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DIVERSE DIRECTORS. Lulu Wang poses for a portrait to promote
her film The Farewell during the Sundance Film Festival in Park
City, Utah. Among the 1,200 top films of the past 12 years,
female directors of color are in the single digits, with only
five black females, three Asian females, and one Latina,
according to a study by USC Annenberg’s Inclusion Initiative.
But the 2019 Sundance Film Festival proved to be a referendum on
the dismal industry statistics. (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)
From The Asian Reporter, V29, #04 (February 18, 2019), page
7.
Female directors of color find a spotlight at
Sundance
By Lindsey Bahr
AP Film Writer
PARK CITY, Utah — Hollywood has an abysmal track record of
hiring women of color to direct its biggest features. But at the
2019 Sundance Film Festival, they’ve been behind some of the
buzziest films and secured some of the biggest distribution
deals.
Gurinder Chadha’s Blinded by the Light has been bought by New
Line for $15 million and Nisha Ganatra’s Late Night, written by
and starring Mindy Kaling, has been acquired by Amazon Studios
for $13 million.
Lulu Wang’s The Farewell has also gone for $6 million to A24.
Wang says although she thinks of herself as a filmmaker first,
that she does feel a responsibility to represent because there
are still so few Asian-American female directors getting their
films made.
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