And the Winner Is...
by Detrea Moullett

For the first time in the history of the Academy Awards, the Oscar for best film director was awarded to a woman.   It’s astounding that it has taken 82 years for a woman to win in this category, considering how many women are directing films now.  There are so many talented female film directors, but I chose three to spotlight here.  I chose the history making Alice Guy Blache, Kathryn Bigelow because of her Oscar winand Gurinder Chadha, simply because I like her movies.


Alice Guy Blache, “Lost Visionary of the Cinema”

Alice Guy Blache, 1873-1968, was the first woman director and the first woman to own and run a film studio.  She actually was one of the first film directors, female or male, back when motion cameras and the first sound equipment were being developed.  According to McMahan in “Lost Visionary of the Cinema,” films at that time were short clips produced to sell the equipment, and Alice Guy was at the forefront of film.  She was working for the Gaumont Company in France as a secretary, and when she suggested to her boss that she create some short scenes she was given permission as long as it did not interfere with her secretarial duties.

Alice Guy Blache went on to become one of the first to create a fiction film, as most films at the time were what today would be considered documentaries. There has been some argument that she was the first to make fiction films, but there was another fiction film that was screened before her first film.  McMahan says that though she was “not the first person to make a fiction film, [she] was among the first to make the transition from the cinema of attractions to narrative cinema, and that earlier than previously supposed.  She was among the first to put the close up of the human face to dramatic use.”

She also was head of production at Gaumont for 11 years, and then after she was married she moved to the U.S. and started her own studio, Solax.  Blache started her movie career in 1896 and made her last movie in 1920.  Blache was not only a director, but a producer as well.


Gurinder Chadha, Cinematic Voice of Multicultural Britain

Gurinder Chadha may not be as prolific as Alice Guy Blache or as high profile as Kathryn Bigelow, but she’s one of my favorite film directors nonetheless.  Chadha was born in East Africa and has lived in England since she was two.  When she was sixteen, she wanted to be a truck driver.  In Eye on the World by Stone, during Chadha’s third year of university, “she went to India to work on a dissertation about images of Indian women in the media.  Stone went on to say that Chadha “realized how powerful the media is and how singularly powerful in defining someone like me, and how ill-equipped it is to talk about someone like me… I realized I wanted to get some control over those images.”

In “Eye on the World,” during an early interview with Chadha when her only full length movie was Bhaji on the Beach, she states that she is trying to “make sure that no one can generalize about [Indian women] in any way.”  Stone says that the film “examines the generation gap among Pakistanis in London, the relationship between men and women and the bigotry faced by an interracial couple.”  These themes recur throughout her work.  Bend It Like Beckham, for example, Jessminda is struggling with the expectations of her parents with regard to her future and the conflicts that arise from her love for her Irish soccer coach.

Chadha’s father, a Sikh, had to cut his hair and discard his turban because of the discrimination he faced in London.  He “bought a grocery shop and became a firm believer that his two daughters should have careers and be financially independent.”  The father in Bend it like Beckham struggles to accept that his daughter does not want the same things out of life that his culture deems acceptable, and realizes by the end of the movie that she does not have to accept racism as he did when he first moved to London.   In Bride and Prejudice, which is based off of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the father has five daughters.  One of these, Lalita, though unfortunately not as witty as Elizabeth Bennett, like Elizabeth wants a very different outcome for her life than what is expected of her.

With Bride and Prejudice, Chadha introduced a whole new group (Jane Austen fans) to Bollywood.  The colors and sounds of this movie are a vivid departure from the usual Austen redux, while Austen’s story works well with Chadha’s themes of generation gaps, relationships, and difficulties faced by interracial couples.


Kathryn Bigelow, Director of “The Hurt Locker”

With her recent win at the Academy Awards, Kathryn Bigelow catapulted herself (finally) into the public’s notice.  Jermyn & Redmond in “The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow says that Bigelow “has arguably become the most visible, enduring and accomplished woman film-maker yet to sustain a career in post-classical Hollywood.”  She studied painting at San Francisco Art Institute and the Whitney Museum of New York, and then changed to film since it seemed more accessible and less elitist.  She learned the craft at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Film. Her art training explains the “painterly way that Bigelow approaches all her work, from pre-production to post-production and the way that she is involved in every area of a film shoot.”

Jermyn & Redmond state that for “two decades Kathryn Bigelow has been both confounding and (re-)defining what it is to be a director in post-classical Hollywood, demanding with every new film release that her audience reassess who and what ‘Bigelow’ is.”  She is a woman working in the action genre, yet is capable of working outside those boundaries with a film such as Weight of Water.   However, there are themes that prevail in her work, no matter how disparate her work may seem.  Jermyn also notes in Cherchez la femme, “Qualities that lend themselves to identification as her “signature” include… a pronounced and self-conscious fascination with the cinematic gaze …; a curiosity with sub or counter-cultures; and a complex engagement with the dynamics of gender, putting the essences of ‘masculinity’ and ‘feminity’ under the spotlight while exploring an intriguing vision of ‘androgyny’ in which such essences begin to blur.”

While her command of and enthusiasm for cutting edge technology also breaks traditional female stereotypes, Jermyn & Redmond say that Bigelow “repeatedly denies the centrality of her gender to the style and radicality of her films and to her position within Hollywood cinema… Bigelow attempts to represent herself as an author before or outside of gender, as a film-maker for whom the category or label of female is irrelevant.”  The ideal of a film director deserving merit simply based on talent is certainly tantalizing.  But since it took the Academy almost a century to award a woman for best film director this ideal is a long way off.


Kathryn Bigelow “has demonstrated how the barriers and borders pertaining to gender, genre and film form in contemporary Hollywood are under constant negotiation.”  Gurinder Chadha focuses on breaking stereotypes of Indian women and interracial relationships.  Alice Guy Blache was a visionary and pioneer in film, as are many directors who happen to be women.  It should not have taken 82 years for a woman to win an Oscar for best film director.  Look for movies directed by women, buy movies directed by women, and watch movies directed by women.  Next time it won’t take so long.



References:

Jermyn, D. and Redmond, S. Eds.  The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow, 2003. Wallflower Press: London.

Jermyn, D.  Cherchez la femme: the weight of water and the search for bigelow in a bigelow film.  In The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow. Eds. Jermyn, D. and Redmond S.  2003. Wallflower Press: London.

McMahan, A.  Alice Guy Blache, Lost Visionary of the Cinema, 2002.  Continuum: New York and London.

Stone,  J.  Eye on the World:  Conversations with International Filmmakers, 1997. : Silman-James Press: Beverly Hills.