On the heels of Sunday night’s Academy Awards—whose stuffiness was tempered only by Lady Gaga’s surprise advocacy for sexual-assault survivors, and by a bedazzled leather jacket worn by Mad Max: Fury Road‘s costume designer—the timing of this year’s Portland Oregon Women’s Film Festival (POWFest) couldn’t be better. The Academy’s record on racial diversity has been deservedly called out in recent weeks, and its treatment of women isn’t much better, especially when it comes to directing. Of the now 88 winners in that category, only one has been female—Kathryn Bigelow, for 2008’s The Hurt Locker. This is symptomatic of the film industry as a whole: Women make up only seven percent of directors, despite the precedent set by pioneering women filmmakers like Agnes Varda, Claire Denis, Maya Deren, and Chantal Akerman.
I’ve grown so accustomed to Hollywood’s antipathy toward film industry professionals who don’t resemble Michael Keaton that I’m skeptical of the Oscars’ ability to improve. But POWFest has a better attitude. As creaky old relics like the Academy buoy the filmmaking establishment, POWFest is working directly against such unimaginative entropy. Each year—and it’s now in its ninth—POWFest showcases films directed by women, claiming space for essential films that rocket past Hollywood’s sexism.