For my Directing class this week, we were asked to pick one director and make a blog entry about them. I started by watching a film about directors. I have Netflix Instant Watch, and had a movie in my queue called Great Directors, a documentary by a woman! Not just a woman but a European woman, who I imagined would have a broader view of the directors in the world. As great as American movies are, I love European films for the stories they portray. They don’t have the huge budgets we do, so they focus more on story. There’s not the emphasis on special effects (the gee-whiz factor, I call it), glitz, or famous actors.
Great Directors (2009)
Documentary by Angela Ismailos
On Netflix Instant Watch
Film has been around for over a hundred years now. With so many directors to choose from, picking one to research takes longer than doing the research itself! My first choice was Ridley Scott because he directed my favorite film, Blade Runner. (I could write a book about that film.) I’ve seen most of Ridley’s movies, and enjoyed them a lot… even the gorey ones! I saw Alien in NYC when it was first released. I remember well my reaction when the creature jumped out of the guy’s chest. I jumped out of my seat and almost landed on the lap of the stranger sitting next to me! Oy.
In the end, I decided not to go with Scott. He’s become so mainstream that everyone knows his story; started out in commercials, awarded a knighthood from the Queen, and so on. Since the budgets for his movies are also out-of-this-world (Prometeus: $120 million+), what does that have to do with us as independent filmmakers?
Also, I wanted to find a female director. We all know there’s only been one — yes, one — Academy Award-winning director that’s a woman: Katherine Bigelow for Hurt Locker in 2011. That’s just wrong!
I started by watching a film about directors. I have Netflix Instant Watch, and had a movie in my queue called Great Directors, a documentary by a woman! Not just a woman but a European woman, who I imagined would have a broader view of the directors in the world. As great as American movies are, I love European films for the stories they portray. They don’t have the huge budgets we do, so they focus more on story. There’s not the emphasis on special effects (the gee-whiz factor, I call it), glitz, or famous actors.
Great Directors (2009)
Documentary by Angela Ismailos
On Netflix Instant Watch
The ten directors focused on in the film are:
Bernardo Bertolucci
Catherine Breillat
Liliana Cavani
Stephen Frears
Todd Haynes
Richard Linklater
Ken Loach
David Lynch
John Sayles
Agnes Varda
If I had more time, I’d write about my impressions of each. Perhaps I will one day. Suffice to say I recommend the film, especially to anyone who appreciates foreign film as I do. Some of the names are recognizable American icons, like Lynch and Sayles, but I enjoyed the global perspective. Ismailos also has an obvious affection for protest films, so she’s a woman after my own heart!
I was excited to begin my research on one of the women directors from the doc, and I was looking forward to watching one of their movies in full, but I ran into some trouble finding any of their films on Netflix. What’s when I googled “great women directors.” I found some interesting stats on them on Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/feature/best-women-film-directors-and-movies. The most conspicuous (and depressing) fact is that women aren’t often nominated for awards.
The article lists 36 female directors by:
• Number of scored films
• Average Metascore
• Average User Score
• Average Box Office Gross
(not including documentaries)
Top 10 include:
Lone Scherfig — Denmark
Lucrecia Martel — Argentina
Sofia Coppola — US
Agnès Jaoui — France
Claire Denis — France
Susanne Bier — Denmark
Lisa Cholodenko — US
Nicole Holofcener — US
Mary Harron — Canada
Jane Campion — New Zealand
Highest Lifetime Cumulative Box Office Grosses for Women Directors,
Director Lifetime Domestic Gross, Average Gross Per Film
1 Nora Ephron $810,462,500 $101.3m
2 Betty Thomas $776,402,800 $110.9m
3 Amy Heckerling $767,737,300 $96.0m
4 Penny Marshall $764,042,300 $109.1m
5 Nancy Meyers $726,866,100 $145.4m
Not surprisingly, the Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow has gotten the highest Metacritic score.
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I used this information to keep hunting for a film to watch, but still found scant few by any of these women on Netflix. What finally got me to the director I chose was this article: http://www.ifp.org/resources/the-overlooked-of-2011-six-great-women-directors/.
IFP, in case you’ve never heard of them, has this to say about itself:
IFP’s Role in Independent Film
After debuting with a program in the 1979 New York Film Festival, the nonprofit IFP has evolved into the nation’s oldest and largest organization of independent filmmakers, and also the premier advocate for them.
Of the six mentions, I chose Megan Griffiths. For more about her, read my following post.
