For International Women’s Day (or the day after) I wanted to create a well rounded list of women directors from the 90’s that would amaze and astound you, but that wouldn’t be the case. Creating this list made me mad because it shouldn’t have been this difficult to pick out five women who had made a handful of films, but after doing some research I learned that in 1998, only 9% of feature film directors were women. So while many film fans were complaining that Martin Scorcese had not yet won a best director Oscar, and I was one of them, we should’ve been yelling that only five women directors* had been nominated for the award in total. Five! And of that handful, not a single one was a woman of color.**
*Lina Wertmuller (1977), Jane Campion (1994), Sophia Coppola (2003), Katheryn Bigelow (2010), and Greta Gerwig (2018)
**Ava Duverney was nominated in the Best Documentary Feature for a film that she directed.
As you can see, only one of those nominations was from the 90’s, but that doesn’t mean good work wasn’t being done. In the years since, the recognition has slowly been happening, with Bigelow even winning the Best Directing trophy in 2010, but overall the directing opportunities haven’t been overflowing. According to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, the percentage of women directors in 2019 was only 13%. Sadly, the percentages for women representation in producing, writing, editing and cinematography is equally small. It wasn’t until 2018 that a woman was nominated for an Academy Award in cinematography, Rachel Morrison for Mudbound.
There’s work to be done. For myself, I’m going to seek out more female directed films, especially from women of color. Hopefully a nomination for Nomadland’s director Chloe Zhao will spur more conversation around the topic.
Kathryn Bigelow
Any list of top directors period from the 90’s needs to include Kathryn Bigelow. From horror projects like Near Dark, to action movies like Point Break, to Sci-Fi dystopian flicks like Strange Days, she always brought quality to the project. She’d also be included on the current list if I didn’t want to make room for others because she continues to do exciting work with her Academy Award winning film The Hurt Locker as well as Zero Dark Thirty.
Jane Campion
With the Academy Award winning film The Piano, Jane Campion burst onto the scene and continued to deliver quality work throughout the 90’s and beyond, focusing nearly all her work on the trials, tribulations, and successes of women with films such as The Portrait of a Lady, Holy Smoke, and In the Cut.
Allison Anders
Somehow I managed to watch Gas, Food, Lodging when it was first released to video and it managed to stick with me so much that when Quentin Tarantino announced this anthology film Four Rooms, it was her segment that excited me the most. Besides those two films she would also direct Mi Vida Loca, Grace of My Heart, and has worked continually in the decades since, mostly in television, having lent her talents to Sex and the City, Riverdale, Southland, and The Affair.
Nora Ephron
Would there be romantic comedies without the work of Nora Ephron? After writing acclaimed films such as Silkwood, Heartburn, and When Harry Met Sally, Ephron was given the opportunity to direct her own scripts and in turn gave us the underrated This is My Life and the once, well twice, in a lifetime pairing of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan for the wonderful Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail. Sadly Ephron passed away in 2012, but not before giving us one more gem in Julie & Julia.
Antonia Bird
Probably the least known name on this list, I included her because she directed one of my favorite “out there” films that I first discovered on video, Ravenous. A frontier survival film much like Dances with Wolves, only add in some Wendigo, it’s bonkers and brilliant and was a far departure from the other films of hers, the charming Mad Love (with favorite Drew Barrymore) and thoughtful Priest.
Bonus Filmmakers whose films you need to watch during the rest of the month.
Karyn Kusama: The Invitation, Jennifer’s Body, Destroyer
Lana and Lily Wachowski: Bound, The Matrix, Cloud Atlas
Jennifer Kent: The Babadook, The Nightingale
Kelly Richardt: First Cow, Certain Women, Meek’s Cutoff
Chloe Zhao: Nomadland, Songs My Brothers Taught Me
Greta Gerwig: Lady Bird, Little Women
Sofia Coppola: The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Marie Antionette
Ava Duvernay: Selma, 13th, A Wrinkle in Time
Andrea Arnold: Fish Tank, American Honey
Miranda July: Kajillionaire, Me You and Everyone We Know
Anna Boden: Mississippi Grind, Captain Marvel
Patty Jenkins: Wonder Woman, Monster
