Film / TV
Fabric Origin Spotlights Women Directors
Story Highlights
This year Fabric celebrates the 96th Academy Awards, and the three films with female directors that have been nominated. Only the director of Past Lives, Justine Triet, was also nominated for Best Director. Although women have been involved in the film industry from the Silent Era through to present day, it has only been in the past two decades that we’ve seen more female directors at the helm of movies.
According to Wikilist, between 1911 and 1969 there were only 69 movies directed by women, a shockingly small percentage of 0.0553% of the 124,724 movies produced during this time period1. Between 1970 and 1999, 135 films were directed by women, an increase to 0.11% of all films. Since 2000 to the present day (March 2024) we have had 135 features directed by women and a marginal gain to 0.162% of the 317,779 films released.
Of all these movies, women have only been nominated for Best Director 9 times (including this year) and only 3 have won. The first time a woman was nominated for Best Director happened in 1976 with Lina Wertmuller and her film Seven Beauties.
Evidently, there is still a long way to go to reach directorial parity in the film industry, but in the meantime we’re choosing to celebrate the women directors that have brought us to today.
As a part of that celebration, Fabric Origin has created a list of 100+ movies directed by women. The “Women in the Director’s Chair” collection (ID = 1758) can be used to spotlight women directors, with perfect timing for the Academy Awards on March 10th and to honour Women’s History Month. You can also check out the Women’s History Collection (ID = 1244) of movies and TV shows featuring women in powerful roles.
For more information about implementing Collections from Fabric Origin’s extensive movie and TV metadata, go to the developer portal here.
