Surprise, surprise: More women are directing indie films than Hollywood blockbusters

By Katie Rife | May 6, 2014 | 8:00pm

Aux Features Film

The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film released its annual report this week, and—in a shocking twist that absolutely no one saw coming—it turns out the same people who keep making awful, Bechdel-defying crap like Battleship don’t like to hire women behind the scenes either. Only one major studio film being released this summer boasts a female director—Jupiter Rising’s Lana Wachowski—and according to the report, only six percent of the top-grossing films of 2013 were directed by a woman. Those statistics fall in line with previous studies showing that there are fewer women employed in Hollywood production than there were in 1998.

However, the report shows things aren’t quite so bleak on the independent film front. The study concludes that 18 percent of independent features and 28 percent of documentaries that played at film festivals in 2013 were directed by women. (And this particular study doesn’t account for television, where directors like Game Of Thrones and Breaking Bad regular Michelle MacLaren have been making small, incremental steps towards greater female representation.) As for other behind-the-scenes roles, a relatively whopping 33 percent of film producers and 27 percent of executive producers of independent films are women. Meanwhile, cinematography remains the most male-dominated, with only 10 percent of cinematographers overall identifying as female.