Something a bit different here, but something I've been mulling over the past week or so. After watching Bright Star last week I was looking over what I've been watching this year and I realised the three pieces of direction I think are the best so far have all been by women - Jane Campion for Bright Star, then a couple from Venice, Francesca Comencini (White Space) and Shirin Neshat (Women Without Men). Going further down the line if I went as far as ten achievements in direction, half of my current list would be female directors, with Lone Scherfig and Andrea Arnold as well for really elevating and being the best parts of their films (An Education and Fish Tank, respectively). Now I didn't think too much of it and just thought "huh, weird", but I've been seeing a few comments here and there about women directors (even in interviews with Campion) and started to think of the lack of acclaim from the industry, particularly the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: the oscars.

Now the oscars famously have only ever nominated three women for best director - Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties (x_x), Campion for The Piano and Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation. The BAFTAs are the same, also only with three, Coppola, Campion and Valerie Faris, who co-directed Little Miss Sunshine. Throughout the years people have always used the lack of nominees as evidence of bias (and that was always the case with similar accusations from everything from black performers to foreign language films). Sexism, racism, xenophobia, well they do say that all any award or poll does is tell you who voted for them :D.

That of all people it should be me to play apologist for the oscars does rather go against my sensibilities, I do think their aversion to embracing foreign language films as anything other than a token gesture is narrow-minded and self-important (BAFTA at least shows how an awards giver can balance out domestic bias, coupled with an international flavour that is not basically restricted to a common language) but on the race issue, nowadays it would actually be unthinkable for AMPAS to not nominate at least one black performer (the last time that happened was 2000). Which leads on to the more problematic question of why women can't.

On first glance, it seems to simply be the fact that the numbers are against them. Every year thousands of members are sent dvd screeners of the films and it is impossible to get nominated without them (At the BAFTAs Million Dollar Baby relied on 3 theatrical screenings and became not only the only Oscar winner this decade not to get Best Picture nominated, but it didn't get a *single* nomination). Somewhere between 50-70 films try their hand and are sent to voters each year, but less than 10% of those films are by female directors so right off the bat the odds have been shrunk.

Yet the problem with that is it applies as well on the race issue and even in years where it seems as if they're under-represented, there's nothing really of quality or there's too much competition people like Terrence Howard (2005) and Ruby Dee (2007) manage to find a following and get major attention. Also, while AMPAS may severely underlook foreign language films when you look at how many actually bother to send dvds the amount of ones with nominations, and major ones isn't too discouraging. With the women's films though it's not the case as since Coppola's nomination the vast majority get nothing at all, and less than one in five even get two nominations from the oscars. The way their voting system works (requiring not just sending the films out but aggressively campaigning and advertising them) obviously doesn't help but why does it hurt the womens' films more than anything else? Is the sexism that deep?

At the voting level, I'd suggest not - to get a best director nomination, usually you have to have made a film that they have nominated in best picture (at the oscars the rule of thumb is 4/5 best picture nominees will have their corresponding directors nominated, then one wildcard, usually either foreign, arty or technically brilliant snaps up the final spot) and they seem to not really care who made the film as long as they liked it that much. But what kind of films do the oscars go for at this level? There's a sliding scale, going from Hollywood prestige pieces, to low budget films from the "indie" branches of the major studios, to other English language films (usually British), then and only if all of those have been exhausted comes the foreign language fare and then comes the *real* independent films. You don't get nominations without studio backing at some stage down the line and the sexism comes right at the heart in that as Christopher Doyle once said "the only thing they do in the U.S. is look at the box office. It’s not a film industry anymore, it’s an accounting department".

It's no surprise that the three women who did get oscar nominations did so with films outside the Hollywood box which naturally dominates the oscars. Seven Beauties is an Italian production, The Piano an international co-production and Lost in Translation was produced by Coppola's father's company so their opportunities to shine were not given through Hollywood and succeeded within that community in spite of it. They also *all* wrote their own scripts, as did Courtney Hunt, Sarah Polley and Tamara Jenkins, the only women whose films received acting nominations in the last two years. Therein lies the problem, Steven Spielberg doesn't write his own scripts, Clint Eastwood doesn't, Martin Scorsese does a lot of work on them but most of the time gets given something meaty to work on and doesn't have to create it all himself.

Until the powers that be in the major studios start trusting women with their investment and give them a chance to tackle the best material then that will cut their awards chances off at the knees more than the system which gives them does. When did a woman last get, say, a Ron Harwood script, or a Charlie Kaufman screenplay to sink her teeth into? Last year all the academy had to go on from women was Frozen River, Then She Found Me, Mamma Mia and The Black Balloon. Elegy and Wendy & Lucy could only afford to screener the acting branch for a hopeless outside shot at a nomination. Put in those terms, it's no wonder AMPAS only has three female directorial nominees. I nominate Céline Sciamma for Water Lilies in 2007, I give Andrea Arnold the win for Red Road in 2006, what do these two films have in common? Neither are American and neither had any kind of presence at the oscars because they weren't campaigned. For these awards, the studio is king, and it doesn't even have to be in the original financing of the project, but in the distribution and marketing. As long as Hollywood shuts the women out and make women seemingly only fit for rom-coms, or the deliberately anti-feminist types like Kathryn Bigelow, then it doesn't matter how they come to vote for awards, too many doors have already been shut.