Support from other women in the industry appears to be key. It was Megan Ellison of Annapurna Pictures who funded the $40 million dollar budget of Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, while Amy Pascal of Sony Pictures was instrumental in releasing the film.
Hess, whose movie Napoleon Dynamite debuted at Sundance in 2004 and went on to gross $46 million on a budget of $400,000, told me that she was able to direct her Sundance feature Austenland because author Stephenie Meyer of the Twilight novels came on board as producer. The film, a comedy about a Jane Austen fan who goes to a British Austen-themed resort, was picked up at Sundance for approximately $4 million by Sony Pictures. It was one of the larger acquisitions at the festival and serves as an example of how indie films can be a pipeline for women directors into the studio system.
Hess said of working with Meyer and Shannon Hale, the author of the novel Austenland, "It was amazing to have three girls who have a lot in common; we're friends and we decided, 'Let's go make a movie.'" As for shooting a film with a female protagonist (Keri Russell), Hess explained, "I just wanted to do a movie for the girls. ... I love making movies about dorky boys, but there's a lot of dorky girls out there too." When I asked her why she wanted to direct, Hess said, bluntly, "I love the control, I love the power, I'm never going back."
Catherine Hardwicke is the ultimate example of a female director who transitioned from the indie world into the studio world. After her gritty 2003 film thirteen screened at Sundance and won her a Best Director award, Hardwicke went on to helm such studio features as Twilight, which grossed $392 million worldwide on a budget of $37 million, and launched a multi-billion dollar franchise.
And yet even with the success of that movie, subsequent Twilights were all given to male directors. After some frustration with the studio system, Hardwicke told me that she is making her next project as an independent film. "I hope that people are going to start to get excited about female power and the fact that 51 percent of the audience is women," she said. "We need more voices out there."
The next step for the independent film community may be to make a targeted effort to encourage women to direct the kinds of genres—sci-fi, thriller, war, action, fantasy, comic book/graphic novel—that would lead to more directing opportunities on Hollywood blockbusters. With women playing a greater variety of roles in the real world, it seems that compelling female-directed movies can be made in a broader range of genres without compromising women's unique voices.
This approach has certainly worked for Kathryn Bigelow. Even without industry awards recognition, her war film Zero Dark Thirty has successfully taken on some of the biggest issues of the day and even critics of the film's perceived politics admit that it is one of the best films of the year. Bigelow herself, who began as an independent filmmaker, appears to relish having her work spark so much debate. As Bigelow asserts in her recent Time cover story "Holding up a contemporary mirror is more attractive to me now than ever."
The movies are not just a mirror of reality—they shape reality, as well. For female directors today, the independent film world has become a proving ground, one that can transform mainstream Hollywood and shape the images, values, and stories that we live by.