Reporter’s Notebook: The One Big Awards Show That Didn’t Lock Out Women Directors

I encountered similar reactions from academy old-timers during the #OscarsSoWhite controversy a few years back. More than one longtime member patiently explained to me that academy voters did not have a problem with or history of racial exclusion in the least. Hadn’t they awarded an Oscar to Sidney Poitier?

Well, yes. Yes, they had. In 1964.

The outlook has become brighter for female directors. In 2017, Patty Jenkins broke multiple box office records with “Wonder Woman,” and last year Greta Gerwig became the first woman of the decade to land an Oscar directing nomination, for “Lady Bird.” And thanks to the more intense scrutiny on studios and pressure from organizations like Time’s Up, hiring female directors is slowly becoming something of a badge of honor. At Sundance, after the actress Tessa Thompson announced her commitment to work with a female director in the next 18 months, more than 100 producers and actors, as well as seven studios, echoed her promise. They called it the 4 Percent Challenge, after the finding by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative that just 4 percent of the top 1,200 films of the last decade were directed by a woman.

Researchers in this field have long said that shifting the default assumption that directors are men is crucial. A few years ago, in a study for the Sundance Institute and Women in Film Los Angeles, dozens of film industry buyers and sellers were asked to name female directors that would be on the consideration lists for movie projects. They listed an average of three names; most listed zero names. That is changing, thanks to the successes of Jenkins, Gerwig and Ava DuVernay, and newer names like Chloé Zhao, who directed the critically cherished indie “The Rider,” and Marielle Heller, who directed Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant to Oscar nominations in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” despite being locked out of the nominations herself.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/movies/independent-spirit-awards-women.html?partner=rss&emc=rss