Historic Directors Guild Nom Draws Attention

By Jordan R. Young

HOLLYWOOD,CA (Hollywood Today) 1/26/2010–When the Directors Guild of America nominated Kathryn Bigelow for helming “The Hurt Locker,” she joined an elite group as the seventh woman to receive the honor in the feature film category. On a more exclusive note, she may be the first ever to compete with her ex-husband (James Cameron, director of “Avatar”) for the award.

There’s no question the industry veteran is a major contender for the DGA trophy—and the Oscar—with “Hurt” (which she co-produced) taking top prize at the Producers Guild of America Awards last Sunday.

“I think Bigelow deserves the win,” asserts Esther Sokolow, 18, a student filmmaker at Chapman University’s prestigious Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. “She made a fantastic, truthful, and raw war film that honestly felt like it was made by a man. It may be sexist to say that, but in a world dominated by males, Bigelow solidly holds her own with ‘The Hurt Locker.’ And I’d much rather see her take home the awards than Cameron. I’m rather sick of his arrogance.”

Bigelow’s DGA predecessors are Lina Wertmuller (“Seven Beauties”), Barbra Streisand (“The Prince of Tides”), Jane Campion (“The Piano”), Sofia Coppola (“Lost in Translation”), Valerie Faris (“Little Miss Sunshine”) and Randa Haines (“Children of a Lesser God”). Wertmuller, Campion and Coppola are the only women thus far Oscar-nominated for Best Director.

Hollywood’s Golden Age was a largely sexist one, though it didn’t start out that way. The DGA’s first female member, Dorothy Arzner, who directed Katherine Hepburn in the decidedly feminist “Christopher Strong,” was the sole woman to make a name for herself in the field during the 1930s; actress Ida Lupino did likewise in the 1950s, after stepping in to replace a director stricken with a heart attack on a film she’d co-written.

Women directors were commonplace in the silent era, when they also dominated the screenwriting field. Alice Guy Blache, who directed over 400 films, and Lois Weber, who made pictures about everything from racial prejudice to capital punishment, were the most accomplished; screenwriter Frances Marion, comedienne Mabel Normand and actress Lillian Gish were among the many to try their hand.

“The film industry was wide open to women [then] because it had yet to become departmentalized and because unions—always male dominated—had made no impact in the new industry,” according to film historian Anthony Slide, who made a documentary on the subject. “There was no union or guild to prevent a woman from being a cutter one week and a director the next.”

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