Director Kathryn Bigelow: One Of Only Four Female Directors Ever Nominated For An Oscar

UPDATE: Katheryn Bigelow is first woman to win Oscar for Best Director in 82-year history of the awards. Brava Kathryn Bigelow! We love you.

Kathryn Bigelow will make Oscars history if she becomes the first woman film-maker to win Best Director in the 82-year history of the Academy Awards.

But Bigelow's expected victory for her Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker masks a startling gender imbalance within the movie industry that researchers have dubbed the "Celluloid Ceiling."

Bigelow, 58, is one of only four women to be nominated for the best director prize, following Lina Wertm|ller for Seven Beauties in 1976, Jane Campion for The Piano in 1993; and Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation in 2003.

The paucity of female film-makers to earn recognition at the Oscars reflects an industry-wide trend, according to Martha Lauzen, head of the Center for the Study of Women In Television and Film at San Diego State University.

Lauzen's annual report on women in the movie industry recently suggested that of the top 250 highest grossing films in North America in 2009, only seven per cent were directed by women, a drop of two per cent from a year earlier.

The imbalance is also reflected in other areas of the movie business. In 2009 only eight per cent of credited writers on the top 250 films were female.

"There is a lot of denial regarding women's current place in the movie business," Lauzen said. "I've heard editors of major trade publications as well as the heads of studios simply say there is no problem.

"They'll either say no celluloid ceiling exists or they'll rattle off four or five names of high profile directors who happen to be women and then with a shrug say 'See - there's no problem.' Well that's incredibly misleading.

Click here for the full story by:

Published in The Telegraph
Photo Credit: Paul Grover