But while self-imposed limits enter into the equation, there's still a very real hierarchy of power to contend with, and it puts men on top, nonwhite men and white women somewhere below, and nonwhite women on the bottom. As Anders says about second films, "If you're not white, tack on another couple of years. It's almost like, thank you, black woman lesbian, we've heard that voice. Goodbye."

Thus despite the fact that Leslie Harris' first movie, "Just Another Girl on the IRT," got positive reviews and made a profit, 10 years later she's still trying to put together funding for her follow-up, "Royalties, Rhythm and Blues," a behind-the-scenes look at a woman working in the hip-hop industry. Though written for a multicultural cast, Harris says, "My passion is to make a three-dimensional black woman who is the lead of the film. That has been a challenge for me. I've been told -- a lot -- that black women can't carry a film."

Despite such frustrating responses, Harris evinces remarkably little bitterness. "I'm confident that I'll get it done. Hopefully things will change and the industry will be more receptive and I'll be there waiting with this great script and they'll greenlight it."

Given the massive amounts of money to be made off hip-hop culture, Harris' idea would seem salable. But one strange thing about the treatment of female directors -- and, by extension, female subjects -- is how often it defies economic logic. At the very least, one would expect Hollywood to try to exploit the female audience out of craven self-interest. As Anders says, "They should be able to market anything. This is America. They sell us everything under the fucking sun."

As the success of TV shows from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to "Sex and the City" suggests, there's an enormous audience for stories revolving around interesting heroines. Women buy more novels than men. They've made hits out of the mainstream movies that truly address their concerns.

But the movie industry is a dream factory, and the resistance to women in it seems based, in part, on the subterranean longings of the men who run it. "Whoever is putting up the money -- as much as they might want to be eclectic and varied in their thinking, their taste and experience and subconscious desires come into it," says Nancy Savoca, whose films include "Dogfight," "Household Saints" and "24 Hour Woman." "If you look at the movies, they're all the fantasy of a studio executive who's making the decision to greenlight a movie. It's about whether you've caught his imagination. His imagination says a middle-aged man having a problem with his wife, that seems really good. His imagination says a woman should look a certain way, and there's your A-list actresses."

Ephron disputes this idea, noting the ascendance of women studio executives like Columbia head Amy Pascal and Universal chair Stacey Snider. "Ten years ago almost every studio was run by men, and if you were interested in doing a movie about a woman it was very hard to find someone with power who even understood what you were talking about," she says. That's no longer true. "I don't think you can blame the men who run the industry anymore. There are too many women running the industry."

Some in Hollywood, though, say that the women who've scaled the studio hierarchy have done so by adopting retrograde ideas. "One thing we have to remember is they've grown up in the boys' network. They've been acculturated to believe that a commercial film is a male film," says Linda Seger, a script consultant and the author of "When Women Called the Shots: The Developing Power and Influence of Women in Television and Film." "Some of this is really unconscious. This is a very practical business. These women are working 12, 15, 16 hours a day. They haven't been taking classes on feminist theory."

In fact, many directors say the number of women studio heads only adds to their disappointment with the current situation. After all, in the early '90s, few anticipated the current stagnation. Back then, as some women were moving into positions of power in Hollywood, others were garnering praise in the burgeoning indie world, a scene that was electric but still obscure enough that the profit motive hadn't occluded all other values.

"Nancy Savoca and I came along at a brilliant time," says Anders. "People weren't expecting to make huge amounts of money, so you could do very personal, character-driven work and you could set up your next project based on the fact that you got into some prestigious festivals. Now it's much harder."

That's because in the last decade the indie scene has undergone massive consolidation, merging with the studio system to form what many call Indiewood. Once executives realized there were big profits to be made, films unlikely to yield immediate high grosses went by the wayside. "The minute 'Pulp Fiction' had that awesome opening weekend we were fucked," says Anders. Adds Savoca, "The indie movie is dead. If you scratch the surface of independent film financiers, they just want to be studio people. All people want is the runaway hit."

"Even at Sundance, a film that's considered small now is not really small," says Harris. "It has well-known actors or actresses. 'Monster's Ball' is considered a small film. Now, if you want a wide distribution you have to get talent that the studio feels will bring in box office." Films that don't bring in box office results immediately tend to get booted from theaters before they can build word of mouth.

To address this, Veneruso and Katie Lanegran run "The First Weekenders Group," an e-mail list encouraging its 1,600 members to see women's films as soon as they open. When it comes to independent films, such audience-building measures will likely be more effective than badgering industry bigwigs. Businessmen may never defer to the call for equality, but they can be convinced by the possibility of profits.

The First Weekenders Group is but one encouraging recent development. The very existence of Alice Locas, which aims to do for the film business what the Guerrilla Girls did for the art world, is another. When the Guerrilla Girls formed in 1985, according to pseudonymous member Kathe Kollwitz, the art world looked a lot like the film industry does today, with only a tiny fraction of women showing at major galleries. Today, the proportions are nearly equal. Perhaps the greatest reason for optimism was this year's Sundance, where women swept the top prizes. In addition to Rebecca Miller's "Personal Velocity," there was "Daughter From Danang," co-directed by Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco, which won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize, and Patricia Cardoso's "Real Women Have Curves," which took the Dramatic Audience Award.

So it's obvious, at least, that women can make great movies. What's less clear is just how many more they need to make before their stories stop being dismissed as irrelevant, their talents as narrow and their audience as nonexistent.

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