General Discussion

niyad

(113,550 posts) Sat Dec 1, 2012, 11:23 PM Dec 2012

we heart the sundance film festival-where women hold up half the screen

We Heart the Sundance Film Festival–Where Women Hold Up Half the Screen

In what’s being called a first, one-half of the 16 dramatic films chosen for competition at the prestigious 2013 Sundance Film Festival this coming January in Park City, Utah, are directed by women. In comparison, only three women-helmed dramas were selected for the 2012 fest.

And to get a larger picture of how limited directorial opportunities are for women, just five percent of the 250 top-grossing movies last year were women-directed, according to San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film.
. . . .

In the Sundance documentary competition, women are directors or co-directors of half the films as well–but that’s not so surprising, as women are much better represented in the doc world. Given our politics at the Ms. Blog, we’re particularly curious about 99% – The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film (directed by Audrey Ewell, Aaron Aites, Lucian Read, and Nina Kristic) and After Tiller directed by Martha Shane and Lana Wilson, which follows four U.S. doctors who still provide late-term abortions since the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in 2009.

Although they don’t reach the 50 percent mark, women directors are also well represented in the World Cinema categories at Sundance, including dramas by Chile’s Alicia Scherson (The Future) and Indonesia’s Mouly Surya (What They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love) and docs by Cambodia’s Kalyanee Mam (A River Changes Course), Britain’s Kim Longinotto (Salma), Egyptian American Jehane Noujaim ( The Square/El Midan) and Georgia’s Tinatin Gurchiani (The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear)

Any of you planning on going to Sundance this year?

http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2012/11/30/we-heart-the-sundance-film-festival-where-women-hold-up-half-the-screen/