Hoping for a Bigelow Breakthrough

Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to win the best director Oscar, was only the fourth female film-maker to be nominated in the category.

She joined a select list featuring Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation (2004), Jane Campion for The Piano (1994) and Italian director Lina Wertmuller for Pasaqualino Settebelleze (Seven Beauties) in 1977.

Dutch film-maker Marlene Gorris won an Oscar in 1996 for her movie Antonia's Line but it was for best foreign language film rather than in the director category.

That Bigelow's win is such a talking point raises the question of why women film directors remain such a rarity in Hollywood.

Bigelow herself is often reluctant to be referred to as a female director, making no reference to her gender in her Oscars acceptance speech.

"I suppose I like to think of myself as a film-maker - not a female film-maker," she recently said as she picked up the best director honour at the Directors' Guild of America awards.

But the Celluloid Ceiling - an annual report issued by San Diego State University about the employment of women in movies - estimated that, out of the top 250 grossing films of 2009 in the US, women only directed about 7% of them.

This represents a decrease of 2% from the previous year and, perhaps more worryingly, shows no change from the percentage of women directing in 1987.

The report's author, Martha Lauzen, says Hollywood is in denial about the lack of women behind the camera.

"I've heard editors of major trade publications as well as the heads of studios simply say there is no problem," she told the AFP news agency.

"They'll either say no celluloid ceiling exists or they'll rattle off four or five names of high-profile directors who happen to be women and then with a shrug say, 'see - there's no problem'.

"Well that's incredibly misleading. Just because you can name four or five women directors doesn't mean no problem exists.

"If you don't think there's any problem then you're not going to be looking for a solution and that perpetuates the status quo." . . .

from BBC News