I remember those Director's Series DVDs — the ones compliling the work of A-List directors like Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Mark Romanek and others — and wondering when/if we would see ones for some of the deserving female directors out there, like Sophie Muller and Floria Sigismondi. Alas, the series never made it beyond a second installment...
An article over at Slate.com's XX Factor section this morning, written by Alyssa Rosenberg about women in music video, has me pinging back to that speculative exercise...
Rosenberg focuses on Melina Matsoukas — winner of this year's Best Video VMA for one of her many Rihanna videos, and currently getting props for her Solange "Losing You" clip and Christina Aguilera's "Your Body" — and uses her as a perfect example of a female video director who seems destined for bigger things (and bigger screens)
Here's a piece from the article:
It's easy to get frustrated about the state of female directing in film and television. The latest numbers from the Directors Guild of America, out this week, report that women directed just 15% of television episodes in the 2011-2012 season. The amount of work white women did stayed static, and the number of episodes women of color got to direct went up but the jobs for men of color shrank.
One ray of hope is Melina Matsoukas music videos. Just as many of the young male directors working in film and television today built their reputations in music videos, two new clips out this week from director Matsoukas give me some optimism that more women can use this form to develop the kind of unique visual style that will get the TV and movie honchos' attention.
And the summation:
These two videos [Solange and Christina] show off what Matsoukas can do in five minutes or less, in a medium where powerful female artists, unlike Hollywood executives, are keenly interested in speaking to women's fantasies. It would be nice to see her follow in the footsteps of David Fincher, who went from Madonna music videos to bloody, cerebral thrillers, or Marc Webb, who's directed Weezer and Green Day and is now working on his second Spider-Man movie. If would be awesome to see just what Matsoukas can do given more than three-minute increments at a time.
Visit Slate.com for the full article.
