Michael Moore Calls Lack of Female Directors in Hollywood ‘a Form of Apartheid’

The documentary filmmaker pointed to one of Hollywood’s persistent gender issues in a panel discussion at the New York Film Festival on Sunday, once again drawing attention to the vast gap between the number of female and male directors in the industry and dropping the word “apartheid” while he was at it.

The Hollywood Reporter brought details of Moore’s comments:

During the audience Q&A portion of a conversation with Moore at the New York Film Festival on Sunday, Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. director Leslie Harris asked about the oft-discussed topic – particularly, what their white male counterparts can do to help minorities break through.

“It’s amazing, really, that women are so nice, or that any of us have throats left – I mean, seriously, we’re lucky,” said Moore, after quoting the USC statistic that only 1.9 percent of the top-grossing 100 films over the past two years were directed by women.

[…]“It’s a form of apartheid, folks, when a minority controls everything and the majority gets a bone thrown to them. That’s just absolutely wrong.”

–Posted by Kasia Anderson