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Women directors

Hayley Mills in The Trouble with Angels
  • Posted at 5:00pm
  • 27 June 2008
  • by AndrewCollins-RT
  • 1 comment

The 1966 family comedy The Trouble with Angels, in which Hayley Mills creates mayhem at a convent-run school, is not Ida Lupino's finest hour.

But as one of America's very few working female directors in the late 1940s, 50s and 60s, she earned her two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. One for films, one for TV, where she ended up directing episodes of The Virginian and The Twilight Zone).

Lupino's name always comes up when discussing women who made the director's chair their own – mainly because there are so few examples.

So how much has changed in the intervening years? Well, the 76th Academy Awards were notable for an unprecedented surge of oestrogen in 2004. Lost in Translation anointed Sofia Coppola as an emerging talent: the third woman ever to be nominated for best director (after Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties and Jane Campion for The Piano).

Three other films in the major categories were also directed by women: Whale Rider (Niki Caro), Monster (Patty Jenkins) and Something's Gotta Give (Nancy Meyers).

Meanwhile, in the UK, Gurinder Chadha has established a solid career off the back of Bend It like Beckham (her latest film Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging is released on 25 July).

And to pluck just one name from the international scene, Samira Makhmalbaf embodies the New Wave in Iran – a country where the issue of sexual equality is far more problematic than a pay gap.

But in Hollywood, little has really changed. Movies aimed at a female audience are still big box office, but this summer's Sex and the City was directed by a man. So were The Devil Wears Prada, In Her Shoes and many others in the "chick flick" genre.

So why have women made such significant moves in many other areas of the industry, but not directing? After all, female producers abound, and female studio heads are not unheard of. And yet a glance through the films on TV this week throws up just a handful directed by women: Billy Madison by Tamra Davis, who has since decamped to television; Guinevere by Audrey Wells; Triumph by Randa Haines; After the Wedding by Susanne Bier; and Water by Deepa Mehta. Not exactly a mandate, if I may use that word.

You could argue that it doesn't matter – that it's more important that women a) wield executive power and b) write screenplays, thus controlling the content. On the other hand, perhaps the most important feminist milestone occurred last year when director Julie Taymor's Beatles musical Across the Universe appeared in UK cinemas and proved that women are just as capable as men of making bad films.

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  • Posted on 01 July 2008
  • at 11:41am
  • by Vicky16

Why is it 'an important feminist milestone' that one woman made one bad film. If a man makes a bad film (and every week plenty are distributed), his gender is never mentioned. It would seem ridiculous. There are good and bad directors both male and female. I was disappointed that a interesting article seems to conclude that the lack of female directors was because they were not up to the job.

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