Meet Lorene Scafaria, Diablo Cody, Dana Fox, and Liz Meriwether. These four women are the female powerhouses in the male-dominated world of screenwriting. With such successful films as Juno (written by Cody) and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (Scafaria's latest screenplay) under their belts, they're taking Hollywood by storm and having as much fun as they can along the way.

They're the "boozy, all-woman answer to those close-knit gangs of Hollywood boy-men captured on screen in “Entourage” and embodied by the real-life Apatown, the industry moniker for filmmaker Judd Apatow’s coterie of actors and screenwriters including Paul Rudd, Jason Segel and Seth Rogen. But these women also work hard: Ms. Cody, Ms. Fox and Ms. Scafaria can command seven figures to write a movie that makes it into theaters with big stars. Ms. Meriwether (the others call her “the freshman”) is on her way to joining them."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/fashion/22fempire.html?pagewanted=1&_r...

"That’s no small achievement when you consider that among the screenwriters who are in steady demand for major projects, only about 20 are women. Don’t even try to credit their bankability to their looks. "

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Where were all the women? If you wondered that at any point during the everlasting evening of the Academy Awards, you weren’t alone. Over at Women and Hollywood, Melissa Silverstein noted that there were long periods during the awards show in which there wasn’t a woman to be seen onstage, asking if there isn’t a way to have more women involved in the ceremony.

The minimal female presence onstage, however, is rather in keeping with the dearth of female nominees and winners at this year’s Oscars. In taking a closer look at how female filmmakers fared this year, it appears they are just as rare as you'd suspect amongst the lists of the Academy's nominees and winners. However, there were some bright spots and surprises amongst the often predictable awards.

Courtney Hunt, for example. Her gritty film Frozen River earned her a nomination for best original screenplay, and a best actress nomination for Melissa Leo, making it the 'Cinderella Story' of this years Oscars. Frozen River, Hunt’s debut film, started out as a short. It won an award at the New York Film Festival, however that recognition didn’t make it any easier for her to find money to make her film into a feature. Consequently, the feature length film was made for approximately only $500,000. One can only hope that this recognition by the Academy won’t have her scrounging for funding for her next film.

I wrote a while back about Loveleen Tandan, billed as the co-director of Slumdog Millionaire, and the lack of recognition she seemed to be getting. Well Jan Huttner’s campaign to have Tandan nominated along with Boyle was not entirely a success. I say not entirely because while Boyle was the sole nominee and winner of the Best Director award, Huttner’s ‘Slumdog brouhaha’ did bring the issue into the spotlight at least. Over at her blog, the Hot Pink Pen, her last word on the matter is that the Oscars missed out on a chance to make history by putting Tandan on the ballot alongside Boyle. She points out the sad, though not entirely surprising, fact that in eighty years of the Academy Awards, only three women have ever been nominated for Best Director: Lina Wertmuellen, Jane Campion and Sofia Coppola. Not only that, but of the men who make up all the rest of the nominees, only two have not been white men. John Singleton and Ang Lee are the only two men of colour to have been given the nod, and Lee made history in 2006 when he broke the colour barrier and won the award, the first time it wasn't given to a white male. It’s enough to make you wonder why we see the Oscars as the be-all-end-all of film awards when their scope is often so obviously narrow.

But back on the brighter side, women did fare better in the Documentary and Short categories. Tia Lessin and Ellen Kuras were both nominated in the Feature Documentary categories, for Trouble the Water and The Betrayal, respectively. In the Documentary Short category, there were women amongst the directors of three of the nominated films: Irene Taylor Brodsky for The Final Inch, Margaret Hyde for The Witness – From the Balcony of Room 306, and Megan Mylan , who won the Oscar for her doc Smile Pinki. Elizabeth Marre was nominated alongside Olivier Pont for Manon on the Asphalt in the Short Film category, as well as Steph Green and Tamara Anghie for their short New Boy.

Among the more technical awards there were fewer female nominees, but Rebecca Alleway was nominated for her work as Set Decorator on The Duchess, and Revolutionary Road was given a nod for the work of Kristi Zea as Art Director and Debra Schutt as Set Decorator.

While there were no women amongst the Best Director nominees, three of the nominees for Best Actress were acknowledged for their work in films directed by women, and there were women amongst the producers for two of the Best Picture nominees, Kathleen Kennedy for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Donna Gigliotti for The Reader. It was Kennedy’s sixth nomination and Gigliotti’s second.

2008 was an exciting year for women in film, as I noted during the first dark days of January. Sadly, we didn’t see much of that excitement on the Academy’s stage. Even sadder is the fact that that isn’t much of a surprise. Most of the buzz around women at the Oscars usually tends toward that of the Best and Worst Dressed variety. But there’s always hope for next year. In the meantime, we can look out for those women like Courtney Hunt and Loveleen Tandan, whose Oscar nods will at least pave the way for bigger and better projects for them, and will also hopefully make the road a little easier for the female filmmakers following in their footsteps.

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Danny Boyle’s name is all over the headlines these days as he racks up award after award for Slumdog Millionaire, including Best Director at the Golden Globes and the Director’s Guild Award for outstanding directorial achievement in a feature film. The film is nominated for ten Oscars and is expected to sweep the awards, particularly Best Director after Boyle’s DGA win – usually a clear indicator of what will happen at the Oscars.

So, good for Boyle. But didn’t I read something about a co-director? I’ve been scanning the headlines for mention of Loveleen Tandan, the Indian woman who started out as Casting Director but was promoted by Boyle himself to the position of Co-director, and as far as the headlines go, she seems to be missing in action.

Tandan has worked primarily in casting when it comes to Hollywood, as Casting Director for such films as Tandoori Love, Brick Lane, Vanity Fair and Monsoon Wedding (on which she was also Second Assistant Director). She’s worked as the casting consultant for India on The Namesake and The New World, and Slumdog Millionaire marks her first credit as co-director. So how did she get from Casting Director to Co-Director?

After tirelessly searching out child actors to play the three main characters at three different times in their lives, Tandan suggested that, for the sake of authenticity, some of the film be shot in Hindi. Although wary at first, Boyle and writer Simon Beaufoy agreed, and she wrote the Hindi dialogue herself. As the time to begin filming approached, Boyle asked her to step in as co-director.

Boyle says that Tandan was so “indispensable to the complex Mumbai shoot” that he felt compelled to give her the co-director credit. He acknowledges the tremendous help he received in order to make the film culturally authentic, and the Hindi dialogue, though at first considered a risky move, is certainly one of the key components in achieving said authenticity.

So it’s the media and the awards folks that seem to be forgetting about Ms. Tandan. However, when Chicago film critic Jan Lisa Huttner started an online campaign to have Tandan nominated alongside Boyle for Best Director at the Golden Globes, it didn’t end quite as she’d planned. Tandan herself sought to end the campaign, calling the suggestion that she also be nominated inappropriate, and stating that she was highly embarrassed by the idea. She claims to be greatly honoured by the co-director credit and would like to leave it at that, it seems.

Apparently, co-director credits are not only very rare, but not even recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And the Director’s Guild even passed a bylaw in 1978 which states that there can be no more than one director per feature film. But! What about the Coen brothers, you may be asking, just as I did. It seems that waivers are occasionally granted, à la the Coen brothers themselves, who both won Best Director for No Country for Old Men. And this isn’t the first time controversy has arisen over the apparent shunning of a female co-director. Eyebrows were raised in 2004 when Fernando Meirelles was nominated for City of God, and his co-director Kátia Lund left in the dust. Tandan's contribution was recognized by the New York Critics Online Awards, which gave Best Director to "Danny Boyle with Loveleen Tandan." Not quite as high profile as the Oscars or the Globes, but it's a start.

So what to do if you just want to see credit given where it’s due? It seems that you can’t fight the battles of those who don’t want to be fought for. And maybe Tandan has a point, though I can’t help but feel she’s been perhaps a little too modest. But that’s just me. The good thing in all this is that her co-director credit is a major boost to her career, which was one of the reasons Boyle gave it to her in the first place. It’s the first step on the road to her own directing career. She has plans to write and direct her own film in Hindi, and has been receiving offers from near and far. So rather than crusading for honours she doesn’t wish to be a part of, I think I'll just be staying tuned for what she comes out with next.

And for those who haven't yet seen it, Slumdog Millionaire is playing this week at Empire Theatres.

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Now that we're safely into the wet and slushy days of January and most of us have an idea again of what day of the week it is, or are at least getting good at making the eight look like a nine in our cheque books, let’s take the inevitable look back at the year gone by. More specifically, let’s round up the big hitters and big stories when it came to women in film in 2008.

The noteworthy films directed by or written by women in 2008 run the gamut when it comes to the subjects they tackle. There are common threads, of course; both Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River and Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy deal with women in tough economic circumstances and the subsequent tough situations they find themselves in. As an interesting side note on that, Hunt apparently had some economic difficulty herself in finding funding when she refused to use a better known actress as her lead. She eventually found private funding, however, and Frozen River took the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2008 – a lesson, perhaps, in trusting our instincts. The ever-relevant and always complex subject of family, those we’re born to and those we make for ourselves, is dealt with in Gina Prince-Blythewood’s The Secret Life of Bees, as well as Rachel Getting Married, written by Jenny Lumet and directed by Jonathan Demme.

Two very different literary adaptations deal with love and seduction; Isabel Coixet’s Elegy is based on Philip Roth's novel about a professor who seduces his students, while the much anticipated Twilight, directed by Catherine Hardwicke and based on the novels by Stephenie Meyer, features a mortal teenage girl hopelessly in love with a vampire. Twilight, listed as #8 on IMDB’s list of the top-grossing films of the year, also takes the prize for being the highest grossing opening ever for a female director, somewhere in the ballpark of $70 million. Not surprising, considering the buzz around the film and the thousands of teenage girls who lined up to see it. (Have a look at the wonderful and hilarious Sarah Haskins' investigation into just what it is about vampires that has all those girls screaming.)

In other big budget, high-grossing films of the year, we have Mamma Mia!, which was directed by Phyllida Lloyd and which few of us really want to admit we not only saw, but hummed along to. Written by Catherine Johnson and based on the musical which incorporated songs from Swedish pop group ABBA (don't pretend you don't know), it earned Golden Globe nominations for both Meryl Streep’s performance and for Best Motion Picture in the comedy or musical category. In keeping with the music theme, on a slightly different note, is Cadillac Records, Darnell Martin’s film about a recording studio in 1950s Chicago and the lives and careers of such American legends as Muddy Waters and Etta James.

Other films of note dealt with the often male-dominated arenas of sport, with the story of a young Dominican baseball player trying to make it in the U.S. in Sugar, co-written and co-directed by Anna Boden, and war, with Kimberly Peirce’s Stop-Loss, about an Iraq war vet called back for duty.

In my personal look back at the films of 2008, there’s one more that didn’t make any of the lists or blogs or articles I saw, but that I think deserves mention. The U.K. film Unrelated, written and directed by Joanna Hogg, features a 40-something Englishwoman who joins a family of old friends and their friends at a rented villa in Tuscany. You almost want to hate these sort of posh people, blasé even about the stunning beauty of their surroundings, but you can’t help but sympathize with and be drawn in by the main character, a woman so clearly harbouring some secret pain of her own as she oscillates between spending her time with the mischievous and daring ‘Youngs,’ the children of her friends, and, more dutifully, with the ‘Olds,’ a category she seems uncomfortable belonging to. I had the pleasure of seeing this film in Edinburgh’s Filmhouse Cinema during the fall, an experience which would have been even better had I not spent the entire time thinking how much we need a Filmhouse Cinema of our own here in St. John’s (!).

However, the opportunity to see at least some of these films, if you haven’t already, is still available. Twilight is still screening right now at Empire Theatres, and MUN Cinema has just posted their winter schedule, which, lucky for you, features two of the above-mentioned films – Frozen River and Wendy & Lucy – among many other great offerings.

Have I missed anything? What were your favorite female-led films of 2008?

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