Long wait before more films made from a woman’s perspective - Women's Agenda

Long wait before more films made from a woman’s perspective

Today’s Golden Globe awards may feature plenty of female talent – including co-hosts Amy Poehler and Tina Fey – but they will feature just one female director: Kathryn Bigelow.

The fact they feature a female director at all is something to be celebrated: just a handful of women have been nominated for the best director award in 70 years of the Golden Globes. Just four women have been nominated for the best director Oscar, of more than 400 nominees in that award’s history.

As film director Martha Coolide once put it: “For guys competition is fierce, but for women you are more likely to win the lottery.”

The problem stems from the fact that the pool of female directors to choose from isn’t all that deep.

Indeed, only five of the top 100 films at the Australian box office last year had female directors. Four of them were co-directed with a man. Hysteria, a film about the invention of the vibrator, was the only such film directed solely by a woman. Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty does not show up on the list as it’s not out in Australian cinemas until later this month.

The films with female co-directors included the animated Brave (on which writer Brenda Chapman was replaced as director around halfway through production), a Katy Perry documentary (Jane Lipsitz), comedy Bachelorette (Leslyne Headliand) and indy film Ruby Sparks (Valerie Faris).

Female directors on Australian flicks appear a little easier to find – but just. While some of the best films of 2012 – including the Sapphires, Wish You Were Here and Mental – were all directed by men, there were a couple of notable mentions made by local ladies. Lore, an excellent Australian-German war thriller, was directed by the Cate Shortland, her second feature film after 2004’s Somersault. Another, Satellite Boy, was directed by Catriona McKenzie.

Still, Australian women have been making films since the 1920s, and have long been graduating from film school in equal numbers to men. Progress is slow because so many challenges for women in filmmaking still stand in the way.

Last week, celebrated Australian director Nadia Tass told Women’s Agenda how tough it can be for women in an industry full of male executives. “The female has to be pretty strong to tell a group of male executives ‘OK now, you have to listen to me. This is how the script is and you need to come over to my perspective and see it for how it is because I think this version is really important’.” 

Brave director Brenda Chapman recently scribed about the challenge in The New York Times.

“Sometimes women express an idea and are shot down, only to have a man express essentially the same idea and have it broadly embraced. Until there is a sufficient number of women executives in high places, this will continue to happen.”

So what can we do? For women in film, the advice is much like it is for women in the boardroom. As Champan put it: “Mentor. Inspire. Move forward together. That’s the best I can think of.” 

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