Some of us just watch movies to watch movies. I don't care or know whether the director is a man or a woman 98% of the time.
Exactly. I seek out movies that I think that I will enjoy, not to satisfy a novelty quota. If I see a movie by a female director it's because I was interested in the movie, not because of the gender of a production member. There will be no women directors on my list simply because there is no woman director that I have seen a sufficient number of films by of a high enough quality to be considered. Take Kelly Reichardt for example. She did
Wendy and Lucy, which I think is a pretty extraordinary film, and if she did (and I saw) five films of
Wendy and Lucy-quality, she would be high on my list. Unfortunately, she only has three features to her credit and the other two don't really interest me and neither was particularly warmly received.
Take Kathryn Bigelow as another example. I've seen two films by her -
The Hurt Locker and
Strange Days. Now, while I loved
The Hurt Locker, I found
Strange Days to be almost shockingly awful. Knowing that she has a good amount of credits, I look through her filmography and I can't say I'm particularly excited by
Blue Steel or
K-19: The Widowermaker. She would have to have several more
Hurt Lockers up her sleeve (and no more
Strange Days) for me to consider her.
Even moving into more acclaimed female directors, I'm not too thrilled at this point. The one woman that seems to have the best chance at cracking my list (according to the acclaim on this board) is Agnès Varda, and even she doesn't really get me going. The only film by her that I've seen is
Cléo from 5 to 7 and I was rather unimpressed by it. Not that I thought it was bad, it was just OK. Looking through her filmography, the only two movies that I'm interested in irrespective of her being a woman are
The Gleaners & I and
Vagabond. Even if I really liked those movies she wouldn't make my list due to too much competition from old dead white guys (whom I enjoy for reasons that have nothing to do with them being old, dead, white, and/or guys).
The Gleaners & I and
Vagabond could potentially capture my imagination and make me want to see more Varda films, but if they are only as good as
Cléo from 5 to 7, that won't happen.
Incidentally, the whole thing is absurd. The female factor doesn't (or shouldn't) count for more than the "gay" factor or the "black" factor or any other novelty factor that should have nothing to do with why anyone watches anything. It is a pretty funny thought that much of the flake in this thread (and around the board) is about the lack of female representation and not something altogether different, because it shouldn't count for more than anything else. Someone could make the case that the concentration on female directors is distracting from the "real" issue of the underepresentation of Indian or Czechoslovakian or Hungarian cinema and filmmakers. How many people are skipping over
Marketa Lazarová so that they can see
Whip It and what does it matter?