One look at this year’s Oscar nominees reveals the indelible mark independent film has made on popular culture. The Sundance Film Festival, in particular, has been

responsible for the rise of American cinema’s most renowned contemporary
directors, from Steven Soderbergh to Todd Haynes. Beasts of the Southern
Wild screened to audiences for the first time a year ago at Sundance. Quentin
Tarantino was discovered there with Reservoir Dogs.Ben Affleck gained prominence

first as a star of Kevin Smith’s films. All of the documentaries nominated for an
Academy Award this year played at Sundance.

But this robust pipeline between Sundance and Hollywood has been conspicuously
male. Where are the women of Sundance?

Twenty-thirteen was supposed to be a year of celebration for women at the festival.
For the first time, Sundance’s prestigious film competition reflected parity between
male and female directors. This was capped by a Sundance Institute/Women in Film
study that triumphantly declared: “More Women in Independent Film Than
Hollywood.”

Then the film reviews came in—and these ginger steps forward were thrown a few
slaps back.

Critics almost exclusively eviscerated the feature films directed by women
that premiered at Sundance this year. Across the board, reviews of women-directed
films in the top trade publications consistently:

• Paid less sustained and thoughtful attention to the films’ craft (visual style,
narrative structure, character development). Storylines were characterized as
“shallow,” “naggingly lightweight” and “desperate“—in contrast to the descriptions of
male-directed films, which were lauded for their lyricism, “feminine…sensibility” and
“complex symphonic framework.”

• Presented contradictory and confused assessments of the films’ future success.
Films were at once described as “too commercial,” “formulaic,” “conventional” or
“derivative”; then had their mainstream viability questioned because they were
“tonally uneven” stories that defied traditional genre norms.

• Bemoaned the absence or marginality of male characters, often faulting films for
“off-putting” or unlikeable female protagonists, whose authenticity and believability
were questioned. One reviewer claimed the director used men as “accessories” in her
film. Ironic, to say the least.

• Based their evaluation of the films that explored female sexuality on how
sufficiently the (male) reviewer was “satisfied” with the story—a rather twisted
resistance to the films’ efforts to foreground female desire (e.g., “satisfactory enough
to reach any kind of memorable climax”).

• Were shorter in length—by almost a third—than reviews of films directed by men
(see Hollywood Reporter’s review of Touchy Feely, for example).

This highly gendered evaluation is a deeply embarrassing reflection of the current
state of film criticism and bodes ill for the future of independent film and popular
culture at large. Are film critics able to keep up with the complexity and provocations
put to screen by independent female filmmakers? Or, like the porn-obsessed
protagonist of Joseph Gordon Levitt’s Don Jon’s Addiction, are male film critics
afraid of real women and what they do to stories in the shadows and light of cinema?

If the hallmark of independent film is the originality of storytelling practices and
cinematic styles, what happens to our film culture when so many film critics grossly
misread the cinematic choices and approaches of female directors? For example,
when a drama get mistaken for a comedy—and then faulted for not being funny
enough and too serious.

The public misreading of these films has monetary and cultural consequences. Critics
decide what’s “good” and who will be lauded as an auteur. Distributors determine a
film’s worth and whether to put it on DVD or in a theater near you—or not.

Festivals are more than glamorous events grabbing at sponsorship and celebrity.
They are not just filtering systems that carve thousands of films down to nice, juicy
slates for critics and industry execs to nosh on. Festivals that support independent
filmmakers do so by creating points of access through which audiences—including
industry professionals—understand and value different kinds of storytellers. Festival
curators can provide the context, framework and language necessary to make trends
and innovations in contemporary filmmaking legible. It is unfortunate that the
traditionally 250-word descriptions of films in the Sundance film guide (traditionally
written by festival programmers) this year were replaced with twenty-five-word
blurbs and blank space.

Almost two decades ago, Susan Sontag wrote about the death of cinema and
cinephilia as it transformed under technological shifts. Now these technologies have
pried open the means of filmmaking just enough to reflect a wildly broad spectrum of
stories and perspectives in our society. But the current state of film criticism is
clumsily fumbling around these rich and subversive cinematic sensibilities.

Anyone invested in the evolution and vibrancy of independent film needs to worry
when a critic at a major trade publication uses the word “stupid” to characterize a
film. What is the cost of this decaying mode of criticism to the future vitality of
American cinema? We need ways to engage films that challenge independent cinema
and compel innovation and growth. This is no longer just about gender equality in
the film industry—this is a make-or-break moment for independent film as a field
and its relevance for popular culture at large.

Roya Rastegar is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the History of Art Department at Bryn Mawr College – THE NATION – February 22, 2013