NYWIFT Blog

By Katie Chambers

For Caytha Jentis, a career in storytelling has never followed a straight line — but the New York Women in Film & Television community has remained a steady presence, evolving alongside her as her work has shifted across mediums, decades, and definitions of success.

Jentis first joined NYWIFT as she re-entered the film industry after several years focused on motherhood. Having trained at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications and earned an MFA in screenwriting from UCLA, she had already worked in literary representation and development when she made a pivotal decision: to produce her own screenplay independently.

 

That film, And Then Came Love (2007), starred Vanessa Williams and centered on a donor-inseminated single mother, a subject rarely portrayed with nuance at the time. Jentis wrote and produced the film herself while raising children in suburban New Jersey. “I decided to produce it myself,” she recalls. “That’s when I joined NYWIFT, as I was getting back into the movie business with this new independent film.”

NYWIFT’s early support proved meaningful and tangible. The organization co-presented And Then Came Love’s theatrical opening in New York City, hosting a reception that helped generate visibility and community around the release. The screening sold out. “It was really wonderful,” Jentis says. “To have NYWIFT host a cocktail party at the opening just made it feel like an event.”

Shortly thereafter, Jentis was invited to speak on a NYWIFT “How She Did It” panel, where she and her producing partner Maggie Harrer discussed the uphill battle of making and distributing an independent, female-forward film. “We talked about how, through the odds, we made this movie and got the deal [with Warner Bros.],” she says.

 

She continued to build a body of work rooted in motherhood, gender dynamics, and societal expectations. Her follow-up film, Bad Parents, adapted from her Off-Broadway play It’s All About the Kids, skewered suburban sports culture with dark humor. Casting director Adrienne Stern — a fellow NYWIFT member — helped assemble a cast that included notable comedic actors Janine Garofalo, Christopher Titus, Kirsten Johnston, and Cheri Oteri. “Knowing the value of recognizable names was crucial,” Jentis notes.

Her web series The Other F Word emerged directly from a NYWIFT moment. While attending the 2014 NYWIFT Muse Awards, Jentis watched comedian Judy Gold emcee the ceremony with a set about turning 50, a topic that mirrored Jentis’s own creative questions about aging and visibility. “She was doing this whole bit about turning 50,” Jentis recalls. “I thought, oh my gosh, I have to write her a role.”

Gold joined the series, which explored midlife friendships and ageism with humor and bite. The show also featured Nancy Giles, now a regular Muse Awards emcee, along with Steve Guttenberg and others connected through the NYWIFT community. Fellow member Suzanne Ordas Curry helped secure longtime member and 2017 Muse Honoree Alysia Reiner for a cameo.  “These were women coming to help me on a project that Hollywood was kind of ignoring,” Jentis says.

Despite the series’ success, Jentis increasingly encountered ageism and struggled to find representation with an agent or manager. “Turning 50 was taboo,” she says. “Buyers would tell me, ‘You’re too old to be in a writer’s room.’”

Rather than stepping back, she shifted direction again. Jentis wrote the stage play Sex Work/Sex Play, co-founded the Gold Standard Arts Festival to celebrate artists over 50, and expanded the festival into Cirque du Gold Standard, featuring performers over 50. That last project emerged from her newest and latest passion: acrobatic performance.

 

In her early sixties, Jentis took up aerial hoop on a whim, initially as research for an essay she was writing. “I sort of fell in love with it,” she says. She also found the physical work liberating, especially as an “older woman.” There were surprisingly few barriers to entry in what outsiders might deem a “young woman’s sport.”

When an instructor emphasized that every aerial act was storytelling, the connection to Jentis’s regular creative practice was immediate. That realization led to her writing and performing in Freedom for a Night,  fun feminist, genre-bending circus stage play featuring scripted word, dance, song and aerial performance, which premieres in February 2026.

Many years after her first NYWIFT event, Jentis reconnected with the organization in a new way, meeting NYWIFT CEO Cynthia Lopez at a party hosted by longtime member Iliana Guibert. “I really understood how NYWIFT supports women in all areas of media and performance,” she says, “even when your path becomes non-traditional.”

Today, NYWIFT is promoting Jentis’s aerial work and the next iteration of the Cirque du Gold Standard in April 2026 through newsletters, blog interviews, and social media posts. She also remains closely connected to Curry, whose Ridgewood, NJ-based festival has partnered with NYWIFT and whose industry blog “Suzee Behind the Scenes” regularly spotlights NYWIFT events and members.

Looking back, Jentis sees NYWIFT as a creative constant: a place that met her at pivotal moments and continued to show up as her work changed shape. “It doesn’t get easier,” she says. “Especially for women. That’s why having a community like this matters.”

The feministically fun circus stage play Freedom for a Night runs February 19-22 at the Theater For A New City.

Learn more and get tickets.

Follow Caytha Jentis on Instagram at @Caytha. 

(All images courtesy of Caytha Jentis)