Women in Film: Past, Present, & Future w/ Julie Taymor, Diana Barrett, Misan Sagay, and Julia Spiro

A special event to benefit the MV Film Society and its youth Scholarship awards.  Several panelists from the Film Industry will join together on the Film Center stage to discuss candidly the topic: Women in Film: Past, Present, & Future.  

A wine reception will be held in our lobby starting at 6:45 PM  

Panelists include Diana Barrett (Film Investor), Julie Taymor (Director/Producer), Misan Sagay (Screenwriter), and Julia Spiro (Studio Vice President). Please scroll down for bios. 

DIANA BARRETT — FILM INVESTOR

Diana Barrett was on the Faculty of Harvard University from 1975 until 2004. She was a member of the Social Enterprise core group where she taught Business Leadership in the Social Sector as well as in  Executive Programs. She received both her Masters in Business Administration and her Doctorate in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School. Her special interest was in large and complex health systems; she traveled extensively nationally and internationally working with corporations and hospital systems as they explored innovative ways of providing high quality and affordable care. Dr. Barrett has worked in many countries particularly Mexico, Colombia, and India where she assisted the Ministries of Health initiating programs for physicians and other healthcare providers.

After a long academic career, in 2005 she founded The Fledgling Fund, a private foundation that works at the intersection of film and social change, providing grants to filmmakers who believe that their documentary films can ignite or sustain social change

Dr. Barrett is on the Board of the Everglades Foundation, The Lords Place, United Way, Society of the Four Arts and is on the Visiting Committees for Photography and Scientific Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

JULIE TAYMOR – DIRECTOR/PRODUCER

As a Tony®, Emmy®, and Grammy® winning and Oscar® nominated filmmaker, Julie Taymor has changed the face of Broadway with her innovative direction.

Film credits include Fool’s Fire, Oedipus Rex starring Jessye Norman which received an Emmy Award as well as the International Classical Music Award, Titus, starring Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange; Frida starring Salma Hayek which garnered six Academy Award nominations and won two; Across the Universe which received  Golden Globe  and Academy Award nominations , The Tempest, starring Helen Mirren and a cinematic version of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, filmed during her critically acclaimed, sold-out stage production at Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn.  She is currently developing a feature film of Gloria Steinem’s MY LIFE ON THE ROAD starring Julianne Moore and a TV Series, Hackabout based on Erica Jong’s book, FANNY.

Her Broadway adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997. An instant sensation, it received 11 Tony® Award nominations, with Julie receiving awards for Best Director and Costume Designer. The show has played over 100 cities in 19 countries, and its worldwide gross exceeds that of any entertainment title in box office history.

Other theater credits include the play Grounded, starring Anne Hathaway, at the Public Theater as well as Broadway’s Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, The Green Bird, and Juan Darien: A Carnival Mass, which earned five Tony Award nominations including one for her direction. Operas include Oedipus Rex, with Jessye Norman, The Flying Dutchman, Salome, Die Zauberflote (in repertory at the Met), The Magic Flute (the abridged English version, which inaugurated a PBS series entitled “Great Performances at the Met”); and Elliot Goldenthal’s Grendel.

Taymor is a recipient of the 1991 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, as well as a 2015 inductee into the Theater Hall of Fame for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater, the recipient of the 2015 Shakespeare Theatre Company’s William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre, and a 2017 Disney Legends Award honoree. She recently directed M BUTTERFLY starring Clive Owen on Broadway.

MISAN SAGAY – SCREENWRITER

Misan Sagay is an award-winning screenwriter and producer. She won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture for Fox Searchlight’s BELLE. The Belle script, also nominated for a Humanities Prize, was inspired by the true story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, the illegitimate mixed-race daughter of a British admiral who was raised by her aristocratic aunt and uncle.

Sagay’s producing and screenwriting credits include Secret Laughter of Women, starring Colin Firth and Nia Long; ABC television movie, Their Eyes Were Watching God, starring Halle Berry and executive produced by Oprah Winfrey. Sagay wrote on “Guerrilla” with John Ridley for Sky Atlantic and Showtime. She is writing “Battersea Rise” for BBC, “Imprinted” for ITV, adapting the life of Dame Daphne Sheldrick, “Life, Love and Elephants” and FELA for Focus Features for the screen.

Misan Sagay is also a Medical Doctor specializing in Hematology.

JULIE SPIRO – STUDIO EXECUTIVE

Julia Spiro most recently was a Vice President of Film Development and Production at Warner Bros Pictures. Some of the films she worked on there were OCEAN’S 8, TOMB RAIDER, KONG: SKULL ISLAND and the upcoming A STAR IS BORN. With a focus on female-driven films, she also developed projects with Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Lawrence, Kerry Washington, Ellen DeGeneres, and Margot Robbie, among others. While at WB, she founded and oversaw the Warner Bros Emerging Directors Workshop, a first of its kind program in the studio system that chose five up and coming filmmakers to produce and direct a short film on the Warner Bros lot. The program’s goal was to give these emerging directors a thorough education in the studio world and to create a sample of their work that would eventually lead to them directing feature-length studio films. All five short films aired on HBO this year. Prior to working at WB, Julia worked at Universal Studios-based production company Kurtzman/Orci, where she was a producer on the film NOW YOU SEE ME. She began her career at Creative Artists Agency.

Julia is a graduate of Harvard College and grew up in Boston. She is now a year-round resident of Martha’s Vineyard, where she is writing a novel.