Birds Eye View.

"Birds Eye View [March 8 through 14] was not set up to define a woman's vision, only to encourage and promote it," writes Rachel Millward in the Financial Times. "Critic Mark Kermode once told me: 'When I think of great films by women directors, I think of the incredible violence of Baise-moi; I think of the full-blooded horror of Near Dark; I think of the dark nightmarish dream-like quality of a film like Ratcatcher; I think of the just insane explicitness of a film like Anatomy of Hell.' Women's films run the gamut of theme and mood, just as men's films do."

Updated through 3/7.

That said: "Only 7 per cent of British filmmakers are women and only 12 per cent of screenwriters. The figures are similar in America, and only three female directors - Sofia Coppola, Jane Campion and Lina Wertmüller - have been nominated for Oscars. There is, as an American journalist put it, a 'celluloid ceiling,'" writes Kate Kellaway in the Observer As to why this is so, and what might be done about it, Kellaway hosts a roundtable discussion with Gurinder Chadha, Vicky Jewson, Gaby Dellal, Antonia Bird and Carine Adler.

Kellaway also opens a discussion in the Guardian's Arts blog, asking, "[W]hat needs to happen for more women to feel that directing a film is a possible - and potentially fantastic - future career?" In another entry, Rachel Millward offers four suggestions.

Back to the festival: Cath Clarke has a preview for Time Out.

Update, 3/7: Charlotte Cripps has a preview for the Independent.

Posted by dwhudson at March 5, 2007 6:38 AM