At this year’s Academy Awards, the glass ceiling was shattered when Kathryn Bigelow took home the award for Best Director, the first female to do so in the 82 year history of the Oscars. Her film The Hurt Locker also won for Best Picture.

The timing could not have been better for Amy Taubin, contributing editor to Sight and Sound magazine and Film Comment magazine, to come speak at Fairfield University.

On Tuesday March 16, a multimedia presentation called “Who’s Looking? Women Direct Movies” was held. REEL WOMEN, a new group created by Professors Elizabeth Haas and Roxana Walker-Canton, organized the presentation.

“It’s an incredibly euphoric moment for people who care about women making movies,” Taubin said.

Women make up half of the population and more than 50% of the movie-going audience. They want to see themselves recognized in film.

“Given that 50% of the population is female, the representation of women showing their experience on screen from the inside is stunningly little,” Taubin said.

Only three women directors had ever been nominated for an Academy Award before Bigelow: Lina Wertmuller (Seven Beauties, 1975), Jane Campion in (The Piano, 1993), and Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, 2003).

Every year, men direct 93 percent of movies. According to statistics from the New York Times, of the 600 films total films released last year, women directed only 60. About half of those were documentaries, which Taubin said is friendlier to women than narrative features simply because they are not as prestigious.

Taubin spoke about female directors who were present, but mostly forgotten about, since film history began. Alice Guy-Blanche was a director in the silent film era. She made over 1,000 films for the US and France, but she is not in the textbooks like the Lumiere brothers. By 1920, she had all but stopped making films, finding it difficult to get work after the studio systems was formed. Dorothy Arszner was another film director who made about forty features until 1960. Actress Ida Lupino also took her turn at directing movies.

People should not get the idea that one movie like The Hurt Locker will change everything for women directors. This one win will not mean people and films will become gender-blind, said Taubin.

But now the audiences and film industry realize it is not an issue of there is not enough good women directors. Instead, there needs to be an infrastructure created where people who want to make movies can make them.

Taubin discussed the historic Oscar win and the upset of The Hurt Locker against other nominations in the Best Picture category.

“It happened because of tremendous will and tremendous ability,” Taubin said of Bigelow and her film’s wins.

Part of the reason why The Hurt Locker won is because we live in a culture dominated by narrative, said Taubin. Bigelow’s narrative was compelling: the glass ceiling had to be broken and this was the moment to do so. Her narrative was also made up of the competition between her and her independent movie versus ex-husband James Cameron and his box-office blowout Avatar.

“The Oscars are an emblem, a sign, of validation by the filmmaking industry,” Taubin said. This is key for a woman to win the Best Director nomination because it meant Bigelow’s powerful colleagues said “Yes, she’s good” and not “Oh, I have to work with a girl.”

According to Taubin, Bigelow and The Hurt Locker’s win for Best Picture and Best Director breaks the mold of what a film that wins an Oscar is.

The Hurt Locker is not a usual kind of action like Mean Streets. It’s more of an art movie, something Taubin labeled a “structuralist avant-garde.” There was minimal human interest; there were no long scenes where the characters talked about their feeling or aspirations. The viewer got the character by seeing them at work.

The film was basically seven separate sequences of disarming explosive devices. It was made for under $20 million while Avatar was made for around $350 million. The Hurt Locker made almost no money on its first outing, while Avatar broke box office records.

“It’s hard for anyone to be a director,” Taubin said. “It’s even harder to sustain as a woman director.”

About The Author

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.