Women In Film

The joint Women In Film and Women In Film Foundation Scholarship program offers women of all ages and background the opportunity to create careers in film, television, communications and new media.

The program awards scholarships each year to female students at several major film schools in the Los Angeles area and other parts of the country. We consider criteria including academic merit, artistic achievement and financial need.

Please note that we do not accept applications for our scholarships from the general public. Rather, we work in partnership with the faculty and development staff of film and television departments in the Southern California region to select our annual scholarship recipients. It is up to the faculty members at these schools to nominate and/or accept applications from students already enrolled in accredited M.F.A. programs. Since each school has different selection criteria, please ask your advisor about Women In Film scholarships if you are enrolled in an M.F.A. film or television program in Southern California.

The current scholarships we award are as follows:

The Eleanor Perry Writing Award is administered directly by UCLA. It is an annual award to an undergraduate or graduate student at UCLA for an original screenplay that best depicts women in a present-day or historical perspective. The Foundation Board chooses the winner from three (3) finalists’ scripts. No dollar amount is specified; each year the Foundation Board votes to approve an amount. In recent years, this has been $3000. The award was originally set up in 1985, sponsored by Eleanor Perry and continued after her death.

The Meredith Mac Rae Memorial Scholarship is awarded in memory of Meredith Mac Rae and is administered by Chapman University. The Scholarship Committee chooses the winner from among University recommended finalists who write an essay of a page or more on what the Scholarship would mean to them. Candidates are graduate students in the MFA program who have some experience in acting, producing, and directing (like Meredith Mac Rae herself). The Foundation Board sets the amount to be given. In recent years, this has been around $3000.

The Verna Fields Memorial Fellowship is awarded to a woman graduate student in either directing or editing to assist with the production of her thesis film. In recent years, this has been $1000. It is administered directly by UCLA annually to a female director in UCLA's MFA program.

WIF Crystals Scholarships: For the past decade, WIF has been giving $2,000-$3,000 scholarships to media students throughout Southern California. These scholarships are funded by WIF’s annual fundraising gala, the Crystal/Lucy Awards.

The current endowments are as follows:

Women In Film/Loreen Arbus Endowment: Thanks to the generosity of WIF supporter Loreen Arbus, we endow a $2,000 annual scholarship to a student studying cinematography in the MFA program at UCLA.

Women In Film/Tichi Wilkerson Kassel Endowment: We endow a $2,000 scholarship in the name of WIF’s founder, Tichi Wilkerson Kassel. This is given to an undergraduate female student studying film at AFI.

The Bruce Paltrow Endowment: Thanks to the generosity of the Paltrow family, we endow a $1,000 annual scholarship to a film and media student at Tulane University.

From left to right: Women In Film Foundation Trustees Marion Rosenberg and Marion Spiegelman present the 2005 Meredith MacRae Memorial Scholarship to Chapman University MFA student Dannkke Walkker as Dean Robert Bassett looks on. From left to right: Women In Film Foundation Trustees Marion Rosenberg, Dorothea Petrie, and Scholarship Committee Chair Carol Peters with Dee Caruso, Professor of Screenwriting, UCLA Dept. of Film and Digital Media, and 2006 WIFF Eleanor Perry Writing Award recipient Emmy Laybourne.