Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland Partners With SeriesFest for Female-Director Initiative

By Variety Staff

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – SeriesFest has partnered with producer Shonda Rhimes’ company Shondaland to launch a new initiative supporting female television directors.

The Women Directing Mentorship will be an expansion of SeriesFest’s Featuring Women platform, and will offer participants the opportunity to shadow a director for an episode of a production.

“Shondaland has long been known to defy industry standards through dynamic female characters, but we have also always felt it was important to have equal representation behind the camera. To have talent and sets that reflect the world we live in has always seemed natural,” said Rhimes. “We’re happy to partner with SeriesFest on this mentorship initiative to continue providing opportunities for women directors.”

Submissions for the program are now open on . They close March 4. The winner will be announced in June at SeriesFest: Season 5.

“At SeriesFest, our mission is to support all artists working on serial content,” SeriesFest founders Randi Kleiner and Kaily Smith Westbrook said. “Knowing that there are far too few working women behind the camera today, we felt empowered to focus our efforts on an initiative that could help support emerging female directors. We are thrilled to launch our Women Directing Mentorship as the next step in the evolution of our Featuring Women platform and can’t think of a better partner for this inaugural year than Shondaland. Shonda Rhimes changed television landscape and continues to be a leading force as she and her company redefine representation on both sides of the camera and we are honored to be creating this incredible opportunity with them.”