No matter what you might think about the Oscars' relevance or significance, there's a statistic which one simply can't ignore. Over the Academy Awards' 81-year history, no woman has ever won Best Director.
None.
Another shocking statistic, only 3 women ever received a Best Director nomination. They were Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation in 2003, Jane Campion for The Piano a decade earlier and Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties in 1976. That's about 360+ nominations for male filmmakers versus 3 for women.Shocking, wouldn't you say?
Of the 367 members of the Academy's directors branch - who vote for these nominations - blogger Melissa Silverstein (Women & Hollywood) estimates that only about 20 are women.
Women directors have had a hard time in Hollywood, historically, and while things may be getting better, parity is still a long way away. When they're offered a project, there's often a pre-conceived notion of what a female filmmaker should take on.
In The Hollywood Reporter, Steven Zeitchik writes:
An Education director Lone Scherfig recently lamented, good-naturedly, that she was tired of producers thinking of her for stereotypically female projects. "Everyone sends me scripts with these sweet stories," she said. "I've done that already. I want to make a movie with chases and explosions. I want to blow things up."This year, one woman has blown things up with impressive results. Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is easily the best reviewed American film of the year. Her stripped-down, tense drama about US soldiers defusing IED's in Baghdad blew things up with a lot more art and skill than the year's highest grossing film, a sequel based on a popular kids' toy in which women, tellingly, are portrayed with less respect than the vehicles they ride in on.
Bigelow is one of the front runners in this year's Best Director category (because she's made a film men might be comfortable with?). That category could yield three female nominees this year, or as much as in the entire award's history. Joining her could be Jane Campion for Bright Star and the above-mentioned Sherfig for An Education.
Out of the 13 films released in 2009 which received a score of 85 (out of 100) or higher on US site Metacritic, 5 were directed by women:
- 35 Shots of Rhum by Claire Denis (96)
- The Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow (94)
- The Beaches of Agnes by Agnes Varda (86)
- Forbidden Lie$ by Anna Broinowski (85)
- An Education by Lone Sherfig (85)
Also getting good reviews this year were:
- Cold Souls by Sophie Barthes
- Bright Star by Jane Campion
- Amreeka by Cherien Dabis
- Whip it! by Drew Barrymore
- Fish Tank by Andrea Arnold
- Humpday by Lynn Shelton
- Bluebeard by Catherine Breillat
Women directors are also making an impact in the commercial arena this year, with the following titles making a dent at the box-office:
- Julie & Julia by Nora Ephron
- The Proposal by Anne Fletcher
- Amelia by Mira Nair
- Jennifer's Body by Karyn Kusama
- Coco Before Chanel by Anne Fontaine (the highest grossing foreign-language film of 2009)
- It's Complicated by Nancy Meyers (releases on Christmas day)
"Oh my God, isn't it just terrible! I want to shake everyone and ask them that question. Making films is about having absolute and foolish confidence; the challenge for all of us is to have the heart of a poet and the skin of an elephant."
Thick-skinned women directors abound in the US and abroad (notice how many of the directors cited above are not American?)... so what's the problem?
Let's remember that Hollywood is ruled by the box office. A project gets a green light only if projected returns justify investments. The box-office, in turn, is ruled by a form of delayed maturity more characteristic perhaps of men than women.
The top 10 highest US grossers this year (the worldwide chart is not that different) includes at least 7 titles which could easily be characterized as children's films (even though adults make up the majority of attendance). These are the films that make money and more often than not, the directors willing to develop these properties are men. Men who aren't done fetishizing motorized vehicles on which scantily clad, barely legal girls can be artfully draped (like that poster on the wall of their dorm room).
Perhaps gender parity in the industry will only be achieved once we cease to look to cinema for regressive fantasies - films which indulge our fear of the world and our nostalgia for childhood - and begin demanding entertainment for adults.
Let's remember that Hollywood is ruled by the box office. A project gets a green light only if projected returns justify investments. The box-office, in turn, is ruled by a form of delayed maturity more characteristic perhaps of men than women.
The top 10 highest US grossers this year (the worldwide chart is not that different) includes at least 7 titles which could easily be characterized as children's films (even though adults make up the majority of attendance). These are the films that make money and more often than not, the directors willing to develop these properties are men. Men who aren't done fetishizing motorized vehicles on which scantily clad, barely legal girls can be artfully draped (like that poster on the wall of their dorm room).
Perhaps gender parity in the industry will only be achieved once we cease to look to cinema for regressive fantasies - films which indulge our fear of the world and our nostalgia for childhood - and begin demanding entertainment for adults.
Posts
6 comments:
Bigelow has always been an "a" grade director. Her choice of project sometimes lacks IMHO.
I'd gone most of the year assuming I'd not see anything as complete in terms of sheer directing skills as Samson and Delilah. But then along came "Hurt Locker" at MIFF this year. I have rarely sat so tensed in all my life. The film is top shelf indeed. But I take your point regarding the facts that it's a bloke's film Matt.
Curiously, this film was temporarily dropped from local distrib's schedule until all that pesky Oscar talk started up. It's my favourite film of the year, it's a Hollywood production, and it nearly wasn't released here. Strange days.
Strange Days indeed.
That level of tension I think I've only ever found in the films of Paul Greengrass, especially Bloody Sunday and United 93.
Of course I don't mean to say that Hurt Locker is a bloke's film in the sense that women can't enjoy it, only that the type of men who don't easily shower kudos on women filmmakers might make an exception here precisely because she's made a bloody war film. Which is sad, but there you go.
I like Hurt Locker a lot, but I don't think I was as impressed as some of you. To me, if felt a little derivative of a superior film, the relatively recent Beaufort, about an Israeli bomb disposal unit set in the region of the title's historic Southern Lebanese fort. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.
I've often wondered about the lack of women directors. Maybe it's related to the scarcity of women at the highest levels of business. Maybe women don't have the assertiveness and organisational skills. I don't have a position on this, so before you all stone me, I'm just raising the question.
Perhaps gender parity will be achieved when female filmmakers cease being discussed in terms of their sex! Which is why Peter Bart's piece on Bigelow and Campion still rankles: Unlikely Rivals
Great piece, Matt. It makes a great companion to this Indiewire post.
It also reminded me of an essay I wrote a long, long time ago about the diminishing agency of women in Hollywood during the Golden Age. Alas, nothing much has changed. The Silenced Majority>
Very good -- and necessary -- post, Matt. I think we ALL think about this from time to time, some more than others. Because it continually and historically rankles. Then we forget for a time because, really, there are so many good films out there by men and women, that we can just enjoy and appreciate until... awards time comes around again.
What's to be done? Not much until it happens on its own because Academy members decide to get behind a certain movie (like they did last year for Slumdog and a few years back for Crash). In my opinion these were not even particularly good movies, but they acted as magnets. When this happens to a film directed by a woman, she'll get the nomination and maybe the award. (This is why, for me, awards continue to suck. But I guess somebody's got to give' em and somebody else receive 'em.) So women continue to get the shaft from the Academy.
Blacks had their year when Hallie and Denzel won. Gays missed out, in a sense, when Brokeback lost (and Crash won: some say in order to make certain that gays would lose). And so it will be for women, eventually, and then everyone will shout Hosannah! And go back to business as usual.
Women, though -- just like men, but without as much attention paid them -- will keep working, making films good, bad and in between.
NYT's Manohla Dargis weighs in http://jezebel.com/5426065/fuck-them-times-critic-on-hollywood-women--why-romantic-comedies-suck
Post a Comment