The document discusses the underrepresentation of female directors in the film industry and proposes reasons for this disparity. It suggests that auteur theory, which elevated directors to artist/author status, excluded or sidelined female directors, influencing perceptions that directing is a male role. Statistics show few female directors and mentoring programs aim to boost women's confidence in their abilities. The author's artifact will highlight influential female directors and Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar win to challenge the perception that women cannot succeed as directors and inspire more young women to pursue directing careers.

1. Criterion One
Why is directing perceived to be a male pursuit?
My artefact will introduce the statistics for female directors and will suggest a link
between these statistics and auteur theory. It will demonstrate how auteur theory has
given a male-centric view of directing by ether excluding or sidelining female
directors in the history of its development. My artefact will propose that this
exclusion is one of the reasons for the small percentage of female directors in the
mainstream film industry. Over time, inspirational female role models like Alice Guy
and Dorothy Arzner have been forgotten and this has resulted in a lack of prominent
female role models for young women. They need to be able to imagine themselves in
the director’s role. My artefact will demonstrate that it is possible for a woman to
become a successful director by highlighting important female directors of the past
and featuring Kathryn Bigelow’s significant Oscar win in 2010. Finally the artefact
will challenge the female viewer to take action.
In March 2011, an article in the main section of The Observer had the headline,
“Where are all the women film directors?” The writer of the article, actress Kerry
Fox, explained, “I think it is a lack of confidence that stops women directing, the need
for a strong sense of self and an innate sense of the right to be a director.” Nicola Lees
of Women in Film and Television (WFTV) agrees. She runs a mentoring programme
for women, set up when Skillset research in 2009 revealed 5000 women had left UK
media industry employment since the recession, compared to just 750 men. The
research also confirmed that women were over-qualified, overworked and underpaid
in comparison to their male counterparts. Nicola says the number of women leaving
the industry in their early 30s and the shortage of female directors is often attributed
to childcare but that’s not always the case. “I have 20 women on the WFTV
mentoring scheme. Some have children. Some don’t. It’s about women lacking
confidence. Women need to look at their achievements and experience. Men don’t
feel that they don’t deserve to be there.”
Skillset’s UK findings are reflected in the research of Professor Martha Lauzen of San
Diego State University. She carries out an annual “Celluloid Ceiling” study of women

2. working behind the scenes on the top 250 domestic grossing films. Her 2010 findings
show women comprised 16% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers,
cinematographers and editors. Women accounted for just 7% of directors in 2010, the
same percentage as in 2009 and a decline of two percentage points from 1998. Lauzen
has also cited confidence as a reason. She says reporters have told her that, “when
they talk to the guys, they can’t shut ‘em up. But when they talk to the women, it’s
like pulling teeth…. Women have to promote themselves, but when they do, it’s seen
as being unfeminine.” (in Cochrane, 2010)
The idea that behaviour is either ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ can be linked to how
people have come to see the role of the director on a film set. The director is
considered to be the boss and when the boss is male it seems very natural that he
should lead. In her 1992 speech for Women in Film Crystal Awards, Barbara
Streisand made reference to the inequalities in the industry and in particular how
language is used to transform traits seen as positive in a male director into negatives
when displayed by his female counterpart. She says for example a male is
“uncompromising” while a female is a “ball breaker”, a man is “assertive” yet a
female is “aggressive” and when a male is said to have demonstrated “great
leadership” (Premier 1993:27)
Also consider for example the coverage given to the winner of the Oscar for Best
Director in 2010, Kathyrn Bigelow. It is quite a challenge to find press coverage
which doesn’t mention her gender yet we don’t hear or read about the ‘male director’
because the role of the director is gendered as male. Streisand was presenting the
award for Best Director at the Oscars in 2010 and her first sentence was, “From
among the five gifted nominees tonight, the winner could be, for the first time, a
woman.” On opening the envelope she announced, “Well the time has come. Kathryn
Bigelow!” Bigelow does not refer to gender in her acceptance speech and instead
said, “I think the secret to directing is collaborating and I had truly an extraordinary
group of collaborators.” This comment is of particular interest when compared to the
comments made by Brad Pitt about Quentin Tarantino as part of his nomination clip.
Pitt said, “It’s a director’s medium. It starts with the director and ends with the
director. The set is church, he is God and no heretics allowed.” (youtube.com 21 Nov
2011)

3. Pitt’s comments reflect the idea of the director as ‘author’ of a film. Film is one of the
few art forms which is not the work of a single author but the result of the
collaborative efforts of a very large team. As the main collaborators, the scriptwriter,
producer and the director of photography are often given some credit in Oscar
acceptance speeches and during a film’s promotion but it is the director to whom
authorship is attributed. This idea of director as author can be traced back to the
French film critics of the late 1940s and 50s and their debates in French and later
British and American magazines about the artistic value of cinema. Critic Peter
Graham suggests that an article by Alexandre Astruc, ‘The birth of a new avant-
garde: La caméra-stylo’ (Écran Français 144, 1948), is the first to suggest that the
director should be the author and the artist. Astruc writes, “Direction is no longer a
means of illustrating or presenting a scene, but a true act of writing. The film-
maker/author writes with his camera and as a writer writes with his pen.” (Graham
(ed), The New Wave, 1968:15)
This idea was taken up by the young French film critics writing for the magazine
Cahiers du Cinema as a way to revive French mainstream cinema which they felt had
become stale and uncinematic. They enjoyed the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Howard
Hawks and John Ford and used these directors as examples of artists who could
achieve a distinct personal style while working within the constraints of a studio
system. The idea was first referred to as a theory by American film critic Andrew
Sarris in 1962. In his article, “Notes on the Auteur Theory”, he sets down the criteria
for the auteur. A director had to possess a certain degree of technical competence, a
personal style and what Sarris termed an interior meaning or ‘subtext’ to qualify as an
auteur. (in Mast (ed) 1962: 585)These criteria laid the foundations for what would be
one of the most debated theories in the academic study of film for the next few
decades. The issue for young women now is that female directors were excluded from
these debates. They were not discussed as auteurs and as a result of not being part of
the most debated theory as film studies as an academic discipline developed; they
were hardly discussed at all.
This presents a problem in 2011 because young women seem to have no females in
the history of film to look to for inspiration. They seem to accept that directing is a

4. job for men and personally I’ve never heard a female student say, “I want to be a
director.” They are influenced by the statistics because they see the industry as male
dominated and as Lees and Lauzen stated, they lack the confidence to visualise
themselves in that role and buck the trend. They need role models and they need to
know they have the qualities and the skills needed to make it as a director. As Kate
Kinninmont of WFTV says, “Films should be made about people and the best person
should be doing the job whether a man or a woman. It doesn’t make sense that only a
fraction of women are good enough to be at the top – look at school and college
results.”
My artefact aims to be a conversation starter for students and while primarily aimed at
a female audience I believe young females will also benefit from male students being
part of the audience because as the title of this essay suggests, it is all about
perception. They need to see women as equals when it comes to leadership roles in
the industry. This is also why I’ve chosen to feature the Oscar win of Kathryn
Bigelow in the film. She is only one of a number of great female directors but she will
stand out for students because she has directed successful films in the action genre as
opposed to drama or romantic comedy. While equality can only really ever be
achieved when female directors are no longer referred to as female directors, it’s
fairly impossible to make a shift in the perception of young people without an
exploration of the past. That is what this artefact sets out to do.

5. Bibliography
Cochrane, K. (Sunday 31 January 2010). Why are there so few female film directors?.
Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jan/31/female-film-makers. Last
accessed 06 December 2011.
Graham, P J (1968). The New Wave. Secker and Warburg. p 15.
Fox, K. (Sunday 20 March 2011). Where are all the women film directors? Available:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/20/kerry-fox-women-film-
directors. Last accessed 11 December 2011.
Lauzen, M. (2010). The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind the scenes Employment of Women
on the Top 250 Grossing Films. Available:
http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/files/2010_Celluloid_Ceiling.pdf. Last accessed 11
December 2011.
Mast, Gerald, Marshall Cohen and Leo Braudy, eds. (1992) Film Theory and
Criticism: Introductory Readings. 4th ed. London: Oxford University Press. p 585
Premier Women in Hollywood Special, (1993) We are the Girlz in the Hood, p 27
Sarris, A (1996). The American Cinema, Directions and Directions 1929 -1968. USA:
1st Da Capo Press, Inc. 39-278.
Skillset. (2009). 2009 Employment Census. Available:
http://www.skillset.org/uploads/pdf/asset_14487.pdf?5. Last accessed 11 December
2011.
Kathryn Bigelow Winning the Oscar® for Directing - YouTube. Web. 21 Nov. 2011.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-DPBOTlSWk>.
* Kate Kinninmont and Nicola Lees interviewed by K Ward on 02 November 2011