52 Films by Women Vol 3. 3. PERMANENT (Director: Colette Burson)
Permanent illustrates a common phenomenon that affects female film directors. After making her feature debut in 2000, Coming Soon , writer-director Colette Burson had to wait seventeen years before her follow-up reached the big screen – well, a limited theatrical window and video on demand. In the meantime, Burson honed her craft in television – she co-created (with her husband Dmitry Lipkin) the HBO television series, Hung , which ran for three seasons between 2009 and 2011 and wrote one episode of the show, The Riches , also created by Lipkin in 2007; the series starred Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver, but was otherwise as American as black comedy comes. The American film industry does not forgive failure on the part of women directors very easily. If their films tank at the box office and receive indifferent reviews, when then it must be that the director is not working in the right medium. Male film directors are not treated in the same way. The excellent news to report is...