kickstarter to get the film out into the world— online and in festivals.

We decided the film should in essence be about creativity, and my co-director Kathy Hughes and I structured it so that I sat and drew with the cartoonists as we talked about our work. It made for some very interesting and funny conversations. And the drawings that resulted are wonderful.

Among those I sat and drew with was Roz Chast.

This is what the two of us doodled as we talked, our drawings combined as we turned the page around. Can you identify Roz’s and mine?

The set had a total of six cameras around and above the interview/drawing table. Below is cartoonist Amy Hwang ready to talk and draw.

Then on another day, we filmed a larger group of nine cartoonists at the Algonquin Hotel. More photos about this fantastic day of filming in future posts.

Here I am with Emily Hopkins, the first Black woman cartoonist at The New Yorker.

Before we filmed everyone at the round table, we did a photo shoot outside on West 44th Street. The traffic was blocked off for a parade, how lucky! The photographer is Eric Korenman, who shot a lot of stills that day; I will share those in another post soon.

The filmmakers are so talented, Emmy winning and Oscar-nominated professionals! Here is producer Judith Mizrachy, me, cartoonist Bishakh Som and director Kathleen Hughes.

Our cinematographers Marika Hacking and Franceso Saviano of Unarmed Media, shooting cartoonist Amy Hwang.

We shot a lot of the film at the Society of Illustrators in NYC, and are very grateful to them for letting us take over a whole floor of their building.

After a long day of filming:

Many of you know about this documentary already, and have been on the journey with me since I started, and I am grateful for your support. If you can, we welcome your help and would love to have you with us. Here is the page to contribute, which includes a video and rewards (!) that I hope you enjoy. Let’s get these stories of the women cartoonists of the past and the contemporary cartoonists out there!

Thank you so very much for being here, see you tomorrow.

KICKSTARTER LINK.