Lisa Cholodenko Quotes

When I started out, there were three things that made film people look at me with condescension, I was young, I was black, and I was female. I have won a certain respect, but I think the film community still sees directing as a male job.

There aren't good roles for women: the female parts aren't developed: the women are serving the men.

There are still people who have an issue working with a woman director. Women can be viewed as 'difficult' even though they work in the same way as men.

Hmm, can I be obvious and say there is probably a double standard for male vs. female directors? Sadly, I think that's actually the case. And it probably stems from the fact that there are proportionately so many fewer women directors than men ones that each project is perhaps more closely scrutinized for its content.

Some of my contemporaries don't want to talk about the female problem because they feel like whenever they get a teaching position or an award, we are just being pinpointed, fitting into the model.

There's still prejudice and that resistance regarding women, not only on female football but in various activities. Men think that women are a bit fragile to perform some types of activities or don't have the ability and aren't strong enough.

I think a lot of women are underestimated.

Yes, there are obstacles as a woman; there is no doubt about it.

There are so many times that, as a woman in the music industry, you're asked questions no male musician would ever be asked.

Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, "She doesn't have what it takes." They will say, "Women don't have what it takes.”

If you are a man, you have to be like Joe McCarthy to be called “ruthless”. For a woman, all you have to do is put somebody on hold.

With a male-centric show, the women are usually very two-dimensional.

When only one or two percent of filmmakers are female, you can't help but have some kind of bias.

Female-driven shows have to be every single thing and are constantly criticized in a way that male-driven shows are not.

I think, being a woman, we got to prove ourselves twice.

There are obviously issues in our industry. That starts at the top with studio execs who - not just men - don't believe a woman could handle a huge franchise or big action movie.

I think every industry is a male-dominated industry. Whether it is Tollywood or Bollywood or India as a whole, it is male-dominated. We stay in India, and it has been patriarchal society.

I really feel like females have to go 50 extra miles. Not just one - 50 extra miles to be accepted or taken seriously.

I wasn't taken seriously being the only girl playing in band growing up.

I certainly hope that we will get more women in power, when it comes to executives and producers and directors, because the problem is not a shortage of females who are qualified to do the job. It's just that women are not favoured or chosen.

Every woman knows what I'm talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.

I spent most of my career in business not saying the word 'woman.' Because if you say the word 'woman' in a business context, and often in a political context, the person on the other side of the table thinks you're about to sue them or ask for special treatment, right?

Every year there's five cop shows, five medical shows and five 'Law & Orders,' but when it's a show about women, they want to pit everyone against each other. I don't think they'd do that if it was a guy show. I think there's room for all of us.

I think that women are underrepresented behind the camera as directors.

Every single one of us who has been a 'Woman in Film' for more than five minutes is sick of the phrase 'Women in Film.'