Jan Lisa Huttner

One Last Look at Nora Ephron's "Successful" Film Career "What would Nora do now?" I asked myself? (Posted by the Huffington Post on July 10, 2012) Back down and go with the flow? Nora Ephron died on Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at the age of 71. Although she had been very ill for several years, she kept her condition a secret, so her "sudden" death came as a shock to many people.

Watching this year’s Academy Awards nominees for Best Production Design, what stayed with me was not just the scale of the worlds created, but how completely I believed in them. Across this year’s lineup, the environments feel less like constructed sets and more like spaces that extend beyond the frame. In films like Frankenstein, the world does not call attention to itself as design. Instead, it feels lived-in—textured, inhabited, and continuous.

Jan Lisa Huttner is a Brooklyn-based arts critic & feminist activist. She is the creative force behind the SWAN Movement—Support Women Artists Now—which has just begun its third phase as International SWANs® (aka iSWANs). In the Jewish world, Jan is best known as the author of two books on Fiddler on the Roof—Tevye’s Daughters and Diamond Fiddler—both of which flow from a strongly feminist POV.