MOVIES : The Invisible Women : In Hollywood’s rush to embrace black filmmakers, women directors are being left out, but some expect that picture to change

In the world of independent film, director Julie Dash is drawing a strong following as a fresh and innovative voice. Her ambitious “Daughters of the Dust”--set on the Sea Islands off the South Carolina coast in the early 1900s--earned top honors for its lush cinematography at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. But Dash can’t even get a Hollywood agent. In August, friends sponsored a screening of the film on Sony Pictures’ Culver City lot--hoping for a turnout of influential insiders. They didn’t show.

Romell Foster-Owens has directed or written TV specials, stage plays and an independent feature film. She has won awards from the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and the NAACP. But when Foster-Owens went looking for a talent agent not too long ago, a representative of one of Hollywood’s leading agencies bluntly told her: “We already have one black woman director, and she’s not getting any work.”

With the box office success of such black-themed films as “New Jack City” and “Boyz ‘N the Hood,” the Hollywood establishment is hot on the trail of more than a dozen African-American directors. Not one of them, however, is a woman. While pictures of these black men grace the covers of magazines, their female counterparts--as one put it--”can’t get arrested.” The town’s top talent agencies wine and dine young white men fresh out of film school who have no more to their names than one short film; black women who have made award-winning, full-length features can’t get their phone calls returned.

“We’re very concerned that there are no women voices,” says Warrington Hudlin, president of the Black Filmmakers Foundation and co-director of Eddie Murphy’s upcoming film “Boomerang.” “It’s the same reason that there are so few white women directors. Sexism is more powerful in Hollywood than racism. There are actually more black male directors than white women directors.”

Hollywood executives say it will probably take one or two black female directors making commercially successful movies outside the studio system to enable others to break into the big leagues. Columbia Pictures President Frank Price notes that studio gates opened to black men once Spike Lee (with “She’s Gotta Have It”), the Hudlin brothers (with “House Party”), and Robert Townsend (with “Hollywood Shuffle”) had turned out independently financed hits.

“I suspect it’s a matter of time and the right script,” adds Price, who greenlighted “Boyz ‘N the Hood.” “Debbie Allen and Neema Barnette, for example, have learned the craft. They have the talent. Now it’s a matter of coming up with the right project.”

The omission of black women from studio’s director lists comes at a time when many African-American women are troubled by their on-screen images. For the most part, they complain, black women are invisible. And in some of the recent black-directed films where they do appear, black female characters are the targets of a raw brand of sexism portrayed as a part of inner-city life. In “Boyz ‘N the Hood,” for example, teen-age men routinely refer to women as “ho’s” (short for whores) and “bitches”--clearly a commentary on these attitudes by director John Singleton but nevertheless distressing to some women.

Oddly enough, some of the most prominent names on the American literary scene are black women--writers like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and Gloria Naylor. But their stories rarely are produced as features or TV movies, and when they are, the studios don’t tap black women to direct them. Walker’s “The Color Purple” was directed by Steven Spielberg. The miniseries based on Naylor’s book, “Women of Brewster Place,” was “directed by everyone other than African-Americans,” as one black filmmaker put it.

Probably the African-American woman closest to making a major studio film is actress-choreographer-TV director Debbie Allen, who burst onto the scene as the star and director of the TV series “Fame” and most recently turned industry heads by transforming the lackluster “Cosby” spinoff--”A Different World”--into a socially relevant, and comically inspired, prime-time hit.

Allen is set to direct “Going to the Chapel” (which does not have a distributor yet) for producer Jerry Tokofsky. It’s the story of a New York sports reporter who meets his opposite in a tough-talking woman cab driver.

At Paramount, Allen is developing “Goodbye Papa,” a comedy about a funeral that was inspired by her own family’s gathering after the death of her father. At Warner Bros., she and producer Suzanne De Passe are developing “Lonely Teardrops,” the story of Motown singer Jackie Wilson. Together with producer Ed Pressman and “A Different World” writer Susan Fales, Allen is developing a period piece called “Paris Noir.”

Like Allen, the other black women trying to break into the competitive world of feature films typically are at least a decade older than such new Hollywood finds as 23-year-old John Singleton (“Boyz”) or 19-year-old Matty Rich (“Straight Out of Brooklyn”). That in itself is an obstacle in youth-crazed Hollywood. And they’ve been quietly toiling away inside more hospitable environments--stage, independent films, or even prime-time TV. “They’ve gotten stymied at a certain level,” says Debbie Zimmerman, executive director of Women Make Movies, a New York organization that distributes films by and about women.

Barnette, a creative arts teacher from New York who got her first big break when she studied at the American Film Institute, has directed episodes of “The Cosby Show,” “China Beach,” “Hooperman,” and “Frank’s Place,” as well as TV commercials, music videos and theater. Columbia Pictures has hired Barnette to write, with her husband, writer-actor Reed McCant, a script called “The Guide.” Barnette is also expected to direct. She may also direct a project written by Columbia’s young star, Singleton.

Other TV directors who want to direct features include Anita Addison, executive producer and director of the NBC show “Sisters.” Addison also has directed “Knots Landing” episodes, and in 1983 received an Academy-Award nomination for co-directing an animated short. Helaine Head has directed the TV series “Brewster Place,” “L.A. Law” and “The Danger Team,” among others.

These women have found work in television in part because of the growing numbers of shows with African-American casts--part of a realization by the networks that roughly a quarter of their prime-time audience is now black. In addition, there are more black women in positions of authority in television, where federally licensed TV and radio stations are subject to affirmative-action guidelines.

In the independent film world, Dash is one of the few black women to have made a full-length feature film. Another is Audrey King Lewis, whose film, “The Gifted,” about a Southern family with supernatural powers handed down from their West African ancestors, premiered in Washington, D.C., earlier this month during the Congressional Black Caucus convention.

Ayoka Chenzira, probably the first black woman animator, has just finished an independent feature about a mother-daughter relationship. Zeinabu irene Davis has made several short films, and is finishing the 57-minute “A Powerful Thang,” about the sexual politics of a black couple at a critical stage in their relationship.

Most of the black women inside the world of independent film spend as much time raising money for their projects as they do making them. Demetria Royals, a graduate of New York University Film School, has made a documentary and is now raising money for a feature film--to star Whoopi Goldberg--about a female reporter who investigates an urban shooting. Michelle Parkerson spent three years raising money for her latest documentary--about lesbian poet Audre Lorde--and also recently directed a dramatic series on community leaders that aired on a Washington, D.C. public TV station.

Others trying to break into feature films include Beverly Fray, who directed a powerful student film--the original, short version of “The Long Walk Home”; Patricia Khayyam, another USC Film School graduate, who recently won a prestigious international award for her short film; Tracee Lyles, a veteran actress who has produced plays and now writes for stage and TV; and Melissa Maxwell, a USC drama school graduate who worked with Singleton on “Boyz ‘N the Hood” and is now raising money for her own short film, as well as peddling an animated TV series for children that tackles contemporary urban issues.

Euzhan Palcy, who directed “A Dry White Season,” the 1989 feature set against South Africa’s apartheid system, remains popular with Hollywood studios. But Palcy--who was born in Martinique and now lives in Paris--insists their attitude would be different if she was American. “I know in my heart that if I was African-American they would never call me,” says Palcy, who is now at work on a French film. “Maybe they are scared of opening the door to black Americans because of the subjects they would explore. Maybe it’s easier to open the door to a black from another planet.”

Most of the complaints these black directors voice are nothing new to women trying to break into Hollywood. Addison, a former executive for Lorimar, notes that men typically make a stronger impression on studio executives during the all-important pitch sessions. “There are plenty of men directors who are working today simply because they give good meeting,” Addison says. “The industry right now does not accommodate the style of women.”

Other women say studio executives--and film crews--are dubious about their technical credentials. Foster-Owens notes that crews sometimes try to undermine the efforts of women directors, even while they will go out of their way to help a first-time male director. “They constantly challenge your knowledge,” Foster-Owens says, adding that she’s now careful to hire crews who are comfortable working with and for women.

These women also complain that there are no women--regardless of ethnicity--in positions of power at the studio. “There are no black executives that I know of that are in a position to greenlight a movie,” Allen says. “How many women are in a position to greenlight a movie? I think it’s a matter of the sensibility of people in charge.”

In the independent film world that problem extends to distributors as well as to the executives of film festivals, where the showings of films by women lag far behind those of men. “It’s a terrible problem,” Zimmerman says. “Not getting into a major festival is a kiss of death to a film.”

But one of the biggest problems facing these women are the kinds of stories they want to tell, Zimmerman says. Films featuring strong female characters--particularly when they are black--and exploring themes like family and interpersonal relationships are not popular in a business that derives most of its revenues from drawing as many 17-year-old boys as possible into the theater. “We find that in helping filmmakers, when the project is about women, it’s very difficult to raise money” such as grants and other forms of independent financing, Zimmerman says. “When it’s about men, regardless of who the director is, they get funding right away.”

These directors also complain that Hollywood’s powers have a preconceived idea about what constitutes a “black” story. “If you do a period piece love story, and you don’t have people being lynched and hung and run over, that’s not provocative enough,” Allen complains. “Why can’t we do ‘Dying Young’? If I went in there and pitched ‘Dying Young,’ they’d say, ‘Darlin’, die now, why wait?”’

Barnette, who grew up in Harlem, describes the accepted Hollywood vision of life in the inner city as one-dimensional. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for those people in the community who would go tell your mother if they looked out the fire escape and saw you get in a big car,” Barnette says. “There’s an extended family, a community involvement that helps people grow up. If every project in Harlem was taken over by drug dealers, no one would be there now. But these are the images that people in Japan or England or Germany see--and I think it contributes to racism.” Barnette hopes to portray her side of Harlem in “Five-O,” a dramatic script based on an idea by rap artist Kool Moe Dee that Barnette is now raising funding for.

Several of these women face the added obstacle of their own desire to break with traditional story-telling forms. Zeinabu Davis talks of “using film like jazz, trying to create a new language that reflects the lives of women of color”; Ayoka Chenzira describes her latest film as being driven “not . . . by plot, but rather the emotions” of her female characters.

There’s a lyrical, avant-garde quality to the work of both Barnette and Dash, two friends who trade influences with a third filmmaker comrade, Charles Burnett (“To Sleep With Anger”). Barnette’s expressionistic flourishes in the “American Playhouse” production “Zora Is My Name!” --the story of folklorist Zora Neale Hurston--frustrated both the cast and KCET. But it attracted such critical raves as “visually bountiful” and “beautifully constructed.”

Dash broke traditional plot structure in “Daughters of the Dust” by telling the story of an extended Gullah family on the Sea Islands--on the eve of their migration north--in the style of an African griot. Griots, popular in West Africa, are hired during festivities to orally recount a family’s history; their tales meander and don’t necessarily follow a chronological order.

“We’re trying to do something new,” Dash says, “to tell stories the way we heard them told.” She insists that traditional African story-telling styles can come to be accepted by mainstream audiences the same way rap music--whose cadences originally were considered too radical--was popularized. But convincing Hollywood executives of that is no easy task.

“The problem is that (Dash) has done a film that is very poetic, very European,” says Stephanie Allain, who as a vice president at Columbia Pictures is the highest-ranking black woman overseeing production at a major studio. “Because of that, people think she has no idea how to do a narrative film.”

In fact, though, Dash told a powerful narrative story in her black-and-white short film, “Illusions,” which combines the story of a black woman’s struggle over her own identity with a sharp critique of the Hollywood dream factory. Like “Daughters,” this film--set in Hollywood during World War II--shows off her flair for making period-piece movies.

Floyd Webb, the founder of the Blacklight Film Festival--a Chicago-based showing of African-American films--said he is baffled that no U.S. distributor has picked up “Daughters,” at least for art-house theaters. At his festival in August, the film sold out three screenings and more than 100 moviegoers were turned away.

Other of these women have more obvious commercial sensibilities. Addison, who says she sees film as “entertainment first and foremost,” is a big fan of action-adventure stories. Owens’ most recent project--which will premiere at the first African American Film Market in November--is a family oriented comedy called “The Three Muscatels,” a spoof on “The Three Musketeers” that stars Richard Pryor. She also directed a witty TV pilot about black family life. Now she is developing a feature called “Eye of the Storm,” about five men who return home to reclaim the Southern neighborhood they grew up in.

Royals said the summers she spent during film school working on ad campaigns for Maxwell House coffee and American Express at Ogilvy and Mather--which financed her education--prepared her to communicate with a mass audience. “I’m very aware that you have to tell the story you want to tell in a way that can find an audience,” Royals says. And Fray, who is adapting a legend into a feature-film script, says she is interested in stories “that deal with ethnicity, love, relationships with family and friends . . . But I would like to come with a view of life that is not stuck in the idea that if it’s a story about people of color, then it has to be about their plight, or take on a ‘woe is me’ theme.”

Columbia’s Allain says that black women will have to prove they can make commercially viable movies before the studios take notice of them. Former Lorimar executive Addison agrees. “Right now there’s no reason to believe that any movies featuring African-American women will make bucks,” she says. “It has to happen outside the system, or with someone like Singleton (telling a woman’s story).”

Despite the troubles black women are having, Allen insists that the opportunities are greater than they have ever been. “The climate right now is actually more wide open, especially for black women, because we have a lot of wonderful movies coming out starring predominantly black people that are successful,” she says. “It’s just a matter of more women getting out there. You have to create a lot of your own opportunity.”

Ironically, it may be a man--John Singleton--who creates some of those opportunities for his female peers. Singleton’s next project at Columbia, “Poetic Justice,” is the story of a young black woman who finds solace in her poetry. “There are 50 screenplays around town by African-American women that will go in the drawer because Singleton, who understands the Hollywood hustle, will get there first,” Addison says.

But if “Poetic Justice” succeeds like “Boyz,” studio executives--who like to drive forward by watching the rear-view mirror--will be hot on the trail of stories about black women.

And maybe even by black women.