Studio 360: Women Directors, Dirty Projectors

The annual comics extravaganza Comic-Con International is underway, with 125,000 fans geeking out at the San Diego Convention Center. And that doesn’t count all the film and TV stars on hand to court them: from Robert Downey, Jr., talking up Iron Man 3 to HBO producers peddling Game of Thrones.

Next, it isn’t easy to put a fresh spin on A Streetcar Named Desire, one of the most acclaimed plays in American theatre, with its caricatured Brando scream of “Stella!” A new production on Broadway aims to shake things up, putting black and Latino actors in the lead roles.

Then, a couple years ago, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win an Oscar for directing The Hurt Locker. It wasn’t quite the tipping point for women many in the industry had hoped for: of the 250 major movies that came out last year in the US, women directed only 5% of them. But when it comes to commercial and critical breakthroughs among independent films, a shift seems to be happening.

And finally, Dirty Projectors manage to be both avant-garde and accessible — the band plays experimental rock you can still dance to. They’ve collaborated with Bjork and David Byrne, and been covered by Solange Knowles (sister of Beyonce). [Broadcast Date: July 14, 2012]

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