Sundance Film Festival: Lynn Shelton and a wave of female auteurs ...

Image Credit: Eliza Truitt

Cannes, take note.

Call it feminist, call it a full shift in the zeitgeist, call it the seeds of a movie industry revolution, but the Sundance Film Festival has shoved Hollywood into the 21st century when it comes to the inclusion of women filmmakers.

Last May, the Cannes Film Festival?s competitive Palme D?Or line-up sparked controversy over its dearth of female directors. This year?s annual Sundance fest in Park City, Utah, which runs from Jan. 17-27, for the very first time features an equal number of male and female directors in its 16-film U.S. Dramatic Competition category, ranging from Lynn Shelton?s Touchy Feely, starring Rosemarie DeWitt (pictured in the exclusive photo above), to Liz Garcia?s The Lifeguard, featuring Kristen Bell, Francesca Gregorini?s Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes, starring Jessica Biel, Jerusha Hess?s Austenland with Keri Russell, Lake Bell?s In a World, also starring the actress-director, and Stacie Passon?s Concussion.

EW spoke with Shelton, Garcia, Gregorini, Hess, Passon, and Bell, as well as actresses Casey Wilson and June Diane Raphael, who co-wrote the saucy Sundance Midnight screening selection Ass Backwards, and Richard E. Robbins, who directed the CNN Films documentary Girl Rising, which will have scenes shown at Sundance. Absolute joy and excitement resonated through conversations with the filmmakers, who spoke about the bright future for women directors ? Kathryn Bigelow?s name may be the biggest out there these days, but many more are on the horizon.

?As a woman navigating through a traditionally male dominated field, I have often felt like more of an oddity than an artist,? says Shelton, whose Touchy Feely marks her third film at Sundance. ?In addition to a gratifying sense of justice in this ?Finally!? kind of moment, I also hope that this year?s gender parity among competition filmmakers at Sundance means we can look forward to a time (hopefully soon) when the quality and content of our work will be considered on its own terms without regard for what happens to be (or not to be) in our pants.?

Representing a wide range as far as the content of their films, this year?s Sundance crop of female-directed movies range from Touchy Feely?s??massage therapist (DeWitt) with an aversion to bodily contact ? to The Lifeguard?s Kristen Bell as a journalist who quits her job in New York and returns to her childhood home in Connecticut, beginning a new life as a lifeguard and precariously connecting with a teenage boy.

The Lifeguard director Garcia expressed glee at the number of women directors with films in competition at the festival ? a precedent to follow, and make the norm for younger women hungry to go into film and direct. ?I?m hoping this, the female directors of 2013, are a vanguard class. I hope this one?ll be remembered as the year the gates opened and equality in indie film became the norm. I?m a feminist. I?ve been annoyed and dismayed since my first day in L.A. by the sexism in the Hollywood film industry,? she says. ?So, to have my dream come true professionally ? getting a film into Sundance ? converge with a huge stride forward for women in film is a personal supernova. I?d like it on my headstone, please: ?Class of 2013.??

?I think that having eight female directors at Sundance this year is nothing short of profound,? she continues. ?Indie film influences mainstream film and mainstream film influences culture and culture influences how people perceive themselves. The butterfly effect from this year can be that young women start thinking of themselves as filmmakers. They start to make movies in whatever way they can. They value their voice, and they speak up about the female experience in the world. It?s so simple, it?s so basic, but it?s everything.?

In Lake Bell?s feature-film directing debut,?In a World,?she plays a struggling vocal coach reaching for her goal of becoming a voiceover artist.

Bell, who has worked with multiple women directors as an actress, chatted about her own experience of being supported by other women, including Shelton, versus being alone in the fray.

?They often speak of the men?s club vs. no-lady?s club. My personal experience has been a lot of support from women,? she says. ?Lynn Shelton is awesome. She?s someone that when I was making my movie I went up to her, after having a martini, and told her, ?I just think you?re great.? I was greeted with a warm reception. Now we?re together in this competition, and she?s a friendly face. I feel like when I?m directing I?m home, and well suited to my happiness, and how I want to spend the rest of my life.?

But Bell also noted the Catch-22 of bringing so much attention to gender at Hollywood-focused festivals, when in other parts of the world women suffer under sexism-based regimes, and filmmaking is not even a faint twinkle of an option for women.

?I often struggle with the idea of trying to force it. If there were no female directors at Cannes, then so be it. And if there are a record number of female directors at Sundance, so be it. If I have a daughter, one day, I know we?re in a very good place,? she says. ?Where we sit, and our small industry, against bigger problems in the world, we?re doing pretty well.?

Source: http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/01/07/sundance-zeitgeist-women-filmmakers/

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