Summary of story from BTL News, January 24, 2012

The Sundance Institute yesterday announced a collaborative inquiry with Women in Film, Los Angeles, into the lack of independent women filmmakers.

“Sundance Institute has long believed in the value of diverse storytellers contributing to a vibrant culture,” said Keri Putnam, executive director.

“Looking at representation of women filmmakers is an important activity in that context, and we wanted to start our inquiry in our own organization.

“What we’ve already found is that if statistics tell us a story, the story being told about women filmmakers today needs work.”

Only 16.9% of the 3,879 feature films in both narrative and documentary categories submitted to the 2012 Sundance Film Festival were directed by women.

While the number of films made by women as directors and producers is higher in the independent film arena, and particularly among documentary films, there remains a marked disparity between the numbers of feature length films completed by male versus female filmmakers.

Sundance Institute and Women In Film plan to take a fresh look at the issue, and harness the creative programs of both institutions to understand and work toward addressing these challenges.

Looking at distribution statistics regarding the 250 top-grossing films released 2010, only 7% were directed by women, 10% written by women and 24% produced by women.

Early research shows that when the number of women in behind-the-camera roles increases, so do the roles for women in front of the camera and so does the content interesting to women and girls worldwide.