Wednesday, June 3, 1998
Despite history, female directors take spotlight on silver
screen
FILM: Festival furthers women’s bid for equality in
male-dominated field
By Sabrina Solanki
Daily Bruin Contributor
Though actresses have long been on-screen icons, a tally of
household names behind the scenes (Steven, Spike, Milos, Ang) is
suspiciously void of female names.
This month’s US magazine reports that, in 1996, only 10 percent
of the feature film directors in the Director’s Guild of America
were women. This was actually an improvement over 1985’s statistics
of just 4 percent.
But, for the first week of June, the UCLA Film and Television
Archive in association with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences and the Directors Guild of America will bring attention to
women’s films by presenting the Los Angeles International Women’s
Film Festival, which began Tuesday with a sneak preview of Randa
Haines’ "Dance With Me."
Festival program director Andrea Alsberg says, "You’ll feel much
more from these films, they will make you think. Every single one
of these films made me want to discuss them for hours."
In addition to the festival’s eight films, a symposium Thursday
will promote discussion. Five of the eight directors will meet for
a question-and -answer session with the audience. The audience will
be able to ask the filmmakers about being women directors in the
film industry and about the films themselves.
With a preponderance of women involved, this festival may seem
to be geared toward a female audience. But the event’s coordinators
say that the wide range of themes and topics which these films
touch upon make them interesting to any individual.
"When you categorize or place a mark on an event like this one,
people might tend to think it’s mainly for women," Alsberg
explains. "But it’s not – everybody should come to this festival
because the films are so diverse."
The range includes Nadia Fares’ "Honey and Ashes," which looks
at the constraints of Arab women caught between tradition and
modernity while trying to take control of their lives. Then from
Australia comes Samantha Lang’s "The Well," a drama about the
psychosexual relationship between two women. And Ann Hui’s
"Eighteen Springs," from Hong Kong, is a Chinese melodrama of
subsuming desire to family obligation.
These rare international selections are only a few of the films
that will screen at the festival. Because some weren’t picked up
for distribution in the United States, the festival will be the
only chance for the audiences to see them on screen.
Alsberg points out that they are different from the mainstream
films that Bruins see in Westwood. But she maintains, "The films
are character driven and complex."
Not only are the films character driven, but they have strong
female protagonists. That does not necessarily mean that the
characters or films are feminist though.
"Feminist is a word that is incredibly hard to define," Alsberg
says. "I don’t know if I would categorize these films as feminist
even though I am quite certain most of the directors would consider
themselves as feminists."
Semantics aside, the festival will, more importantly, unveil a
group of dedicated and talented women directors in a time where men
still dominate the statistics.
FILM: The Los Angeles International Women’s Film Festival plays
through Sunday. The remaining films will be screened at UCLA’s
James Bridges Theater. The Symposium on Thursday will take place at
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at 8 pm. For more
information, call (310) 206-FILM.