Director Lesli Linka Glatter will be honored with the 2016 Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Medal, the American Film Institute has announced in a release.
The award, AFI notes, “recognizes the extraordinary creative talents of AFI alumni who embody the qualities of filmmaker Franklin J. Schaffner: talent, taste, dedication and commitment to quality storytelling in film and television.” Previous female recipients include producer Anne Garefino and director Patty Jenkins.
Glatter has been a prominent figure in the entertainment industry for over three decades. She made her feature directorial debut with 1995’s “Now and Then,” which starred Melanie Griffith, Demi Moore, Rosie O’Donnell, Rita Wilson, Christina Ricci, Thora Birch, Gaby Hoffmann, and Ashleigh Aston Moore as a quadruplet of friends as teens and then thirty-somethings. It’s become a cult hit for women who came of age in the ‘90s.
Since then, Glatter moved on to direct for a number of high-profile television series. After starting out with “Twin Peaks,” she’s also directed episodes of “Gilmore Girls,” “The West Wing,” “ER,” “Mad Men,” True Blood,” “Homeland,” and dozens more.
She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short in 1985, and has been nominated for multiple Emmy and Directors’ Guild awards, the latter of which she won for “Homeland” in 2015 and “Mad Men” in 2010. She is now an executive producer on “Homeland,” and currently directing and executive producing “Six,” a History Channel military drama about Navy SEALs.
Glatter has written and spoken extensively about gender discrimination within the industry, penning a 2014 piece for The Hollywood Reporter called “What Happens to All These Women After They Direct Their First Film?” In it she said, “If someone had said to me when I started directing 20 years ago that in 2014 we would still be talking about the lack of employment of women directors, I would have said that’s impossible.”
In an interview with Variety, she said, “There is discrimination going on. I don’t think anyone is sitting in a room twirling mustaches. I think it’s more ingrained than that. I don’t believe directing is easy for anyone. It is not for the faint of heart, but it should not be harder for women to direct than men. It should be an equal playing field. This should not be an issue. But the fact that it’s being talked about so much has to be a good thing. We have to deal with the studio and networks that hire because that’s where change will take place. That’s who is making the hiring decisions.”
The presentation of the Schaffner Medal will take place at the AFI Life Achievement Award Gala Tribute to John Williams in Hollywood on June 9.
