Women in Film

I had intended to address this issue before the Academy Awards, but unfortunately that was the week I flaked out and I never got it written. While I'm not out to claim gender-bias or demand some sort of affirmative action, I am dismayed every year by the lack of nominations for female production staff in certain categories. I'm all for nominating the best examples in each category, but it seems to me that there are either very few women working in certain areas of film production, or they are not working on the best (or most visible) projects.

We already know about the lack of nominations for female directors. So far, there have only been three: Lina Wertmuller in 1976 for the Italian Seven Beauties, Australian Jane Campion in 1993 for The Piano, and Sofia Coppola in 2003 for Lost in Translation. I know there are plenty of wonderful female directors out there, so this disparity could be contributed to the fact that many of the films taken on by female directors seem are concerned with smaller stories. While many of them are acclaimed, they lack a certain grandure that automatically elevates their work to Oscar consideration. For example, Kimberley Pierce showed great promise heading Boy's Don't Cry, but an independent film about a gender-confused teen, while likely to gain awards attention for the performances, is not the kind of film that generally enters into the Best Picture arena. Perhaps Pierce will have greater luck with her upcoming Stop-Loss, but that depends on the quality of the film, a public embracing of the current social commentary in the subject matter, and it sticking in viewers minds all the way to December. Not likely.

Far more disturbing is the seeming complete lack of female candidates in most of the technical fields. The writing categories have nominated plenty of women, and female writers seem to be involved with just as many esteemed projects as the male writers. In the past 15 years, there have been 22 nominations for female writers and 7 of them have won. There are also a plentitude of nominations in the art/set direction and costume design categories: at least 20% of the nominees in art direction are female, with that number rising closer to 85% in costume design. I find it interesting that there are so many male fashion designers, but that women costume designers in film seem to outnumber them handily. Clearly women are represented well in many ways.

But this parity doesn't run across the technical board. If I were involved in filmmaking, as I have often imagined myself to be, my main areas of interest would be directing, editing, cinematography or musical score. So I was extremely saddened to see so few women represented in these categories, at least over the last 15 years, and I would suspect, in the history of the Academy Awards. I've already talked about direction, so let's examine editing, which is the actual cutting of the film. It establishes the pace, reactions, mood, and film historians have often said it is the editing of a film that creates the meaning, not the shots themselves, but their arrangement. Over the last 15 years, there have been 12 nominations for women in the field of editing, out of a possible 75. That's about 16%. Not horrible, but not sufficient to me. Three of those nominations have been for Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorcese's longtime editor, and that makes me wonder whether it's her actual work, or her association with Scorcese pictures (always in the Oscar contention pool) that get her consistently nominated. Of the remaining 9 women nominated, 3 are foreign editors working on foreign films (one underneath a female director), and 3 more are working on independent projects, outside mainstream filmmaking. That leaves only 3 women film editors that were nominated for their work on studio projects in the last 15 years (who are not Thelma Schoonmaker). Does that mean there are very few women editors working within the studio system, or just not very many good ones?

In the category of score, only two women have been considered, with a total of 4 nominations. Rachel Portman has been nominated three times, for 1996's Emma, 1999's The Cider House Rules and 2000's Chocolat. She won for Emma and became the first woman to win an Oscar for musical score. The only other female nominee is Anne Dudley, who also won, in 1997 for The Full Monty. It think it is important to note that both of their wins came in years when there were two song categories, Original Dramatic Score and Original Comedy or Musical Score. They both won in Comedy or Musical Score. (And just as an additional note, the winners in Dramatic score for each of those years were Gabriel Yared for Best Picture winner The English Patient in 1996, and James Horner for Best Picture winner Titanic in 1997.) I just refuse to believe that there are no other accomplished female composers!

Here is the real travesty. In the areas of cinematography, sound mixing, and visual effects, there have been absolutely zero female nominees, at least in the last 15 years, and probably in the history of the Oscars. (I'll have to continue researching to be sure. 15 years seemed a long enough time span to begin with.) The only woman nominated in Sound Editing is Anna Behlmer with a whopping 9 nominations to her name. However, she is only one part of her sound editing team, which usually includes at least 2 other men. How is it possible she is the only woman in Hollywood involved in Sound Editing? Seriously, there are no other women on any of the effects teams. And no women cinematographers??? Really??? Cinematography involves the lighting and any movement of the camera. Again, I refuse to believe that there are no competent or accomplished women out there who work in this field.

So, with these interesting discoveries under my belt, I have decided to keep a look out for women working in any of these areas and make a note of it. Occasionally I may introduce them to you, like "Hey, check out the awesome cinematography in such-and-such." Because I'm adamant that there have got to be women somewhere working in these fields, I'm gonna have to put my money where my mouth is and find them! I'm at least going to keep track of current releases so that come Oscar time next year, I may have an actual debatable opinion about who should be nominated in the technical categories, and whether some of them should be women.If anyone out there notices some kick-ass technical work done by a female filmmaker, lemme know!