Only 7% of the top 250 films last year were directed by women, according to the latest Celluloid Ceiling Report from the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State.
Jane Fonda didn’t mince words in denouncing the routine employment discrimination faced by female filmmakers, especially at the studio level. “The studios are run by men and they have the bottom line to meet and they give jobs to people like them,” said Fonda at a Women of Sundance brunch yesterday. “It’s a matter of gender, not that we don’t have the experience,” noting that it’s not unusual for male directors with skimpy resumes to receive opportunities handling a hundred-million-dollar tentpole.
Fonda then proposed a two-pronged approach in battling the industry’s entrenched sexism: “We have to shame the studios for being so gender-biased,” she proposed. “We have to prove we can be commercial,” she added, observing, “We have to fight real hard to get women in positions of power and remember there are no set rules. Kathryn Bigelow made a guys’ film [The Hurt Locker], while her ex-husband James Cameron made a feminist film in Avatar.”
Fonda will next appear in the Netflix series Grace and Frankie alongside Lily Tomlin.
[via The Guardian]
