San Diego University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film revealed in its annual Celluloid Ceiling report on Thursday, January 12, 2017 that in 2016, just 7% of the top 250 films were directed by women.
The number is a 2% drop from 2015’s 9% that had Sam Taylor Johnson’s Fifty Shades of Grey and Elizabeth Banks’s Pitch Perfect 2.
Some of the movies released in 2016 that were helmed by female directors include Jodie Foster’s Money Monster, Sharon Maguire’s Bridget Jones’s Baby, Mira Nair’s Queen of Katwe and Andrea Arnold’s American Honey.
The executive director of the center who anchored the report, Martha Lauzen expressed her displeasure over the low numbers to Variety saying, ‘I would say I’m dumbfounded. It is remarkable that with all of the attention and talk over the last couple of years in the business and the film industry, the numbers actually declined. Clearly the current remedies aren’t working.’
The report also showed that women accounted for 24 percent of all producers working on the top 250 films of 2016, a 2% decline from 2015.
They made up 17% of all editors, 4% of sound designers and 5% of all cinematographers.
34% of the films had no female producers, 79% lacked a female editor, 97% of films had no female sound designers, and 96% didn’t have a female cinematographer.
Dr Lauzen added that external force might be what the industry needs to really ensure the incorporation of women in the film-making process.
‘The industry has shown little real will to change in a substantive way.For real change to occur we may need some intervention by an outside source,’ she said.
However it looks like there will be some improvement in 2017 as movies like Patty Jenkins‘ Wonder Woman, Niki Caro‘s The Zookeeper’s Wife, Sofia Coppola‘s The Beguiled and Lucia Aniello‘s Rock That Body are already lined up for the year.
This post first appeared on TNS.
No Fields Found.