women directors?

em, i don't know about you, but the only 3 good female ( hollywood ) directors that come to my mind are sophia coppolla,kimberly peirce and nicole cassell i'm sure there are a few more...but i imagine not many more...why is that? Iran has plenty of female directors, isn't that funny?

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sorry, just found 2 more: jane campion ( the piano ) and penny marshall ( awakenings )

Amy Heckerling and Kathryn Bigelow are pretty well established.

But, yeah, just like with most top jobs in this world, directors are mostly men. And I honestly don't think the situation is very different in Iran either for that matter.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

With no offense to female directors, a good deal of their material is focused on predjuice towards women and minorities.

I'm NOT saying that's bad, I'm just saying that their isn't a godfather coming out of female directors because they are helming projects to denounce sexism and predjuice which IS cool.

But that is a niche, much like the feminist writing movement, alot of women wrote about the problem or problems within the movement, but they didn't start writing out of their(generalization) niche for a while.

So in 5-10 years I would expect some major fool's gold, fixed or not, to be arriving on female directors doorsteps.

And, like male directors, female directors will write/direct the same amount of material, with the niche still being there.

I'm NOT being sexist, I'm merely stating where females have had to come from, being forced into inferiority to men in every regard, from business to industry, coming from that is TWICE the work that a man has to do with TWICE as less pay/recognition from it. It's a simple evolution of the industry.

Also, big business types probably stuff female directors onto projects *for* females. And with nothing else to do, that's what they have to take.

But I'm 100% sure their is as much talent, just less opportunity, but the time will come, and then, in 50 years, we will finally have some female game designers

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Some examples, please. I don't agree that the directors mentioned in this thread are especially hardcore feminists or necessarily travelling outside of the mainstream. And how many male directors are putting out a Godfather? It's just like, you know, the best film ever made.

there is a great director called Isabel Coixet,she´s from Barcelona
if you understand spanish check this site, http://www.clubcultura.com/clubcine/...et/wassabi.htm, she writes her opinions about things there, really good and funny in my opinion

and this is about her new film http://www.clubcultura.com/clubcine/...eta/index.html

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aside from the women i have mentioned, most of my experiences with female directors have been bad, most of those films have been boring chick flicks ( not even romantic comedies , just really boring films about the menopause or something, with absolutely nothing happening but a lot of dialogue about feelings and such ), they were so boring i didn't even bother to remember the names of the directors or movies, but at the end of the movie i wasn't surprised a woman directed them....

interesting would be a percentage, since there are fewer female directors, finding less interesting or good movies made by them doesn't prove anything about the state of things now - i mean, what's the percentage of good male directors? 1 off ten? isn't it the same after all with female directors?

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true, i think i read somewhere it was 4 percent

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0138927/

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0025978/

*note* on Allison Anders and the Women's Independent Film Movement:

Anders’ body of work is part of the Identity movement within the conceptual scene of the visual arts, which started to gain momentum in the early 1970’s. This major art and social movement expresses and studies history and memory of issues regarding race&ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. As part of the Identity movement, several women artists emerged during the mid 1980’s with significant films dealing with one or all of those subjects. There is yet to be a definitive title of this movement, but for the time being we can call it the Women’s Independent Film Movement.

This movement includes directors Allison Anders, Rebecca Miller, Nancy Savoca, Lisa Cholodenko, Kimberly Peirce, Kasi Lemmons and actors such as Lilly Taylor, Parker Posey, Tilda Swinton, and Jodie Foster to name a very few. Many of these artists are still making films, and are considered by the various film academies and critics around the world as some of the most important figures in the history of cinema


Some great films, but films that are niche, the best female directors have risen from that movement and their has yet to be a truly breakaway movie from a female director.

It WILL happen, and women WILL get their chance, but right now it is still very niche, much like the women's authorship movement.

I don't consider the Godfather the best movie ever made, merely an original piece of work, that is what I meant by using it as an example.

There are about three films by Lena Wertmuller that rank amongst my favorite movies of the 1970s.

Seven Beauties, Seduction of Mimi, Love and Anarchy. Swept Away may be up there as well, making it four.

Those are all the noteable films (and all by 1 director!) that I can think of off the top of my head, which hopefully says more about my particular sampling than about the amount of good films ladies be making.

What about Lost in Translation? And in some respects you could argue that Boys Don't Cry was quite a success for being an indie production: 2 Academy Award nominations ending with one in the bag.

And I think Adidasss were talking about Hollywood directors, or at least more ore less mainstream directors. You can't really expect a director belonging to something called "Women's Independent Film Movement" to release blockbusters that compete with Spielberg and Bruckheimer. It's not only different niches, it's two completely different worlds.

No, but it is widely considered the best movie ever made so it doesn't matter much what you or I think of it. And it's over 30 years old now, and still people view it as one of the best movies ever made. I just thought your demand for female directors having to produce something equal to The Godfather to earn your respect as slightly unfair, to say the least.

Thanks for the link criss, it looks interesting

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Lost in Translation and Boys Don't Cry are both niche, and they are only two movies, there is no versatility as of yet in the women's director catalogue. I don't care about academy awards, I just care about niches.
I don't care about sales, I care about niches and versatility, right now women are grounded in a niche because A. The stories need to be told and B. The people in charge believe that females are the one who needs to tell the story and C. Women have not broken out of their niche as of yet, exceptions? Of course, but their hasn't been a godfather exception.

The Godfather DOES NOT MATTER, and it does matter what I or you think, personal opinions are better than overrating something. The point of using the Godfather as an example is to show versatility within the amount of movies produced.

Female Directors, including sofia coppola (which is probably the only female director you know of), remain grounded in traditional movies that tell stories about women and their hardships.

I'm not denying that a woman's story shouldn't be told, it should be, and female directors do a great job.

But you cannot name one director that has broken out of the romantic comedy/female drama/female comedy niche. With sparse examples.

Male directors, directly due to them being male in an industry that was pervaded with sexism, can do all the movies listed above, plus a movie about anything else, not just those that are close to their heart.

The godfather of the women's directorial movement will be something that breaks the niche with effective results.

You seem to be hanging over my use of the word godfather, or thinking that I do not believe women can direct, that is not the point of focus.

I'm just trying to state that when a female director breaks her niche role with a very good production, that will end up opening the seal of the niche.

And do not try to argue that women have been as versatile as men, they were only given the ability to direct since the 1980s, realistically, the 1990s. And their are so many tales to tell that they can communicate effectively due to their relationship with the story that one would obviously jump at the chance.

But the breakthrough movie (not ocsars, not money) of the women's directorial movement has not come to show their versatility.

But when that comes, we will begin to regard female directors as we do male directors. Not for doing anything better, but for producing effective works that dismiss their niche.

It hasn't happened, but it will. Those are just the facts.

So... Movies by women are niche, and movies by men are universal? Would Million Dollar Baby be niche if it had been directed by a woman?

"There hasn't been a Godfather" - "The Godfather does not matter". You're a living contradiction. Isn't The Godfather niche? It's a movie about italian americans written and directed by italian americans.

I have mentioned other female directors in this thread alone. And if you look at most films made today you will actually see that they are movies that tell stories about men and their hardships. That is the norm and that is why you call movies by women "niche" and think that they only make movies about girl stuff.

Kathryn Bigelow comes to mind again, but sure, there are not many well known woman directors.

Can it be that a woman making an action movie or a thriller does it because it is close to her heart and a man that makes a romantic comedy does it because it is close to his heart? It's not just the industry that is sexist when you assume that what theme attracts a director is decided by gender.

In other words, a film about men made by a woman and that the audience think is made by a man?

Sometimes you're almost right but very often you're oh so wrong... I will stop using The Godfather as an example if you promise to do the same.

How do we know when this breakthrough has arrived if it's not a hit? How does it stop being niche if it doesn't reach the mainstream?

Well, perhaps some of us have allready begun to regard the few female directors out there as equal to their male colleagues. And perhaps female directors could be seen as directors who bring something new to filmmaking that develops the art form instead of something obscure that has to be labelled as a niche of its own simply because women made the films.