Abroad: Where The Female Directors Are
In her Risky Business column for the Hollywood Reporter, Anne Thompson notes that twelve of the 61 directors in the foreign-language film category are female. “Check their resumes, and many of them are veterans who have been churning out films for years,” writes Thompson “Around the world, somehow, women find it a lot easier to make movies than they do here in the U.S. The feminist movement in this country has come and gone, leaving many women striving to make their way in the workplace, yet in Hollywood the state of support for women directors remains woeful. Even when someone brilliant comes along like Karen Moncrieff, who wrote and directed the 2002 Sundance hit BLUE CAR and this year’s just-released THE DEAD GIRL it’s hard to summon up much optimism for her future.”
It’s true, of course, that there are far fewer working female directors than their are male ones. And as Thompson writes, “Even the most talented women, who usually establish themselves with low-budget indie fare, somehow wind up directing movies for television, lame romantic comedies or studio family films that no self-respecting male would touch.”
What she doesn’t mention is that the foreign language submissions, many of them, benefit from arts subsidies, tax breaks and direct funding. And some foreign language entries are similar in scope, tone and story to U.S indie dramas.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/features/columns/risky_business/e3i70a5636dd36012c71b35f2a1bbd8fe4d
Whatever happened to Martha Coolidge, Joan Micklin Silver or Penelope Spheeris?
Nathalie Wreyford of UK Film Council has set out to tackle this problem and to rectify it by investing in a fund to help develop female writers in UK.
Good for her! Penelope Spheeris is due to start shooting the Janis Joplin project produced by Squid & Whale producers