After I completed my survey of New Zealand feature directors by gender, I wanted to put the New Zealand statistics alongside those from other countries. It's impossible to do this globally, or exactly. The figures are unavailable for Lebanon, for instance, a country with about the same population as New Zealand, where there is a very different cinema history and no state funding. In the United States, the volume of filmmaking of all kinds makes it impossible to establish a comprehensive picture. But here's some information which gives a general idea, for directors of narrative feature films only.
Australia (five years to mid 2011) 18%
Canada (2010) 16% (all state-funded) via Women in View
France (2010) 21% (state-funded, but with lower budgets than men-directed films) my research
New Zealand (2010) 16% (same percentage in both state-funded and not state-funded lists) my research
Norway (2010) 19% (from the Norwegian Film Institute database, not known if all state-funded)
Sweden (2010) 11% (19% of all state-funded films) via Swedish Film Institute
United States (2011-12) 18% (films from round the world shown at selected United States festivals) via Martha Lauzen at the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film
United States (2010) 7% (250 top-grossing films, a steady decrease from 9% in 1998; 5% in 2011) via Martha Lauzen at the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film. I better understood this especially low percentage and the decrease when I saw this graphic.
For the first time, I feel confident that although there are some local differences the percentage of women directors of narrative features is about the same everywhere in the world. Consider these figures in association with the percentage of films with women as protagonists (thank you, Miss Representation!), 16 percent, and it's obvious the problem is serious as well as complex.
But there's hope! By chance I received an email that shows that women who make decisions within the entertainment industry are not only aware of the problem but trying to analyse it and seek solutions. The notes helped me think and I hope they're helpful for you, too.
I don’t know where these women met, two middle-aged women, two Queen Bees. They live on different continents and they work in different sectors of the entertainment industry. Each is a major decision maker with a biiiiig budget. Was it an airport lounge? A conference? A film festival? An awards ceremony? A party? Anyway they were talking and the conversation turned to women directors. And one of them took notes which, much later, she sent to me. (I get many more emails from people I don’t know than I get comments here, even though there’s an ‘Anonymous’ option.) My understanding from the brief email – this is a very busy woman – is that both participants in the conversation have a strong commitment to women who write and direct feature films. But I have no idea whether they want 'the loud trembling unspoken story of women can break through' or simply to ensure that more women are employed in the industry. The good news, however, is that these two appear not to be like those to whom Jodie Foster referred last year, when it was mentioned that many studio executives do, in fact, look like her — a 48-year-old white female veteran of the industry:
...the lists that come out of the female studio executives: guy, guy, guy, guy. Their job is to be as risk-averse as possible. They see female directors as a risk.After I read the notes I asked to publish them without attribution. Here they are, with warm thanks to the women concerned, in three parts, slightly edited for clarity (I hope).
1. Women's commitment
Do women directors really want to make movies? Some women take time out for childrearing and then won’t make the commitment required.
2. Women often have specific needs – more intensive support, to be enabled, to have their confidence built
Each one requires a bespoke pathway and mentoring. There’s a need to ‘curate individuals’.
3. At the moment the pathways don’t always work. [These are pathways established within 'the industry' presumably, because that's where these women are located, far away from processes like crowdfunding.] What kinds of structures and pathways might work, eg short films to one-hour films?
I've thought a lot about these notes over the last few weeks, as I consider the motivations of the writer characters in my Muriel Rukeyser play, Throat of These Hours. My thoughts are below the jump if you want to read them. But I hope that when you look at the stats and read these Queen Bee notes, you'll have your own thoughts. And I'd love to hear what they are!
