Directors Guild Of America

The Directors Guild of America will bestow awards for outstanding directorial achievement in motion pictures, television and commercials tonight at its 42nd annual dinner at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Robert Wise will accept, on behalf of recipient Ingmar Bergman, the D. W. Griffith Award, given for lifetime contribution to film.

The Directors Guild of America's national board voted unanimously Saturday to recommend ratification of a three-year contract with movie studios and television networks. The new contract would go into effect July 1 and run through 2005. The recommendation comes six months before the current contract expires. The 21-0 vote was taken at the board's regularly scheduled meeting in Los Angeles, according to a guild news release.

Clint Eastwood won the Directors Guild of America award Saturday for his dark Western "Unforgiven," making him the strong favorite for the best director Academy Award. In the 45-year history of the Directors Guild of America award, only three winners have failed to win the Academy Award for best director. This year's Oscars will be presented March 29. "Unforgiven" is up for nine Oscars, including best picture, director, actor and supporting actor.

Peter Jackson, the 42-year-old New Zealand filmmaker whose film "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" is nominated for 11 Academy Awards, was named best director of 2003 on Saturday night by the Directors Guild of America. The DGA win, along with Jackson's win two weeks ago of the Golden Globe for best director, makes him a front-runner for the Academy Awards.

Prime-time TV producers and the major broadcast networks "have failed to fulfill their contractual good-faith obligation to hire more women and minority directors," the president of the Directors Guild of America said Friday. The charge from Michael Apted came as the guild released its annual report on the employment of women and minorities as directors on the top 40 prime-time drama and comedy series.

Prominent film director Michael Apted was elected for a third term Saturday as president of the Directors Guild of America. Apted was reelected at a guild convention in Los Angeles, which was attended by 129 delegates representing the guild's 13,400 members. A new slate of officers and national board directors was also elected. In a statement, Apted, who joined the guild in 1978, said the next few years would be "critical to our guild and to the industry."

First-time director Kevin Costner won the Directors Guild of America award for best director of 1990 Saturday night for his epic western "Dances with Wolves." Costner also starred in the film, a three-hour account of a U.S. cavalry officer living with American Indians. The film won him the Golden Globe award as best director earlier this month. In Saturday's competition, Costner beat out veteran director Francis Ford Coppola, who was nominated for the fifth time for "The Godfather, Part III."

Ron Howard was named best feature director by the Directors Guild of America for the film "Apollo 13" at simultaneous award dinners held Saturday night in Los Angeles and New York. In recent years the DGA awards have been accurate predictors of the best directing Academy Award. But Howard was not nominated for an Oscar for "Apollo 13," which retells the harrowing story of the astronauts who were trapped in a dying spacecraft. "I didn't expect this at all.