Sunday, April 1, 2007

Girls on Film

This is a Ida Lupino. She was an actress, but more importantly she was one of the first women to write, direct and produce Hollywood films. She also directed lots of episodic television (Daniel Boone, Route 66, and others). She is on my mind because there aren't enough women directors just like there are not enough African-American, Native American, Hispanic American, etc ... filmmakers. The film business has been and continues to be dominated by white men, and that is a shame.

Last week I gave a workshop for students who are applying to get in to my advanced production class. This is sort of a capstone filmmaking class. The films produced in this class go to film festivals and are screened publicly. These students make good films despite (maybe because of?) of their teacher. At the end of the session a student came up to me and asked if there are any women in the class. I was embarrassed. Sure there are women in the class- five of the 20 students- but this student was the only woman who attended the workshop. I am afraid this is a bad sign.

What if only one out of every five doctors, lawyers, teachers, vets, newspaper reporters, TV weathercasters was a woman? Wouldn't we think it strange? We need, we want to see films from other perspectives. This is not a good trend. We need more women filmmakers.

We need more Ida Lupinos.

PeterH

7 comments:

Unknown said...

can i apply to be ur student? haha

Anonymous said...


According to what I see coming from Hollywonk the last many years, some fresh directors would be a great breath of fresh air, regardless of their gender.

Especially if the director, or the actors hired for the jobs, would stay out of the political arena and stick to their jobs for a change.

Unknown said...

Salon had an alright article about this a few years ago. Might interest you.

http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/movies/feature/2002/08/27/women_directors/index.html

PeterH said...

Donnacha,

Thanks for the link and for stopping by.

PeterH

Anonymous said...

Do you think that shows like On The Lot (coming to Fox http://www.thelot.com/) or websites like YouTube (http://www.youtube.com) will influence the future of film making? Will it diversify these groups of film makers? Could it even bring personal short films to more mainstream audiences?

PeterH said...

Blindeh,

That is a really good question. I don't know the answer. It might just default into bad TV which will do no one any good. I'll ponder it.

PeterH

Becca G said...

I made a home video once... does that count?