DIRECTING WORKSHOP GETS GRANT

The American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women resumes this summer after a two-year hiatus, thanks to a $60,000 challenge grant from “Aliens” producer Gale Anne Hurd and her efforts to raise the matching amount.

The institute started the 18-month workshop program in 1974 to help women working in film, television or theater gain directing experience. The workshop shut down in 1985 after fund-raising efforts fell $120,000 short.

Hurd, 31, who lives in the Hollywood Hills with her director-writer husband, James Cameron, said she learned about the workshop’s troubles in a newspaper article.

She said that the first five workshops produced “so many of the graduates (who) have come to be the leaders in the television and film world, and it seemed to me that the industry ought to continue the kind of successful research and development program that had met with such successful results.”

The program’s 73 graduates include a number of successful directors: Randa Haines, who directed “Children of a Lesser God” and the TV movie “Something About Amelia”; Lynne Littman, who directed “Testament,” and Karen Arthur, who won an Emmy for a “Cagney & Lacey” episode and who has directed a number of TV and feature films, including the miniseries “Crossings” and the 1975 film “Legacy.”

Other graduates include Lee Grant, Susan Oliver, Nancy Malone, Lesli Linka Glatter, Tamar Simon Hoffs, Nessa Hyams and Marsha Mason.

Institute Director Jean Firstenberg said that with the new funding “we are new going forward very expeditiously. . . . It’s a real success story.” The selection of this year’s workshop members should begin in July, she said.

Though no applications have been sent out, the workshop has received more than 1,000 calls from prospective participants, said Cathryn Boxberger, institute director of communications.

After making her $60,000 challenge grant in December, Hurd, who also produced “The Terminator,” helped solicit matching gifts from other producers, entertainment industry law firms, foundations and individuals.

The largest matching gift was $25,000 from former Monkee Michael Nesmith, who produced the films “Repo Man,” “Timerider” and “Square Dance,” as well as video and television projects. Producer Ted Field gave $10,000.

The Hunt Foundation in Pittsburgh gave $7,000. Gulf & Western, which owns Paramount Studios, chipped in $5,000. And Cameron, who directed “Aliens” and “The Terminator,” donated $2,000.

Hurd believes the entertainment industries are reluctant to fund the workshop because it calls attention to the paucity of women directors.

There is a tendency to ignore the problems women directors face in getting work, Hurd said, and programs that focus on these problems have a hard time raising funds.

“If you ignore it, then the problem doesn’t exist. If you address it, perhaps that means it does,” she said.

According to a 1980 survey conducted by the Directors Guild of America, women directed 14 of the 7,332 feature films released from 1950 to 1980 and 115 of the 65,600 hours of prime-time television shows produced in the same period.

Since that study, the fortunes of female directors have changed. In 1986, women directors worked on 36 feature films, out of 297 produced in the United States that year, and 25% of daytime television programs. But the films women have directed are “still less than 8% of the total,” the institute’s Boxberger said, and women “still have difficulties getting into prime time.”

This year, 1,362, or 16.6%, of the guild’s 8,224 members are women, including theater directors, second-unit directors and other related positions. By comparison, roughly 20% of the Writers Guild of America’s members are women.

Hurd, who plans to continue her fund-raising efforts, said the key to maintaining the workshop for women directors will be getting “fairly stellar people who are committed” to keeping it alive.

“This program has had great success, but it is part of an overall program (of the institute’s workshops). The other AFI workshops do not exclude women, but this is the only one that was directly designed for them. So I think that without the focus of attention on this . . . people didn’t even realize that it wasn’t continuing,” Hurd said.

“You know, it really does boil down to someone deciding to take it on.

“Things have been changing, and I really have to applaud the work of the executives in allowing more projects . . . and indeed financing (more women directors). But it’s been slow in coming. “