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Women’s cinema is a variety of topics bundled together to create the work of women in film.  This can include women filling behind the scene roles such director, cinematographer, writer, and producer while also addressing the stories of women and character development through screenplays. 

Women’s cinema recognizes women’s contributions all over the world, not only to narrative films but to documentaries as well.  Recognizing the work of woman occurs through various festivals and awards, such as the Sundance Film Festival.

“Women’s cinema is a complex, critical, theoretical, and institutional construction,” Alison Butler explains.  The concept has had it’s far share of criticisms, causing some female filmmakers to distance themselves from it in fear of be associated with marginalization and ideological controversy.

Statistics

A study done by USC Annenburg researched what it meant to be a female in the film industry, no matter if they were working behind the scenes or were fictional characters. USC Annenburg looked at two test groups for films, the top 100 films every year from 2007 to 2015 and the top 100 films in 2015. 

For the top 100 films in 2015, women were leads and co-leads in 32 of them, while of the 32 films, only 3 of them included a race other than Caucasian.  Out of the thousands of speaking roles, only 32 characters were LGBT and of those characters, 40% of them were racially diverse.  Female characters were also three times more likely to be seen in a sexual context.

Behind the scenes had similar statistics to the female fictional characters.  Female directors, writers, and producers made up 19% of the 1,365 people that it took to create the top 100 films in 2015.  The percentage of female writers (11.8%) and producers (22%) can be seen as high compared to female directors (7.5%).  Of the 7.5% of female directors, three of them were African American and one was Asian.

For the top 100 films every year from 2007 until 2015, of the 800 films, 4.1% were directed by females.

Documentaries

While there is still a gap between the percent of female and male filmmakers, women tend to be more involved in documentary films.  There is a higher percentage of women directing documentaries than women directing narrative films.

In the history of the Academy Awards, there have been 11 female documentary directors that have won Oscars.  Barbara Kopple received two of those awards with her films Harlan County, USA (1977) and American Dream (1991).  Yvonne Smith’s film Adam Clayton Powell (1990) was nominated as well, making her the first African American producer to be nominated for ‘Best Documentary Feature’.

Celluloid Ceiling

The Center of the Study of Women in Television and Film has dedicated 18 years to the study of women in the film industry. An annual report is created, discussing how women have contributed to as filmmakers. Most of the findings from the research shows that, statistically, it says the same from year to year.

The group also contributes their time to creating articles discussing how women are viewed in film, not only as filmmakers but as fictional characters as well.