We’ve talked a lot about the studies done to determine just how much of a gender gap there is when it comes to female directors in Hollywood (Answer: a big one). Now, those studies are being distilled into a more entertaining form and being delivered to the masses in the form of a documentary series.
The 4%: Film’s Gender Problem is set to debut on Epix on March 8th, which happens to be International Women’s Day. Broken up into six short documentaries, each about five minutes long, the film (which will also be released in a half-hour version after these installments) will lay out the research done in the three-year study by the USC Annenberg Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative, which revealed that across 1,300 top-grossing films from 2002 to 2014, only 4.1% of all directors were women. Even “better,” in the past 85 years, just four women have been nominated for Best Director at the Oscars with The Hurt Locker’s Kathryn Bigelow the only woman to ever win (#OscarsSoMale).
The 4% will run on Epix throughout the month of March, and will include interviews ranging in tone from fun to outright anger with creators and performers like Jill Soloway, Paul Feig, Toni Collette, Anjelica Huston, Catherine Hardwicke, Judd Apatow, America Ferrara, Amy Heckerling, Julie Delpy, Lake Bell, Mira Nair, Amanda Peet, Patricia Clarkson, Mo’Nique, Anne Sweeney, James Franco, producer Christine Vachon, Fifty Shades of Grey director Sam Taylor-Johnson and Kristen Wiig among others.
This is an important project, if only because not everyone cares to read dry academic studies and statistics. If this project can spread the word to a more mainstream audience, perhaps it can illuminate the problem enough for more people to start demanding better from their content. One can only hope, right?
(via Deadline Hollywood, image via Shutterstock)
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