Wellywood Woman

French women directors: the great news & the not-so-great

2012-01-31T16:33:00.000-08:00

Maïwenn after she received the Prix du Jury, Cannes 2011

The nominees for the French Césars have been announced. Unlike this year's nominations for the American Oscars, these acknowledge women's work. Directors Valérie Donzelli (La Guerre Est Déclarée, France's submission for the Best Foreign Language Academy Award) and Maïwenn (Polisse, winner of the Jury Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and best director at the Lumiere Awards, France’s equivalent to the Golden Globes, voted upon by foreign press correspondents in the territory) are two of seven directors nominated for Best Director. That's 28%, pretty good, and their films are also nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. There are only five nominations for Best Original Screenplay, so the gender proportion there is stronger: 40% (Valérie Donzelli co-wrote with Jérémie Elkaïm and Maïwenn co-wrote with Emmanuelle Bercot). Polisse has the highest number of nominations for any film: 13. And the Césars have a First Film category, where women directors are even more strongly represented: out of five nominations, three of the films have women directors: Delphine Coulin and Muriel Coulin (17 Filles); Alix Delaporte (Angèle Et Tony) and Eva Ionesco (My Little Princess). Yasmina Adi is the only nominee of five in the doco category (20%), for her Ici, On Noie les Algériens/ Here We Drown Algerians, about 17 October 1961 in Paris, when the National Liberation Front organized a rally for the independence of Algeria. Maurice Papon, the chief of police of Paris at the time, gave orders to quell the demonstration, and as a result dozens of dead bodies were found in the river Seine. When I look at the trailers for these films, I'm delighted by the presence of women in them. But alongside my delight, and as I warmly congratulate the nominees on their successes, I'm saddened by something new I've learned about gender and French film funding.

Ever since I started the Development project, now in its seventh year, people have told me “In France, women who write and direct features have no gender-related problems.” Sometimes, this leads to a conversation about how the French government strongly supports film-making as a strategy to strengthen French culture and support the language: there's a 'trickle down' effect—so much money available that it’s inevitable women receive more. And, as their representation at the Césars shows, French women’s filmmaking is strong. As well as these winners, there are films like Laure Charpentier’s Gigola, a highlight of last year’s OutTakes Festival here in Wellington. And last week I saw Celine Sciamma’s second, satisfying, film Tomboy: I came out into a summer evening soothed, as though I’d just been in a long meditation.

So, because of what I heard and because of the quality of French women’s films, I thought that (probably) being a woman writer and director in France did not involve the gendered problems that are common around the globe. And, of course, I remembered that Films de Femmes at Creteil (Paris, 30 March-8 April) has run for 34 years and has a consistent educative element, so it—again, probably—helped keep women’s film-making strong. BUT, the Centre National du Cinema et de l’Image Animée's (CNC) most recent statistics, for 2010 (found thanks to Her Film's link to the Swedish Film Institute site) show that French women filmmakers seem to share some of the problems that exist everywhere else.

France's wide-ranging financial support for the film industry involves a complex system of inter-relationships between the state and the private sector, difficult for me to analyse effectively, as a researcher from New Zealand in a language where I’m not fluent. But here’s what I found among the stats for the ‘French initiative’ films, ‘French 100% and mainly French coproductions’ according to the CNC site. In 2010, there were 178 of these films. Listed among them are Tomboy, 17 Filles, La Guerre Est Déclarée, I'm Not a Fucking Princess (My Little Princess' original title) and Polisse. Women directed 21% of these, a higher proportion than any other country I know of that year, and close to Sweden's 20%, achieved with a gender equity policy. But the average budgets of women-directed films were considerably less than those that men directed—€4 rather than €6.7m. (There were only three films that women directed with men, and these had the highest average budget: €6.92m.)

The CNC also provides information that shows whether the films funded are the directors' first, second or subsequent films, and this demonstrates that in women's careers, over time, the proportion of women-directed films decreases and that the gap between budgets for women-directed and men-directed films is larger for second and subsequent films than for first films. (La Guerre Est Déclarée is listed as a first film, but Valérie Donzelli also made another feature, La Reine des Pommes; I don't know what the CNC criteria are for 'first'.)

Women directed sixteen of the 'first' films, or 29%, and the average budgets for these films were €3.22m, in comparison with men’s, which were €4.5m, a €1.28 difference. There were 23 'second' features. Women directed six, or 26%, still good, but the gap between the average budgets grew: €3.46m for women and €6.36m for men, a €2.9m difference. There were 94 films with directors making their third or more features. Women directed fourteen, or 15%, with average budgets of €5.1m in comparison with average budgets of €7.6m for films with men directors, a €2.5m difference.

I'd love more information from French women about what they think causes these statistics. I wish I had time to analyse the list of 'Foreign' films funded, which includes Niki Caro's The Vintner's Luck, because it seems to me that the proportion of women-directed films in that list is smaller, but it involves checking a lot of unfamiliar names. Could it be that other countries, who access the rich benefits that France offers filmmakers are more likely to support films that men direct than women's films? Maybe someone else will check that out. I hope so.

The trailer for La Guerre Est Déclarée is here, among the other woman-directed Foreign Language Academy Award nominations. The others are—Polisse:

17 Filles:

Angèle Et Tony:

My Little Princess:

Ici, On Noie les Algériens:

Finally, there are always reasons beyond discrimination that affect women's careers. Meryl Streep powerfully articulates one reason, or group of reasons, which I think many women will find familiar, in this clip from a video interview with Morley Safer that I can't embed.

Celebration at Sundance!

2012-01-28T21:54:00.000-08:00

Women's films have done wonderfully well in the Sundance Awards. Ava DuVernay has just won the Directing Award for United States Film: Dramatic, with her second feature in two years, Middle of Nowhere. She's the first African-American woman ever to win this award. Lauren Greenwood won the Directing Award for United States Film: Documentary, with The Queen of Versailles. Alison Klayman's Ai Wewei: Never Sorry won a Special Jury Prize. Maria White won the Short Film Audience Award with The Debutante Hunters. The Finally, the World Cinema Screenwriting Award went to Young and Wild, available on MUBI and directed by Marialy Rivas (Chile), who co-wrote the screenplay with Camila Gutierrez and two men.

Lucy Walker had already won the Jury Prize in Short Film Non-Fiction The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom (and is also an Oscar nominee). Blerta Zeqiri's The Return/Kthimi won the Jury Prize in Short Film, International Fiction, and Brie Larson, Sarah Ramos, Jessie Ennis won a Special Jury Award for Comedic Story-Telling with The Arm. (Thanks to Kyna Morgan at HerFilm for the info re this group of awards.)

Warm congratulations to all these women storytellers! (I know there are also women producers of other award-winners, but storytellers are the usual focus here: I hope I haven't missed any of the directors/screenwriters, and that you'll tell me if I have!)

Here's the Middle of Nowhere trailer, and a Sundance interview with Ava DuVernay, one of my heroes, who also founded the African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement (AFFRM), which will distribute Middle of Nowhere in the United States, with Participant Media.*

And here's an interview with Lauren Greenfield, couldn't find a trailer. Magnolia Pictures will distribute The Queen of Versailles in North America.

The Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry trailer:

The Young and Wild trailer:

Finally, The Debutante Hunters trailer is on Facebook, but I can't embed it here.

Monday:
In my excitement I missed some, but Kyna didn't! Here are the others, from her post. Thanks, Kyna! (Kyna will continue to update her Sundance series re distribution announcements.)

Luci Alibar co-wrote Beasts of the Southern Wild which won the Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic, & Excellence in Cinematography: United States Dramatic. Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady directed Detropia, which won the United States Documentary Editing Award. Lisanne Pajot co-directed and co-edited Indie Game: the Movie, which won the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award. The World Cinema Cinematography Award went to My Brother the Devil, writer/director Sally El Hosaini (thanks also to CampbellX for alerting me to this) and the World Cinema Cinematography Award: Documentary went to Putin's Kiss, directed by Lise Birk Pedersen. And Nobody Walks, which director Ry Russo-Young co-wrote with Lena Dunham, won one United States Dramatic Special Jury Prize for Excellence in Independent Film Producing, and Smashed, which Susan Burke co-wrote, won another. That's an impressive line-up.

I loved Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture, so here's Ry Russo-Young, talking about Nobody Walks:

_________________

*Participant Media, like AFFRM, is pretty amazing. Here's their mission statement:

Participant believes that a good story well told can truly make a difference in how one sees the world. Whether it is a feature film, documentary or other form of media, Participant exists to tell compelling, entertaining stories that also create awareness of the real issues that shape our lives.

The company seeks to entertain audiences first, then to invite them to participate in making a difference. To facilitate this, Participant creates specific social action campaigns for each film and documentary designed to give a voice to issues that resonate in the films. Participant teams with social sector organizations, non-profits and corporations who are committed to creating an open forum for discussion, education and who can, with Participant, offer specific ways for audience members to get involved. These include action kits, screening programs, educational curriculums and classes, house parties, seminars, panels and other activities and are ongoing 'legacy' programs that are updated and revised to continue beyond the film's domestic and international theatrical, DVD and television windows. To date, Participant has developed active, working relationships with 600 non-profits which collectively have the potential of reaching over 75 million people.

Its women-directed films include Maryam Keshavarz's Circumstance and Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush's Finding North, about hunger in the United States, which also premiered at this Sundance. Here they are talking about it:

Participant Media's films also include New Zealander Niki Caro's North Country.

Women directors in Foreign Language Academy Award submissions

2012-01-04T23:31:00.000-08:00

Last year, women directed, or co-directed, nine of the sixty-five films submitted for the Foreign Language Academy Award (14%). They wrote and directed only four (6%). And I thought and wrote about that. And Susanne Bier won the award with her In A Better World.

This year women directed ten of the sixty-three films submitted (16%) and wrote and directed three (4.75%): Leticia Tonos wrote and directed Love Child, Athina Rachel Tsangari wrote and directed Attenberg and Juanita Wilson wrote and directed As If I Am Not There. Others directed another writer's screenplay, or co-wrote their screenplays—usually with men—although Pernilla August co-wrote Beyond with Lolita Ray. Here are the trailers, in alphabetical order by the directors' first names. Now I've watched them, I want to see ALL these films, and am glad some are available on MUBI. Which one would you most like to see? Is it time for a major international women filmmakers award, to celebrate films like these and encourage investors to fund more of them?

Agnieszka Holland's In Darkness from Poland

Anne Hui's A Simple Life, from Hong Kong

Anne Sewitsky's Happy Happy from Norway

Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg from Greece

Juanita Wilson's As If I Am Not There from Ireland

Leticia Tonos' Love Child from the Dominican Republic

Maria Peters' Sonny Boy from the Netherlands

Nadine Labaki's Where Do We Go Now? from Lebanon

Pernilla August's Beyond from Sweden (& starring Noomi Rapace!)

Valerie Donzelli's Declaration of War from France

And then I was noodling over at sister site HerFilm, where Kyna has just published her first newsletter, and Lotus Wollschlager has joined Kyna as a reviewer (you can sign up for the newsletter here.) And I found a link to Swedish statistics, where there's a beautiful graph showing the gender difference between Swedish films funded by the Swedish Film Institute—with its gender equity mandate—and the films that the institute hasn't funded, and a link to French stats, which I've wanted to know about forever. People have often told me that women filmmakers are more strongly represented in France than anywhere else in the world, and these stats are very interesting in relation to gender, so I'm working on them right now and will post my wee analysis soon.

Karin Chien: Producer & Distributor Extraordinaire

2011-12-13T21:27:00.000-08:00

Karin Chien

Karin Chien is a producer and distributor based in New York. She’s produced ten films to date. In 2010 she won the Piaget Producers Award which honors emerging producers who, despite highly limited resources, demonstrate the creativity, tenacity, and vision required to produce quality, independent films.

Karin’s most recently released film is Circumstance, written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz, who also produced, with Karin and Melissa Lee. Circumstance won the Audience Award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and has just been nominated for the John Cassavetes Award (for films made under $500,000) at the Independent Spirit Awards. In post-production Karin has Bradley Rust Gray’s Jack and Diane about two girls who fall in love, and Patricia Benoit’s Stones in the Sun, about exile from Haiti.

Karin is also the founder and president of dGenerate Films. dGenerate Films distributes films from the ‘digital generation’ of Chinese cinema, the current generation of independent filmmakers, which includes “poets, painters, and journalists who use digital video as an aesthetic, social, political, or personal tool”. dGenerate’s blog is a must-read for those of us interested in filmmaking in China. The other day it linked to an absorbing podcast with Karin (including, at the end, a very graceful challenge to the interviewer that had me going YES!). Other current posts cover recent Chinese film festivals, censorship, and the new wave of Tibetan films.

A big thank you to Karin, for being so generous with her responses to rather a lot of questions!

KARIN as PRODUCER

How and why did you become a producer?

I love stories, and I wanted to be part of telling stories. And movies, at least when I graduated college, had the widest audience potential. I think that’s shifted recently to online, socially networked media, but the power of storytelling will always be part of the human race. I also wanted to tell stories about women – honest, complicated, interesting portrayals of female characters were lacking when I grew up and still are. There’s a lack of interesting female characters in most movies. Think about how many major female actresses have had to play either strippers or prostitutes, especially in the 90s? Julia Roberts, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Meg Ryan, Marisa Tomei, Natalie Portman. The first film I produced is called Robot Stories. I took that film partly because it was the first script I’d read without a single female stripper, prostitute or waitress. Hollywood is very male – both the stories they tell and the industry itself – and men’s imaginations around women are very limited. But women make up over half of movie-going audiences in the States, and frankly, we deserve better.

What draws you to a project? I’ve heard you speak about a five-year commitment, a kind of marriage, and your latest three films seem very diverse.

I have to feel that a film HAS to be made. Unequivocally has to be made. That’s the only way I’ll get through the near impossibility of completing an independent film! I also have to believe strongly in the director’s talent. And lastly I have to believe this film deserves an audience, and will find one, with my help. Not every script out there needs to be made into a film.

I’ve also heard you talk about building a team round the director. What does this mean for you? Does it make a difference when the director is also the writer?

Filmmaking is that beautiful messy art of collaboration. You can’t do it alone, like you can make videos and put them on YouTube. Filmmaking generates community in the process of making a film, and if you pick the right people to work with a director, they’ll elevate the film in unexpected ways. It’s that thing about being greater than the sum of the parts. I’ve also worked almost exclusively with writer/directors.

Have you discovered any issues around financing and distribution of films by and about women that are different than those you had when financing your earlier films, made by men?

I don’t think gender of the director makes a big difference during financing or distribution. At those points, it’s about commercial viability of the story, who’s in it, plus, in terms of financing, how determined the director is to make his/her film. On Hollywood films, though, it matters a lot if the lead is male or female. Unless you have Angelina Jolie attached, you get your film financed by the male star, not the female star. I also think that while it’s fantastic for Kathryn Bigelow to be the first female director to win the directing Oscar, it’s also important to remember her films are very “male” – male leads, action sequences, adrenaline-pumping storytelling. The existing power structure can get behind her films without feeling threatened.

Both Circumstance and Stones in the Sun had Sundance support. Has this made a big difference?

Absolutely. It’s a miracle to get any independent film made, so you need every resource and every favor you can wring, and then some. Having Sundance support a project I’m producing is a huge help in every way.

WOMEN FILMMAKERS IN CHINA

From your dGenerate site and your article that compares indie filmmaking in the US and in China (first published on Ted Hope's blog) I’ve understood that there are two separate sources of Chinese cinema, the state studio system and the independent digital generation, with some overlap. I’m unfamiliar with the names and work on your own list of six essential films from the digital generation, but there seems to be just one woman and her work: Liu Jiayin and Oxhide 2 (2009), which featured in the Directors Fortnight at Cannes. Is one in six about the proportion of women who write and direct Chinese film? Is the proportion about the same in the state system and in the digital generation? Are there gender-specific issues for women filmmakers in China that are the same as or different than elsewhere in the world? As in the US and New Zealand, are women in China more likely to make docos than to make narrative features?

One in six is perhaps greater than the proportion of women who direct indie Chinese film. I don’t have the numbers, but it’s also a very male-dominated space. There seem to be more women directors in the state system, though. Unfortunately I don’t know enough about the gender-specific issues for women filmmakers in China to compare to the US or the rest of the world.

The only relevant article I’ve ever been able to find, as an English/French-only reader is published on the Women’s Film Festival in Seoul’s site. It refers to six filmmakers and their films included in the festival: Li Yu (Buddha Mountain), Li Fangfang (Heaven Eternal Earth Everlasting), Ning Ying (Perpetual Motion), Ke Dingding and Guo Jing (When My Child Is Born), Ma Liwen (You and Me), Guo Xiaolu (Address Unknown). Are these representative of the digital generation of Chinese cinema or of the state studio system?

You have both represented in that list.

Who are the women writing and directing in China that you think I should know about?

Liu Jiayin definitely. Also Ji Dan, who has an amazing new documentary called When the Bough Breaks. Ning Ying is a veteran filmmaker whose filmography is essential.

KARIN as DISTRIBUTOR: dGENERATE

What connects your producer self who makes films in the United States for theatrical distribution with your distributor self who disseminates films made in China?

It’s a bit of a disconnect, to be honest. The kind of firefighting, crisis-solving, extreme people management skills you need in producing are not what you need in distribution. It’s hard to think of a distribution emergency other than a tape not working at a screening. I suppose what connects the work is my deep desire to support interesting stories, incredible films, and to add to the dialogue of cinema.

dGenerate distribution includes DVD (institutional & limited home), online home (rental) and institutional (purchase) VOD, and public performance exhibition on DVD, tape, and digital. What are the advantages and disadvantages of distributing such a range of formats?

dGenerate’s job is to create the audience for these films. Most Americans have never seen a Chinese independent film. For some films, the educational market is their best audience. For others, it’s the online VOD audience. And for others still, it’s the public performance audience. Our goal is to grow the audience for these films anywhere we can. As long as there are cinephiles in the world, we will continue to exhibit in theaters, museums, universities and even bars! I don’t think DVDs are going away either. VOD is the buzzword right now, but the truth is that VOD not monetized yet. Nobody is making real money – not at the DVD level – from VOD.

AFFRM, dGenerate, and women filmmakers globally

I loved your tweet on 5 December, after the AFFRM (African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement) released its second movie, Kinyarwanda:

@karinproducer A thought: what if Asian Am indie film had had an @AFFRM, in its heyday? Would our films have made more impact? Is it too late?

I’m a huge fan of AFFRM’s, and I’d sent a similar tweet:

@devt So much to learn from @AFFRM: Could women's film festivals do something similar on a global scale?

It seems to me that you and AFFRM offer hope, and there’s lots to learn from your wisdom. I love what Ava DuVernay says on the AFFRM site: “We simply want to offer African-Americans quality black films, while at the same time create a safe haven for filmmakers of color to share their stories, their way.” This seems very similar to what you already do with dGenerate with films made in China, but for an international rather than a single-country audience. And it’s what I’d love to do with the audience for films by and about women, globally. But are the Asian and women’s markets too diverse for an AFFRM-like project, which focuses on a single niche audience, in a limited geographical area? Can you imagine getting into theatrical release with Asian American indie films (your tweet seemed a little doubtful) and the films from China?

Two things. One, I think the time to marshal resources into theatrically releasing Asian American indies has passed. The arena has shifted online, and Asian Americans are making an incredible impact via YouTube. 20-somethings like Ryan Higa, Freddie Wong, KevJumba, Wong Fu – have something like a combined 3 billion views (yes, billions). My tweet meant to imply it’s no longer smart business to theatrically release indie features aimed at the Asian American audience because theatrically releasing indie features is no longer smart business in the States. Two, the moment for an Asian American audience to coalesce is gone. Asian Americans don’t watch Asian American films. There will always be a tiny die-hard audience of supporters, but nothing that could parallel how Black and Latino audiences, for example, support Black and Latino films.

Does successful grassroots/niche VOD need a different support structure than AFFRM’s, or could it too work with festival support? Can you imagine getting into VOD distribution of Asian American indie films? Or linking with Asian film festivals globally, building on the virtual film festival ideas that Sundance and Tribeca have tried, I think?

There is a company in the business of VOD distribution of Asian American indie films – it’s called Asia Media Rights and they distribute via Comcast VOD. I don’t know how well they’re doing, but again VOD is not much of a money-maker for the industry yet, unless you own the VOD channel too. Asian film festivals unfortunately have very little use for Asian American indies. Asian American indies are often made from the viewpoint of being a minority, which doesn’t resonate at all for Asian audiences. Asia also has its own star system, and it does not overlap with the Asian American star system.

How problematic are subtitles in the United States? Do they limit some films’ reach, or dGenerate’s reach?

Americans have subtitle phobia! They assume anything with subtitles is arthouse cinema, even the biggest blockbusters from China are pegged as arthouse cinema here. So dGenerate’s titles are competing against the blockbusters of Asia in the American market. The other issue with Asian films is they don’t follow American aesthetics of storytelling. They don’t have 3-act structures or even happy endings. And Chinese indie documentaries, for example, almost never have graphics, voiceover, stock footage, or animation – all things Americans need to sustain interest in a feature-length documentary.

A PRODUCER'S LIFESTYLE

I read somewhere that you’ve been without an apartment for a while. And I’ve listened to Maryam Keshavarz talk about how tough it was to make Circumstance. I think it’s extraordinary that you managed to make Circumstance for less than $500,000. Reading between the lines I suspect that what you do is hugely challenging, isn’t making you wealthy and compromises domestic well-being. What are the greatest challenges? What keeps you going?

Tilda Swinton recently said one man’s courage is another man’s comfort zone. Staying in one place and doing things I know is not comfortable for me. Being challenged, being on the move, and encountering the new are my comfort zones. Luckily, indie producing challenges every part of myself. I don’t have much need for security or wealth, and I function best with minimal structure, free and independent. I’m also lucky I have more stable friends who I can crash with! But if you’re going into the indie film industry, it’s best not to put too high a value on wealth or stability.

Circumstance producers: Karin Chien, Maryam Keshavarz, Melissa Lee

AFTERWORD

Shortly after I received Karin’s answers to my questions, she released an open letter to the Producers Guild of America (PGA). The PGA had refused to consider Circumstance for its awards because "unfortunately under the current rule structure, we are unable to accept foreign language films at this time". Karin argued strongly that Circumstance should qualify. And I thought, aha, Angelina Jolie's In the Land of Blood and Honey is also (mostly) in a foreign language. Maybe the PGA will change its policy if Angelina Jolie also argues for change?

But now I've read that In the Land of Blood and Honey has received the PGA's Stanley Kramer Award, named after the producer of The Caine Mutiny, High Noon and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Created in 2002, the award honors "a motion picture, producer or other individual, whose achievement or contribution illuminates provocative social issues in an accessible and elevating fashion". That's one way to get round the foreign language problem I guess. But why doesn't the PGA apply its foreign language rule across all its awards? Given film financing's global future, however, as reported the other day in relation to Cloud Atlas, Andy and Lana Wachowski's (the American-born team behind the Matrix movies) latest project, this issue isn't going to go away any time soon. It seems typical of Karin that she has the vision and courage to challenge a policy that will increasingly exclude some of the most interesting American films from consideration for the PGA awards.

UPDATE

Shadow & Act posted in support of Karin's open letter, and noted that the foreign language rule also disqualifies Kinyarwanda and other recent films. And the Producers Guild of America has also responded. Here's that link.

Underground Critic has published a great piece about why Circumstance deserves award recognition as well as a larger audience, and a 'treatise' about why it hasn't yet had a larger audience.

Women & Hollywood on Karin and the PGA.

MORE

Jane Kelly Kosek's All About Indie Filmmaking interview with Karin Chien, about making Circumstance

Women & Hollywood interview Maryam Keshavarz.

Karin Chien with the press after winning the Piaget Producers Award.

Circumstance is now available on DVD.

An earlier version of this interview was cross-posted at Gender Across Borders.

Make My Movie, Gynophobia & Mavericks

2011-11-24T17:08:00.000-08:00

This is the year for the female mavericks to get the same treatment as their brothers*

In New Zealand there’s a new competition for feature films, called Make My Movie. The winner receives $100,000 and makes a movie. As a first step, participants submitted posters for their movies online, with a synopsis, and filled in a few more details, some in relation to the participants’ track records, from memory. One detail requested was ‘age’, which I questioned. The competition needed to know that entrants were over 18, but because of the potential for age discrimination it seemed more appropriate to ask entrants to state that they were over 18.** Twelve finalists were selected, from around 750.

Anyway, I became interested when I saw that the project's writer's name was the only personal name that appeared online with each submission. Aha, I thought, what a great way to find out more about the range of New Zealand women screenwriters. How many are there? So I started at the very beginning, alphabetically, and went to the 43rd entry. Enough to tell me that the numbers of women weren’t great and that there was a relatively high proportion of entrants using initials and/or pseudonyms. So I stopped counting and went on to other things.

Then, this week, someone forwarded me this email, from a woman I did not know:

Hi, just wondering if there have been any comments regarding the final selection in the Make My Movie competition? All but one of the final movie pitches are written by men for men. A simple scan of the many submissions will prove that there are many, many great ideas from men and women so I can't imagine that there could be a 'the women just didn't have the best ideas' argument. I'd love to know if there were any women on judging panel. If this were just a bunch of privately funded guys choosing movies that guys might want to see, then, fine. But this is a competition sponsored by NZFC, NZ on Air and the NZ Herald. One would think that the selection would be more representative of the country's talent as a whole, not just the writers but the protagonists in the stories.

So last night I went through the first 57 entries on the website (not in alphabetical order this time), added the data to my first count, and established that of those whose gender could be identified (I googled some androgynous names) 82% of the writers in my random 100 were men. Of the twelve finalists, one is a woman, so that means 92% of the finalists' projects have male writers. By chance, the apparently female writer, whose name is a little like a pseudonym, was off marrying her director, according to the video pitch they created as part of the finalist process. So unless the name is a guy’s pseudonym, and/or they’re gay and having a civil union, there's no woman director among the finalists. (3 December: Yes! Hilleke Townsend is a woman, good to have that confirmed, and lots of good wishes to her.)

Watching the twelve video pitches was a truly depressing exercise. I didn’t watch all of every pitch but from what I saw only one woman appeared on camera (a producer), and there is a voiceover from another woman. (The age range and cultural mix seems very limited, too.) I also looked at ‘The cull’ Make My Movie webisode: and established that producer Rachel Gardner and the NZFC’s Lisa Chatfield were on the selection team.

My response to the email from my new correspondent is this:

1. This competition did not attract many women writers. Why was this so?

2. The selection team did not select projects written by women in proportion to the submissions made. How did this happen?

There are related issues. The choice of finalists means that:

1. Only one finalist story appears to have a woman protagonist (or protagonist group of women), and this means a real loss of opportunity for women actors.

2. No-one on the selection panel seems to have been alert to gender issues, and/or argued successfully for at least one more project written by a woman and more projects about women. I don’t think that the women on the selection panel are solely responsible for this, and I also know that women decision makers do not necessarily consider gender equity. Anyone can do a gender analysis; in my observation some of the best supporters of gender equity in film are men who are smart enough to acknowledge that shutting out half the screenwriter/director/actor population significantly impoverishes outcomes. In New Zealand, Craig Ranapia, who is not part of the industry as far as I know, is a shining example of someone whose tweets and other comments against sexism appear regularly, on Indiewire the other day.

What’s next? How can change happen, so this gender imbalance doesn’t happen again in Make My Movie or a similar competition, especially given the taxpayer investment? The obvious organisation to facilitate change is WIFT. But WIFT is funded by the NZFC and includes many members who would like their projects to be funded by the NZFC and New Zealand On Air. If WIFT criticises funding bodies and associated decision making processes, both the organisation and its representatives could find that their funding is compromised. On the other hand, WIFT could lobby for some parallel state-funded programmes that give women the opportunities that seem to be lacking at Make My Movie and at its brother competition V48 Hours. WIFT could also strongly support women to enter both competitions, through competition-specific and time-appropriate programmes. And it could work behind the scenes to change these competitions’ culture, so that they become more attractive and fairer to women.

Another obvious source of analysis and action might be the New Zealand Writers Guild, modelling itself on the Writers Guild of America West, which releases regular reports about industry (in)equity. Same problem as WIFT though; it is funded by the NZFC. What about John Barnett, CEO of SPP, a maker of movies and television that do very well indeed, thanks to an employment policy that looks for the best storytellers and employs a high proportion of women writers who consistently shine? Half the screenwriters who applied to the last SPP Emerging Writers Lab were women, and half the successful applicants. Could he offer Make My Movie and V48 Hours some advice?

I want to be optimistic. But back in June (20-29), there was a Facebook discussion around what constituted an ‘all-girl team’ and about the V48 Hours award for a woman director and an all-women team. And some statements from Ant Timpson, the guy in charge (also associated with Make My Movie) illuminate his views, which some women supported. For the full conversation, check out Facebook.

AT: You try and do something positive and it all goes south. The issue was that there was indeed some confusion about it from various managers. I take full blame for it. There was never supposed to be best female director in every city. Just the team. But Gaylene Preston kindly offered to give some money towards a national award that used to be welly only. And thats when it got confusing. Surely it seems silly to win best female team (with a female director) and then lose to another all female short? Just doubling up and somewhat patronising to me. Even the wording of these awards get way too much scrutiny instead of focusing on the big picture. I'm probably scrapping them for 2012 as there seems to be too much politicking about the small stuff with these awards. It was naive for me to do it in the first place.

ME: …Because women's participation is low in V48 Hours, and because—as you'll know—sometimes trying to do something positive involves trial and error, why not consult with Gaylene Preston and WIFT and the NZFC and some of the women who do take part, about the best way forward for the future? Is getting rid of the awards the most useful response to this confusion? And are there other ways to encourage more women to participate, especially as writers and directors?

AT: The only fair thing would be to rollover the award and double the prize for 2012 and make sure there are two distinct awards. BEST ALL WOMEN TEAM and BEST WOMEN director. Just remember though as much as it seems the right thing to do, many women feel that this whole separation of a gender award is somewhat demeaning as well. That's why I made it a fun thing and aimed it at young women and had it as BEST DAMN ALL GIRL. So the intention was easy to identify. And it had nothing to do with a political stance or baggage. Get young women entering the comp and let the adults compete together under one umbrella…With 800 shorts its getting really unwieldily and exhausting. This has been going on for months now and I think some streamlining will def happen in 2012.

ME: …Just hope some streamlining does happen, & that as part of that you'll experiment with new strategies to encourage more women—as well as girls—to enter and have fun. And to compete for those big prizes. And win them. Right now our numbers are far too small. And that's a shame, and probably has a flow on effect on our participation in other programmes e.g. at the NZFC.

How to get past beliefs that programmes to promote gender equity through supporting women writers and directors are ‘patronising’ or ‘demeaning’? Sweden is working towards ensuring that at least 40 percent of the films granted production funding have women screenwriters, directors and producers among their creators. This target has yet to be achieved, however, especially in relation to feature film directors. (As in New Zealand, where roughly half our producers are women, in Sweden women producers are more successful than women storytellers for film, especially when they choose to support male storytellers.) There are some great graphs for the decade to 2010 here.

Now the Stockholm International Film Festival has established The Stockholm Film Fund, in partnership with Telia as main funder and support from Svenska Filminstitutet, Cinepost and Dagsljus among others, including a distributor. The fund allocates the equivalent of US$800,000 to a woman director in her early career, who has directed no more than two previous feature films. The winning film will be produced during the following year and have its World Premiere at the festival in November 2012. This year’s recipient is Lisa Aschan, whose She Monkeys was in this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival. This introduces another possibility: what about some support for gender equity from the New Zealand International Film Festival?

Lisa Aschan receives the Stockhom Film Fund award, with her producer Anna-Maria Kantarious

This from the FAQs about the Stockholm Film Fund:

Why have you created the feature film fund?  We do not think there is any difference between the sexes when it comes to directing films. But as it stands today, there are significantly more men who sit in the director’s seat. The statistics indicate that there is an untapped potential among female directors. We want to realize this potential through this fund. A small country like Sweden cannot afford to ignore half the population when we make films.

Who may apply?  The fund is aimed at professional film makers and production companies. It is the producer who should formulate and submit the application. It must relate to a feature film project with a female director who has made a maximum of two previous feature films, in which the project can be kept within the given budget and time frame.

How does the selection process work?  A nomination committee evaluates and selects projects. The committee consists of Lars G Lindström (feature film consultant, Swedish Film Institute), Git Scheynius (Festival Director, Stockholm International Film Festival), George Ivanov (Program Director, Stockholm International Film Festival)

What’s so difficult about this as a model for New Zealand and other parts of the world? And what magic would happen—thinking of my last post—if the powerful women of Hollywood and their allies set up a similar fund?

------------
* © Lisa Gornick 2011 Lisa’s notes: "The quivering male is adored whilst the woman version is reviled. The maverick film director male is a hero whilst the female version is avoided. It shouldn't still be this way. We have to stop being scared of women mavericks in whatever field they're in." We're familiar with conversations about homophobia. Could it be that as part of making change we need to have some conversations about gynophobia, and the words and actions that come out of this, from all of us, from women and from men? I'm reminded here of Jennifer Siebel Newsom's Miss Representation and how it articulates some of these issues. Go women mavericks! I bet some of you entered Make My Movie!

** And yes, I was a little more alert to this issue having read the exchange below, within the Flicks New Zealand Cinema Census. The 'old dears' and 'old ducks' (55+ in this survey) are more than an entire generation. Some are just five years older than our Prime Minister. (On Saturday, John Banks will have been in this group for ten years ; Winston Peters has been there more than a decade, both guys currently 'relevant'?) Many people aged 55+ go to the movies often and may do so for another forty years or so. I know a 99 year old who goes to the cinema two-to-three times a month and is an avid viewer of movies on television. This demographic is not 'irrelevant'; and it's possible that some of them had interesting ideas to contribute to Make My Movie.

Would be nice Ant but I doubt it. Also, this is a slightly skewed stat I'm sure. You're talking about 84% of people who are flicks users. They probably wouldn't even be aware of this survey if they didn't already use the internet to check for movie times / info. Lots of little old dears still check times in the paper.
Reply · 1 · Like · May 10 at 2:14pm

Ant Timpson · · Managing Director/Owner at Timpson Films

No we drove lots of people to this URL from outside of Flicks. It wasn't Flicks users but it was online users so yes that would have some effect. The old ducks did not feature much in the survey as unfortunately they will soon be irrelevant. As harsh as that sounds.

Reply · 2 · Like · May 10 at 2:29pm

Related Posts

V 48 Hours

South Pacific Pictures and its Emerging Writers Lab

Gender Equity Strategies (scroll down)

Women and the Documentary Feature Academy Award short list (& the rest!)

2011-11-20T14:23:00.000-08:00

Five docos that women directed or co-directed are among the fifteen films short-listed for the Documentary Feature category of the 2012 Academy Awards. Warm congratulations to all these women!
Nancy Buirski directed The Loving Story. Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple, lived in Virginia in the 1960s, where there was a law against interracial marriage. The Loving Story is about their landmark Supreme Court Case, Loving v. Virginia, which changed history. There's no trailer yet, but The Loving Story website is beautiful and here's an interview with Nancy:
.

Cindy Meehl's (Buck) and Susanne Rostock's (Sing Your Song) films are both about men.

Buck is about Buck Brannaman, "a true American cowboy and sage on horseback who travels the country for nine gruelling months a year helping horses with people problems". As he says in one clip I found, it's about horsemanship as an art form. Here's the trailer:

Sing Your Song is about Harry Belafonte. It too has a great website, which includes a journal from Harry Belafonte himself. In the latest (video) entry he talks about Occupy Wall Street.

The other two women directors co-directed with men.

Suki Hawley co-directed Battle for Brooklyn with Michael Galinsky. According to its website, Battle for Brooklyn explores the poorly understood phenomenon of eminent domain abuse. It investigates how real estate developers, local government, community activists, and the media have clashed over the largest single-source development project ever proposed in New York City, the Atlantic Yards project.

Rachel Libert co-directed Semper Fi: Always Faithful with Tony Hardmon. It follows drill instructor Jerry Ensminger's mission to expose the Marine Corps and force them to live up to their motto when thousands of soldiers and their families are exposed to toxic chemicals. His fight reveals a grave injustice at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune and a looming environmental crisis at military sites across the country.

Also on the short-list, Lorenz Knauer's Jane's Journey about Jane Goodall.

And Wim Wender's Pina, which pays tribute to the legendary German choreographer Pina Bausch. Pina has also been entered in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

I'm disappointed that women directors' acknowledged strength in documentary isn't reflected in this list, with just a fifth of the films short-listed directed only by women, or a third if the co-directed films are included. And I'm interested to see that The Loving Story is the only woman-directed film on the list that is about a woman. Are documentaries a little like fictional features, where—in general—if women's projects centre on men, their films are more likely to be taken seriously, by investors and in competitions? Are stories about women's lives taken seriously only if men tell the stories?

This week, when the new Bertha BRITDOC Documentary Journalism Fund was announced, I asked these questions again. Here's the fund's self-description. It is:

...an international film fund dedicated to supporting long form feature documentaries of a journalistic nature...looking for films that break the important stories of our time, expose injustice, bring attention to unreported issues and cameras into regions previously unseen.

On its website's front page, the fund gives six examples of the kinds of films it might have funded, as a guide. Not one of them is about women. One of them, Julie Bacha's Budrus, has a woman director, and it is about a man. Like the Documentary Feature short-list, this gives the message that docos by and about women are not as important as those by and about men. As money for documentaries becomes tighter, will funded documentaries by and about women become more rare? Will women storytellers be shut out, as they are from fictional feature storytelling?

Also this week there's been considerable discussion about the annual Hollywood Reporter Roundtable discussions with directors and writers, because no women have been included, by the wonderful Melissa Silverstein at Women & Hollywood, and by Sophia Savage, also at Indiewire, where there are some interesting comments. As a writer, I'm frustrated that there's no corresponding roundtable that honours women writers (many of them also directors) of new and significant films, where they talk with one another and to us. It doesn't need to be in Hollywood, which hasn't served women well. I just want to hear what gifted women writers have to say when they're together; I can often find them as individuals on YouTube.

There's Andrea Arnold (Wuthering Heights, with Olivia Hetreed); Madonna (W./E.—and if you don't think about Madonna as a writer, please check out her Venice Film Fest YouTube interviews which make it clear that she is); Dee Rees (Pariah), Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo (Bridesmaids); Julia Leigh (Sleeping Beauty, also a distinguished novelist, who would have plenty to say). Then there's the very independent Kelly Reichardt with Meek's Cut-Off and Nancy Savoca & Mary Tobler with Union Square. Lynne Ramsay who wrote We Need To Talk About Kevin with Rory Kinnear. Ava Du Vernay who wrote I Will Follow and followed it up fast with Middle of Nowhere now in post-production AND is the visionary behind AFFRM, the African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement, introduced in this article. Abi Morgan wrote The Iron Lady. Miranda July, The Future. How can these women be brought together? And the many more women writing films in other languages as well as English?

When men are foregrounded in Documentary Feature short-list, in the list of men's films on the Bertha Britdoc site, and at those Hollywood roundtables, it feels as though nothing's changed and nothing will ever change. According to webseries maker Anne Flournoy, commenting at Women & Hollywood, it's no better for women who write webseries, although it's seemed that women storytellers were leading the way in that medium, and probably they still are, but are under-appreciated:

Sorry to report in from the world of web series that it doesn't look much better over here. NYTV Festival recently had a whole day of panels with not one woman on any of them. (Don't get me started on the difficulty of a woman's web series getting into this festival if it doesn't show women in a T&A type situation...with rare exceptions.)

Is it time for those of us who care about this situation to get together to problem-solve, to support one another and to assert ourselves, more effectively than ever before? Are you in?
----------------------
More on The Bertha Foundation

When I read the mission statement of The Bertha Foundation, and looked at its projects, as a storyteller, a lawyer and a social entrepreneur I was excited. Here it is:

The Bertha Foundation believes that in order to affect positive change in the world, you need activist lawyers, storytellers and social entrepreneurs.

Lawyers: We aim to inspire and enable the work of socially minded lawyers and are committed to strengthening the field of public interest law.

Social Entrepreneurs: When people have the right tools and opportunities, they are best placed to solve their own problems. We support those using business principles and innovation to create sustainable large-scale change.

Storytellers: We believe in the power of visual storytelling to educate, inform and inspire action, and are dedicated to supporting the creation and distribution of social impact media projects. Documentaries are central to this vision.

As well as the Bertha BRITDOC Fund for Journalism, there's the Bertha BRITDOC Connect Fund. It is open to filmmakers around the world and supports "smart, strategic outreach campaigns for ambitious independent documentary films with a social issue at their core; films which have the ability to achieve real change on a local, regional or global level."

At Circle's End

2011-11-10T17:26:00.000-08:00

We have lovely neighbours. Madeline McNamara is one of them. A writer, director, actor. Her current gig, for Voice Arts Trust, is At Circle’s End: The Drama of Death from Diverse Perspectives. Part of the Death and Diversity programme at Museum of Wellington City and Sea, At Circle’s End explores death and dying, grief, mourning and lamentation, in a celebration of diversity and sameness, and of life. And to create this unique production, Madeline’s worked with a group of strangers, diverse in culture, faith, age and performance experience. There will be six 40-minute performances only: 

7pm Friday 18 November
3pm Saturday 19 November
3pm Sunday 20 November
7pm Friday 25 November
3pm Saturday 26 November
3pm Sunday 27 November.

Entry is by koha/donation. Limited seating, booking is essential: call 472 8904.

If you saw Madeline’s Demeter’s Dark Ride (nominated for Most Original Production of the Year in the Chapman Tripp Awards that year) you’ll realise that At Circle’s End explores similar themes and imagine that you’re in for a powerful experience.

You may also remember Madeline from the Development trailer, as Viv, down on the Oriental Bay beach, explaining how a screenplay works. In Development, Viv’s the filmmaker who in late middle-age still hasn’t resolved a key issue for many women filmmakers: how to manage her work, motherhood, and an intimate domestic relationship.

I invited a poet, whom I first encountered (long ago) as a fine actor, to play Viv. I invited a filmmaker, a performer from way back, to play Viv. Each refused, for obvious and less obvious reasons. And then I thought of Madeline. And am so glad I did. Because she is just right. And (like Kyna Morgan at HerFilm with the wider Development project) Madeline keeps on me on track. With Development-the-movie.

Now and then Madeline and I do neighbourly stuff together. Often this involves a walk along Oriental Parade. And on the way home, often just before we reach her driveway, very near to where we filmed that beach scene, she asks me about Development. And I explain where it’s at.

The other night we went to see Sacha Copland’s RISE at Bats (“Love does not just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new”—Ursula Le Guin) and then had a long walk in the rain (warm, no wind!) to catch up on what we’re doing and being. Madeline in her elegant black raincoat, me in my jeans and the sleeveless Driz-a-Bone jacket that Viv wears under her big leather coat (see picture above), following the seawall, under the Norfolk pines with their fairy lights. Like the south of France, but with very few people.

photo: Jane Harris

Then came the Development question. As usual, it took me by surprise. Because my mind was elsewhere, with what’s happening now (a lot). So my response was a little incoherent. But a few minutes later, after a damp walk up the zigzag to my place, past our quince tree, its last few blossoms lit by the zigzag’s street light, and in the back door, where the kitchen light shone on the pear tree’s full blossoming, I knew how to begin a new draft of Development-the-movie. At the end of RISE, the cast handed out warm fresh bread, torn from round (Arobake) loaves. And Madeline told me about a woman artist friend who didn’t cook much, lived on hunks of bread, a little like the photographer Bill Cunningham (she’d just seen Bill Cunningham New York). The bread’s my starting place. Yay.

Here in Mt Vic, alterations, renovations and restorations always compromise spring's pleasures. And the next morning the ambient noise from routers, drills, sanders and other assorted power tools reminded me that beauty’s often associated with distress. And the distress is often unexpected, like the water-blaster next door and the post-hole digger on the zigzag. Alongside my excitement about bread’s potential within a new draft of Development, I needed to think more deeply about the distress associated with project.

So here’s a fuller answer to Madeline’s question. A big thank you, Madeline, for your patience and for inspiring me to focus on Development-the-movie again, and to attempt to articulate my progress.

It’s almost two years since we spent a couple of days filming Development and Nancy Coory decided that she wasn’t able to play Emily, the central role I wrote for her. One year since I went to the Branchage Directors Lab and received European responses to the project, to place alongside Linda Voorhees’ response and feedback from others, including Madeline. And while I’ve worked on the wider Development project I’ve delayed addressing the problems associated with the Development-the-movie screenplay now that Nancy’s gone, and with the funding the project needs. Instead, I’ve completed Grow Wellington’s Activate course for entrepreneurs. I’ve researched and experimented online, often with Kyna, as we explore ideas about to increase audiences for screen-based work by, about and for women and support other women’s projects. I’ve published a free book 7 Risks for Single Mothers; & the Art of Managing Them.

I wrote a wee screenplay for an animation now in production (with a lot of beautiful help) that convinced me that I love writing scripts and do it well. I've tutored Women and Film, a third year topic at Victoria University, and thanks to lecturer Liz Watkins and the students, that's helped me to reassess and revise my theoretical standpoint. (It still needs work.) During the course, I saw another narrative feature about a woman filmmaker: Sheila McLaughlin’s She Must Be Seeing Things (1987) and now that’s an additional influence, alongside Sally Potter’s The Gold Diggers (1983). All this has transformed my ideas about women’s filmmaking and about finding resources for stories by, about and for women. Transformed my ideas about media convergence’s influence on screen-based storytelling. Transformed me.

So what does this mean for the next draft of Development? Here’s the text for the front page on the website:

What would you sacrifice to make a movie? A friendship? Love? Motherhood? Your home? Your life?

We are preparing to make Development, a feature film from-the-heart. Set in an imaginary corner of Wellywood, Development-the-movie is about women who want to make movies, wherever they are. It is also a meditation on Jane Campion's challenge: "Women filmmakers must put on their coats of armour and get going, because we need them."

How can the ‘new’ me articulate these ideas? One difficult element in the script is the role of death. Its two deaths came from my conversation with Nancy, over years, and are part of that conversation. Now there’s no Nancy, now I’m a different person, do I have to rethink those deaths? Are they still important? And have I sufficiently grieved about Nancy’s withdrawal yet, so I can think clearly?

Another difficult element is media convergence. As media converge, am I sure that I want to write this story as a conventional film script and produce it as a conventional feature? The other day, US producers Ted Hope and Christine Vachon (@kvpi) held a masterclass, and I followed the tweets under the #khnyc hashtag. Here are those which made me think about the platform(s) for Development, with many thanks to the generous tweeple at the masterclass, and to Christine Vachon and Ted Hope:

Online content is the new "riskaverse" (@kvpi)

"Multi platform hybrid direct distribution release" - got that?

Be platform agnostic, genre agnostic, and forum/screening venue agnostic to survive...

"5 years ago directors didn't want to do TV, next ground is feature length content online." @kvpi

@TedHope wonders what is that excellent feature-length online content that can survive twitter/Facebook breaks?

And I looked at Ti Wainui’s Hemingway’s experiment, and thought hmmm, kinda film-like/though absolutely not a film. But arguably a kind of webseries. With regular breaks that allow for short attention spans and Twitter/Facebook breaks, without the distractions of many webseries sites. With ‘notes’ at the end of each short chapter, including visual elements. Could Development work like that, perhaps, with more or mostly film content and cross-referencing to music/podcasts/clips, to this blog (which has always been part of the project), even to statistics, all of which viewers could watch, read and respond to, or not? What would that mean for the difficult financing issues? What will best suit the Development audience?

And then I re-read The Conversations, between novelist Michael Ondaatje and film and sound editor Walter Murch, one of my all-time favorite film books. And in a discussion about how people choose projects (Walter Murch: “In an ideal situation…an actor chooses a part that represents some emotional truth to her as an individual, which pushes her somewhere she has not gone before”), Michael Ondaatje responds:

There’s a line of Saul Bellow’s— “I write to discover the next room in my fate.” In this way, I think, many novels are self-portraits—or future self-portraits, self explorations, even if the story is set in an alien situation. You can try on this costume, that costume.

And that’s where I am. Trying on this costume, that costume. Development will push me somewhere I’ve not been before. Yes, I’ll start with bread. And then I’ll write 'to discover the next room in my fate'. Which makes it more likely that death will be in there, somewhere. This summer, encouraged by Madeline’s gentle intervention, and occasional questions from other filmmakers like Campbell X and Jaye D., I’ll be back into Final Draft. Working out the next step. Watch this space. And, if you’re in Wellington, check out At Circle’s End, any day now?

Gaylene Preston, Barbara Hammer, & Briar March

2011-11-01T19:31:00.000-07:00

Mary Wiles at Canterbury University edited this beautiful catalogue (34pp) for Gaylene's recent retrospective at Te Papa Museum of New Zealand. It's a great overview of Gaylene's documentaries and biographical drama. I loved reading Keri Hulme's memories of being filmed by Gaylene, Mary Wiles' interview with Gaylene and Deborah Shepard's, Bruce Harding's and Paul Sutorius' contributions.

The catalogue also includes a filmography I made as part of my archival work for Gaylene, with a wee reference to Corinn Columpar and Sophie Mayer's There She Goes: Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond, which helped me articulate how Gaylene can be understood as a feminist auteur. And I'm thrilled that by accident the filmography associates me with Gender & Women's Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, where the lovely lecturers made space for the work on Gaylene's archive, waaaay back in 2003: it was such a supportive and generous and life-and-work enhancing place, thanks to Alison Laurie, Lesley Hall, Lorna Kanavatoa and Prue Hyman. And it's so sad that it's no longer there.

You can order your very own copy of the catalogue for only NZ$20: from Mary Wiles: mary.wiles[at]canterbury.ac.nz, or from Gaylene herself: the1[at]gaylenepreston.com.

There's a rumour that the retrospective may reach Auckland. I wish it could travel outside New Zealand as well.

_______

The finalists for the IDA Documentary Awards have been announced. It's wonderful to see that Barbara Hammer's Maya Deren's Sink, has been nominated. Barbara's life and work have inspired a generation of queer, feminist, and avant-garde artists and filmmakers, and this interview, courtesy Museum of Modern Art, New York, illustrates just how inspiring she is.

Last year, Barbara published an important memoir, Hammer! Making Movies Out of Sex and Life, available here.

And, from a generation that benefits from Gaylene's and Barbara's hard work on behalf of women filmmakers, it's great to see New Zealand's Briar March's Smoke Songs (What do you get when you mix Navajo culture, politics, and punk-rock? The answer: Blackfire; a Native American family band with a message) in the IDA Documentary Awards nominations as well. Smoke Songs has been nominated for the David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award. This award recognises exceptional achievement in non-fiction film and video production at the university level and brings greater public and industry awareness to the work of students in the documentary field. I can't find a Smoke Songs trailer to include, or even an image, but will add one when when I can.

4 December

Sara Nesson's Poster Girl has won Best Short at the IDA Documentary Awards. It looks pretty amazing.

Going Global via MAMI

2011-10-27T20:14:00.000-07:00

Leena Manimekalai

At the recent Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI), women wrote and directed six of the fourteen films competing for its major competition for first-time feature makers. And Satyen Bordoloi wrote an article, It’s Raining Women Filmmakers in Mami This Year.* I questioned him about the MAMI article. Last year, I said, MAMI had an all-women jury headed by Jane Campion. The people who run this festival must be pro-women, that’s wonderful. No, he said. Until he mentioned it, the organizers didn’t even realise that there were so many women’s films. Rashid Irani, senior film critic and a selection committee member said to Satyen:

When I’m talking to you, I realize that one of the most unprecedented things for any festival is that in the competition we have 6 debut women filmmakers...And each one of them is such a stunning debut that you have to see it to believe it.

They’d just chosen the best films. That’s all. I continued to argue with Satyen. Women’s films are often among the best, I said, but not selected, because women and men tend to promote men’s work more strongly when they advise decision-makers and advocate for inclusion. I believe that a subliminal change in attitude among all concerned can cause this kind of shift. Maybe more women made submissions because of the all-women jury last year, which told them women are welcome in Mumbai? Maybe advocates and advisers felt comfortable promoting women’s films, for the same reason? Satyen wasn’t convinced. And there were also more films directed by women in competition at Cannes this year, so maybe women now more easily find the resources to make good films? (From what I hear, I don't think so.) Anyway, I turned to the films.

Here they are: Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty from Australia (also in competition at Cannes), Historias Que So Existem Quando Lembradas/ History Only Exists When Remembered by Julia Murat from Brazil/Argentina (“a masterful fable of memory and time” according to Satyen), My Little Princess by Eva Ionesco from France, The Dead Sea/Sengadal by Leena Manimekalai from India, The Mirror Never Lies by Kamila Andini from Indonesia and She Monkeys by Lisa Aschan from Sweden. My Little Princess, about a love-hate relationship between a mother and her daughter, scooped the award, and awards for best director and best actress.
As I watched the trailers and some YouTube interviews with the directors, and read other interviews, including two of Satyen’s articles about the films and their directors, I had a few more thoughts. It’s great to have a diverse group of women’s features together within a general festival, instead of one or two as exceptions, because it’s possible to begin to speculate about factors that may have contributed to their completion and quality, beyond the talent and determination of their makers.

There’s a common element in two of the filmmakers’ life stories: Kamila Andini and Julia Murat come from film-making families. Kamila Andini’s father is the Indonesian director Garin Nugroho. She is only twenty-six and The Mirror Never Lies centres on Pakis, a 12-year-old girl whose father is lost at sea, and her difficult relationship with her mother Tayung, who keeps her face permanently masked in white lotion. Julia Murat’s mother is Lucia Murat, the film-maker, journalist, and activist against the dictatorship in Brazil between 1968-79. (Other women filmmakers whose story reflects the possible influence of family tradition are the Iranian Makhmalbaf sisters, Samira and Hana, trained by their father Mohsen Makmalbafa, and discussed by Kathy Wu here).

Julia Leigh had a slightly different set of resources. She's a successful novelist. And she’s from Australia. There, Dr Ruth Harley is Screen Australia’s CEO and a strong advocate for gender equity: in its last round of feature development, 41% of Screen Australia's investment went into projects that women wrote. As well, the ever-generous Jane Campion was Julia Leigh's mentor and advocate. Lisa Aschan first came to attention with Fuck the Rapist, a collection of fictional ads for spiked tampons designed to protect against rape. She’s worked in film, television and theatre. Eva Ionesco is a well-known actor, and I believe that women who move from acting to writing and directing arrive with all kinds of inbuilt strengths.

I love it that Sleeping Beauty, My Little Princess, The Mirror Never Lies, She Monkeys and History Only Exists When Remembered all centre on women/girls and gender.

It’s also noticeable that two of these films come from Asian filmmakers. Satyen writes, in an article about Kamila Andini and The Mirror Never Lies:

At MAMI this year, considering the films in competition, there is perceptible difference between films from developed worlds like Europe, North America and Australia and those from developing worlds. Whereas the former have intellectual control, the ones from Latin America and Asia carry a spiritual strength rarely achieved in cinema. Seeing and putting these films into perspective, it is evident, that the hope of cinema lies in the latter.

Is it inevitable that a festival that includes films with spiritual strength to includes a high proportion of women-directed films, as well as filmmakers from Latin America and Asia (and perhaps from the Pacific, if I think about the new Samoan/New Zealand film, Tusi Tamasese's O Le Tulafale/ The Orator which I saw last night and which—directed by a man—arguably has a spiritual power like the one that Satyen discusses)?

I’ve learned about the strength and longevity of women’s film festivals in Asia as part of a project to increase the audiences for films that women write and direct, alongside HerFilm's Kyna Morgan. I think that in English-speaking countries we don’t know enough about these festivals and the work that’s shown there. For instance, according to the Network of Asian Women’s Film Festivals (NAWFF) launched in 2010, NAWFF exists to encourage inter-Asian cooperation among women film professionals and to support Asian Women’s filmmaking, distribution and cultural movements among members. The members include India's Samsung International Women’s Film Festival, International Women’s film festival Israel, Taiwan's Women Make Waves, Korea's International Women’s Film Festival in Seoul and the Tokyo International Women’s Film Festival in Japan. What difference do these film festivals make for filmmakers? How can we link up, and access the films more easily? Most of them have websites in English as well as in their own languages. Anyone for women’s film festival tours?

Kathy Wu wrote recently

If you feel frustrated by the lack of female directors, try looking outside of Hollywood and Western cinema. Just look at what the female filmmakers in Iran are capable of achieving, in an environment that is infinitely more hostile and difficult then here in the West. Some of the most exciting, challenging and powerful women filmmakers in the world today can be found working in the most surprising of locations, speaking the most curious of languages, fastidiously producing their own extraordinary visions of the world. Go and seek them out, because they need your support.

I agree with her. Take Leena Manimekalai. On Facebook she lists some of her many film-making achievements. She’s extraordinarily prolific, describes herself as an artist, film-maker, poet and actor, and lists her interests in human rights, feminism, travel, reading, music, cinema, creative writing, graffiti. But I’d never seen anything written about her until I read this article on her blog, and then an interview.

Sengadal/The Dead Sea is her first feature after nine documentaries, and she had an extraordinary battle with the censors before it was released. Read about it here, where she says “Censorship [of various kinds] feels like it is mutilating my organs”. And here she is on Twitter.

Leena Manimekalai also made the doco Goddesses about

...the lives of three women; Lakshmi, a professional funeral singer and canny businesswoman; Krishnaveni, a grave digger who is given the abysmal task of taking unclaimed bodies in whatever state and burying them with her own bare hands; and sea-going fisherwoman, Sethuraku, who was given a man’s profession by her uncle in order to survive and support her family. These women are incredible: hilarious, cunning and strong. They each display power in their own self awareness and assertiveness.

She's so staunch: speaking about Sengadal, she said: “I will stand with my people…in their fight for Justice.” Her next feature will be Passport, about the arduous and tortuous passage of illegal refugees which force them to travel in material and ideological conditions similar to those of times of slavery.

Many thanks to Satyen and to MAMI, for opening my eyes and heart to this group of filmmakers, as women whose work I can continue to follow.

(I really enjoyed these interviews about My Little Princess, and the clip includes most of the trailer.)

November 3: Sengadal has just won the Network of Asian Women's Film Festival (NAWFF) Award for 2011, which recognises and promotes talented women filmmakers in Asia. A special jury comprising representatives from Women's International Film Festivals in Korea, Japan, India and Taiwan, met in Tokyo to select the winner. A total of 5 films drawn from Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Israel and India competed for the NAWFF award. Sengadal was highly commended as a bold and brave film that sensitively portrayed the plight of the fisher folk in Dhanushkodi, caught as they were in the interstices of a long and difficult ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka between the Sinhalese and Tamil people. With live footage and interviews, the film was appreciated as a stellar piece of work by a young and talented filmmaker.

*Satyen is consistently alert to gender issues in film-making, and I originally found him through this article about women filmmakers in Sweden.

Pratibha Parmar & Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth

2011-09-29T20:25:00.000-07:00

Alice Walker’s life and work have inspired me, shown me that it’s possible to be a writer and a global citizen with love, spirit, courage and laughter. There’s The Color Purple and Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation, as well as the Broadway musical. And there’s so much more: poems, essays, short stories, novels like Possessing the Secret of Joy—about female genital mutilation—and her latest book, The Chicken Chronicles. So when I heard that Pratibha Parmar of Kali Films was making a documentary about Alice Walker, called Beauty in Truth, I was very excited. And, because this is Alice Walker here, and there's a huge audience ready and waiting for a film about her, I was very surprised to learn that Kali Films needs funds to complete the project (like Arwen Curry with her doco The Worlds of Ursula Le Guin, though she has recently received some grants).

Pratibha Parmar is a multi-award-winning filmmaker with a family heritage of protest. She has lived and worked on four continents: Asia, Africa, Europe, America, and has created many “filmic spaces where women of color can reach each other across the various diasporas”. These spaces include her very first video Emergence (where Palestinian, South Asian, African-American, and Chinese women speak about their art), A Place of Rage (about June Jordan and Angela Davis within the American Civil Rights movement, shortly to be re-released on DVD), an earlier film collaboration and accompanying book with Alice Walker, Warrior Marks, also about female genital mutilation, and a feature, Nina’s Heavenly Delights, “a surprising love story where Scottish humor meets Bollywood spectacle”.

Pratibha kindly answered some questions while she completed preparations for Beauty in Truth’s Indiegogo campaign. The campaign's going well. It's heartwarming to read the lovely things people have written about the project and see that almost fifty people have already donated. And I love reading the updates from Pratibha, and (just now) an update from producer Shaheen Haq:

Today I was invited by director Pratibha for a sneak preview of ‘work in progress’ on one of the ‘chapters’ in the film; the official reason for my inclusion into the edit room (normally barred) was, ‘for comments’. Without giving away too much (no spoilers here) I have to say I was blown away. The issues around women’s oppression raised in the film are as pertinent today as they were 30 years ago. ...To watch archive footage of the vilification Alice received from speaking the truth, despite the dangers and the constant attacks on her psyche was a revelation.

There's still a long way to go to reach Kali Films' goal. And after reading Ruby Rich's advice to women filmmakers the other day, I want to urge you to be generous to Beauty in Truth. The film needs us, as much as many of us need the film. In Kali Films' newsletter the other day, Pratibha wrote:

We've been asked by a few people why we need to run a crowdfunding campaign, when we have such a stellar cast including Steven Spielberg and Yoko Ono? Couldn't we find a generous benefactor among the people we have interviewed? Our partial funding from ITVS prohibits this, for concerns of editorial impartiality and autonomy. So we are looking to our friends and supporters to get on board. In this time of heavy cuts to the arts and a strident conservatism that seeks to silence women of color, it's so important to empower women to raise our voices and tell our own stories.

As well as the feel-good elements of being a supporter, donors receive some wonderful 'perks'; for example, for not much more than the price of a movie for two you'll receive a DVD of Beauty in Truth when it's completed. If you can't donate, please spread the word so that others will hear about Beauty in Truth.

Now, the interview:

Q: How did you decide to make Beauty in Truth?

The idea was conceived over a Christmas break four years ago when Shaheen (my partner and co-producer) and I were watching a stack of DVDs in a cosy hideout in Northern California. These DVDs were all biographies of ‘iconic’ men, such as Frank Gehry, Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan.

Immediately we wondered out loud about the absence of cinematic visions of ‘iconic’ women. Where were the STACKS of films on women who have challenged, changed and shaped history and impacted on contemporary culture? I came to filmmaking from a passionate desire to see stories about women, particularly women of color who are rarely seen on mainstream television or cinema screens in all our/their complexity and nuance. So it isn’t a surprise that my default position is to always ask questions.

Where are the in-depth explorations of women as thinkers and public intellectuals, women as history makers and shapers, women who are inspirational leaders and role models for upcoming generations? Where indeed was a film on Alice Walker who is rightly considered one of 20th Century’s most significant writers? And so started the journey of this film.

Q: How far have you got with it?

I am focusing on completing Beauty in Truth before the end of 2011 and want to launch the film in 2012, the 30th Anniversary of The Color Purple.

We have had many funding challenges in the last few years yet we are proud to say we have completed 85% of our filming with just a few small grants as well as major extensions on credit limits on our personal credit cards. More recently support from ITVS who have been fantastic has boosted us. We have interviewed some amazing people including Danny Glover, Steven Spielberg, Gloria Steinem and of course Alice Walker herself.

For me the most frustrating thing about the whole process has been how it’s had to stop and start as we apply for funding, wait for news on our application, pick ourselves up again when the answer is not we hoped for, find another grant to apply to and so and so on. This has meant that for the first time ever in my filmmaking life, I have had to work with different DPs (Directors of Photography) and not the same one throughout. My work as you know is very visually led and so for me the crucial relationship is with my DP.

Pratibha at work on Beauty in Truth with Nina’s Heavenly Delights cinematographer Simon Dennis
photo: Shaheen Haq

But this time around, I have had to find DPs locally in the different cities we were filming in and some times it didn’t work out the way I would have liked. That’s been damn frustrating.

One particular highlight was interviewing Yoko Ono in Iceland when she was giving the LennonOno Peace Award to Alice Walker for her humanitarian work. It was on Lennon’s 70th birthday so the whole event was ultra special. After I finished the interview, one of the people in Yoko’s circle who had been with her for a long time said to me that it was the best interview she had given in a really long time. So of course I was thrilled. Not only did she talk about Alice (they both went to the same college, Sarah Lawrence, but at different times) but she also shared anecdotes about her own work and her and John Lennon. It was such a privilege to talk to her.

Alice Walker & Yoko Ono
photo: Pratibha Parmar

Q: In the Warrior Marks book, Alice Walker writes: “I am sending you the little script that I hope will be part of the film. I don’t know just how you’ll do it, but I think it can be worked in throughout the discussions about genital mutilation, so that I am part of the subject and not just an observer. I’ve done this in a deliberate effort to stand with the mutilated women, not beyond them. I know how painful exposure is; it is something I’ve had to face every day of my life, beginning with my own first look in the mirror in the morning!” I sometimes feel very uncomfortable viewing documentaries made by filmmakers who do not appear to ‘stand with’ the people they work with, even when they claim to do this. How do you ‘stand with’ Alice Walker as you make a documentary about her? Does it help that you’ve already undertaken a very challenging project with her, the Warrior Marks film?

I think every time we make a film we are laying ourselves wide open because most times we come from a place of passion for our work–a passion that helps us to fly over the iron fences in our way. And when you make work that comes from that deep place within your bones, it’s inevitable that you feel exposed and vulnerable. When we made Warrior Marks, it was a challenging and difficult journey primarily because of its subject matter, female genital mutilation. Out of such shared experienced grew a mutual trust and respect. Recently when we finished shooting an interview, Alice said, ‘You know Pratibha we wouldn’t be having these conversations if we weren’t friends’. So I know that the content of our conversations for the film is precious and I feel honored that she has trusted me with her story.

Q: What can you do in a documentary that you could not do in a book about Alice Walker, or she could not do herself, in a book?

There is in fact an excellent biography by Evelyn C White on Alice Walker called A Life: Alice Walker. I highly recommend it.

Visual storytelling particularly with a biography is an exciting challenge and with Alice’s story there is of course the gift of her evocative poetry and fiction. So there is an opportunity here to weave some of this writing embedded into visual montages throughout the film, writing that often reflects key moments in her eventful life. It’s a beautiful way to anchor some of these turning points. I am excited to work with animation, graphics and moving images to create these visual vignettes that hopefully do justice to Alice’s writing.

Pratibha Parmar and Alice Walker.
photo: Shaheen Haq

Q: Has funding been problematic for this project because of women’s lack of access to capital in general? Or to our collective reluctance to support women filmmakers, even though we want more women-centred stories?

Okay let’s start with some startling statistics, which give an idea of what women filmmakers are up against—only 7% of directors, 13% of writers, and 20% of producers are female. Given such a dearth of female representation in front of and behind the camera, is it any wonder that we continue to have a struggle to get funding for female stories and voices.

And within this context many of us especially those of us who are declared feminists are experiencing acute funding challenges. It’s hard especially when you make films that don’t fit into the dominant white, male paradigms at the best of times but right now its pretty dire.

But still, I have to admit that I didn’t think it would be as difficult as it has been to find funding support for a film on one of the most compelling, history making, writers of the 20th century. And I am not exactly a beginner director either. Just this week I read that US T.V. networks hire hardly any women directors and in a situation where women were/are already a minority, our continual disappearance both in front of and behind the screen is worrying.

Women are usually the first hit in any economic crisis as we are witnessing all around us right now with the current crisis and when it comes to our voices in the media the situation just gets worse. There has been an overall shift in recent years towards strident conservative, right wing thinking, which adds to the struggle to get funding for films that don’t fit into their retrogressive lens. Alice Walker’s outspokenness on issues such female genital mutilation, as well as the Palestinian people’s struggle, makes some funders nervous about supporting the film. I know this to be the case from some of the comments we have received.

And it’s not just the right wing. Recently there was an article in the New York Times about the documentaries screening at the Toronto Film Festival and there was not one mention of a film by a woman. Documentary is a genre in which women have always been very prominent. But suddenly when the genre becomes ‘sexy’ and more publically profiled because ‘named’ male directors are turning to the genre, it’s only the male filmmakers who get name checked. Melissa Silverstein who writes the Women In Hollywood blog did a great piece on this.

Q: In the Warrior Marks book, you wrote that the “controlling, curbing, and problematizing of women’s sexuality have always been cross-cultural”, and sexuality is a theme in your work. To sustain your cross-cultural work, and the anger that accompanies it, you must need vast resources of love and courage. Has some of this come from your very long domestic and creative partnership with Shaheen Haq? Has your own sexuality influenced your work? And if so, how? And what are your views on LGBTQ representation in South Asian media?

I believe that everything you are and have been shapes your creativity. In my case my diasporic personal history is an intrinsic part of what has made me. I was born in Kenya, grew up in the UK and was brought up to think of India as my ancestral home. Currently I am making home in California. My status as a woman, a woman of color, an out lesbian and a feminist has challenged me in finding ways of negotiating a world that insists on making me into the ‘other’ but I also love that this outsider identity has given me an opportunity to revel in more imaginative ways of engaging with the world.

As for my relationship with Shaheen–yes indeed I would not be who I am today, doing all that I do without the love I have been blessed to experience with my partner Shaheen Haq. Her faith and abiding confidence in me during my many ‘dark nights’ over the years has pulled me through. Together we have broken many many taboos–for a start she comes from a Muslim background and I from a Hindu–both religions and communities historical ‘enemies’ since the partition of India. My parents fought against British rule in India but they also harboured a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment as a result of the bloody history of that partition. Ditto for her family. And then on top of that we have stepped completely outside the cultural norm and rejected a heteronormative expectation of us, all this has thrown us way off into the margins.

Pratibha Parmar and Shaheen Haq

But I have always embraced the margins which is where some of the most exciting and innovative work comes from. I made Khush in 1991, the first South Asian lesbian and gay documentary. The film spanned India, UK and Canada. At the time I had no idea what the impact of this film would be but to this day I have folks who tell me that had it not been for that film, they might never have come out to themselves, or their families or friends. When I went to India in 1991 to film interviews, homosexuality was illegal and not many people were (understandably) willing to be on camera. I went back in 2008 when I was invited to screen my lesbian romantic curry romance, Nina’s Heavenly Delights. I met many many lesbians and gay men who were out and open about their sexuality. Things had changed absolutely and it was wonderful to see that. More recently homosexuality has been decriminalized in India and there are regular LGBT marches in places like Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta.

For me LGBT representations made by South Asian LGBT filmmakers like Sonali Gulati are far more exciting than any found in South Asian media. Bollywood films have started to include queer characters but they are so often full of stereotypes. Self representation is powerful which is one of the reasons I decided to become a filmmaker.

Q: You have a teaser on the film’s site. Have you got any other images or footage to share?

We now have a longer trailer, which we hope people will view and share as much as they like. We also have quite a few production stills and some of these are on our website alongside my blog. I am about to venture into unknown territory and explore a whole new way of raising funding. Inspired by some amazing success stories, we have decided to take the plunge and start a crowd funding campaign for Beauty In Truth on Indiegogo. And as the IndieGoGo campaign gains momentum we plan to release a few choice video podcasts from the film.

Q: What do you need? How can we help?

Crowd funding is an exciting way to raise money through grassroots outreach and potentially an excellent way to build community and audiences to have dialogue and discussions with. I truly believe that there is a diverse and widespread international community of people out there who want to see this film, especially women. Films like this do and can make a difference. But we need YOUR help. There is only two of us doing this with the help of a few well wishers. Please spread the word on the film. We are asking people to follow us on Twitter and Facebook, tweet/ email their friends, post to Facebook and help get us donations on our Indiegogo site. Become Beauty In Truth Ambassadors and hold parties in your home, community centres and gardens…anywhere really where there is beauty and light and good food.

We want to build an active and vibrant community around the film and if people tell us about their fund raising efforts via a short video or even a short blog or an email, we will post it to our Facebook page (Alice Walker Film) and on our website.

(Versions of this interview were cross-posted at Bidisha, Gender Across Borders, HerFilm, International Museum of Women and Meanjin. Many thanks to all these sites, for spreading the word.)

Flowers for the New Zealand Film Commission

2011-09-29T01:41:00.000-07:00

I love working with Kyna Morgan of Her Film. And from over there in North America, she keeps me in line, often through Twitter. Today, she tweeted about the New Zealand Film Commission’s (NZFC) Fresh Shorts decisions. Fresh Shorts is the NZFC's new low budget short film scheme, run in-house. It aims to identify the next generation of New Zealand feature filmmakers by nurturing and inspiring up-and-coming talent and it has just funded eight films at the $10,000 funding level and eight at $30,000 each. Kyna had been reading OnFilm online and found the NZFC press release. Here's what she wrote:

@devt ur staying up on this, yeah? Looks like gender parity reached for funding. NZFC has no gender mandate, does it? bit.ly/oCRRWT

@HerFilm Actually, I've kinda abandoned it, almost totally fruitless effort-- What's your take on this list? [I was cranky, because I HAD given up, and my mind was elsewhere.]

Kyna didn’t respond. So—of course—I took a look. And she’d done the maths and her addition was correct, so she didn’t need to respond. Women writers and directors are attached to four of the eight green-lit Fresh Shorts projects, at each level.

According to the information on the NZFC website, in 201—its second year—Fresh Shorts attracted 292 applications, an increase of 68 applications from 2010, 160 applications at the $10,000 funding level and 132 at the $30,000 funding level. The submitted projects conveyed a very diverse range of topics and a wide range of cultural perspectives–reflecting the fresh voices the NZFC hoped the scheme would attract.

A panel from the industry and NZFC staff selected the final sixteen projects: Ainsley Gardiner, Jason Stutter, Peter Salmon, Chris Payne & Kath Akuhata-Brown (NZFC Development Executives) and Lisa Chatfield (NZFC Short Film Manager). This is what Lisa—who was a strong presence at V48Hours, accompanied by a Fresh Shorts video which included a reasonable number of women—said:

The increase in applications this year is a fantastic result for Fresh Shorts and I think relates to a closer connection between Fresh Shorts and V48Hrs this year. Of course it did make the task of choosing just 16 films very challenging! There was plenty of debate amongst the panel and the decisions weren’t all unanimous—the strength of the projects and the film makers involved made the process exciting and challenging.

This year the funded projects include three animations, one documentary and twelve narrative films that range from drama to comedy to horror and are set in the past, the future, the present and even inside cardboard boxes.

The NZFC has supplied no details about the proportion of applications that had women writers and directors attached. If I learn more details, I’ll add them here.

The four short films with women writers and directors that have been green lit at the $30,000 budget level are:

Blankets - Director: Louise Leitch, Writer: Casey Whelan, Producer: Melissa Dodds
Soldier Boy – Writer/Director: Jess Bluck, Producer: Sarah Cook
Taniwha – Writer/Director: Asuka Sylvie, Producers David White & Melissa Dodds
Two Eyes, Two Hands, Two Feet – Director: Kirsten Green, Producer: Stephen Lovatt

The four short films with women writers and directors at the $10,000 budget level are:

Airmail - Writer/Director: Prue Cunningham
Friday Tigers – Writer/Director: Aidee Walker, Producer: Julia Parnell
I’m going to Mum’s – Writer/Director: Lauren Jackson, Producer: Jeremy Macey
Purerehua – Writer/Director: Renae Maihi

Good to see some male producers in there, too, time they invested in more women's stories. Many congratulations to everyone: the writers and directors, the producers, the decision-makers. I'm excited to think that this may lead to a change in the present gendered allocation of feature film funding, which primarily benefits men who are writers and directors.

(And, Kyna, you’re correct again, the NZFC has no gender policy. But New Zealand ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1985. Because of this, the NZFC, like all state agencies must encourage the participation of women in public life on equal terms with men (article 7). It has to consider how to encourage women's access to its state-funded filmmaking programmes, because story-telling on screen is participating in public life. But its track record hasn’t been good, so the flowers are to congratulate them! That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate your heads up. Again, yet again, my warm thanks to you.)

And this week, the Swedish state film funding gender model is back in the news, in Variety, with a slightly different take than this one, about Swedish women behind the camera, and Satyen Bordoloi’s last year. Now that’s a great ongoing story!

Why Is It Still So Bad? And What Could We Do About It?

2011-09-28T01:20:00.000-07:00

A poster for Lynn Hershman's !Women, Art, Revolution

I.

Last Saturday, film writer Thelma Adams moderated the annual Amazing Women in Film Panel at the Woodstock Film Festival, with three women directors – Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone), Susan Seidelman (best known for Desperately Seeking Susan) and Nancy Savoca (her latest, Union Square just at Toronto), critic Lisa Rosman, philanthropist Meera Gandhi, and activist Robin Bronk.

Before the panel, Thelma blogged about questions FB and industry friends had raised. And when I read the post and saw ‘B. Ruby Rich’ I was hooked; she’s my hero, a long-time writer about women and feminism and film, and staunch activist — her book Chick Flicks is a classic. Furthermore, many of the questions offered to Thelma are relevant to Kali Films' Indiegogo campaign for funds to complete Pratibha Parmar's feature documentary on Alice Walker, Beauty in Truth. My next post is an interview with Pratibha, and somehow Thelma's post feels like a good introduction. So here it is, with a couple of wee interjections from me, and with many thanks to Thelma. It's followed by extracts from Lynn Hershman's interview with B. Ruby Rich for the documentary !Women, Art Revolution, to provide a broader context, and some suggestions for change.

II.

B. Ruby Rich: Why is it still so bad?

Thelma: I was going to try to start off diplomatically — what have the gains been, and why are we still falling short? In a summer where Bridesmaids and The Help bookended the mainstream box office, why were execs and crix (mostly male) so surprised…. Also, what does it take to get a woman’s narrative arc on screen? What do we have to change to get more there?

Laurie E. Boris: Where are the great stories about older women?

B Ruby Rich: And why have we still not caught up with the silent-film era, where women were kingmakers? Or with France, for that matter? [Wellywoodwoman: Or, maybe, Sweden?]

Thelma: The Iron Lady? I’m thinking Ida Lupino, @B Ruby Rich. I’ll raise that question. One reason vis a vis France is that they are more state-funded — isn’t that correct? I also believe, and argue please, that actresses have to step into producing in a major way a la Pitt & Clooney. Creating their vehicles, building them from the ground up, surrounding themselves with smart, savvy people. True? Not true? Partially true?

Lynn Zuccarelli Austin: I think it’s true. Someone like Lynn Novick who produces & directs docs with/for Ken Burns …is a power in her own right but doesn’t have the name recognition that KB has…despite his consistent and best attempts to always point out to audiences/interviewers when it’s her work vs his. [Wellywoodwoman: see this Women & Hollywood post.]

Thelma: Have women made marginally more progress in the world of documentaries? That would be a question for Barbara Kopple, who I’ll also see at Woodstock Film Festival this weekend.

Lynn Zuccarelli Austin: Jodie Foster seemed to be building a solid portfolio as a producer and then seemed to take a break…Who is on the cusp/horizon now? It seems that smaller, indie films have a stronger/larger female director or producer pool …true/false?

Thelma: It does seem that way … I’ll ask the three indie directors if that’s true.

Michelle McCue: I appreciate a raunchy comedy (Bridesmaids), horror, sc-fi (Marti Noxon’s Fright Night) and all sports movies (including the recent Moneyball). As I may not be in the minority anymore, what are these women’s opinions of the 3 genres I mentioned vs the superfluous “chick flicks.”

Lynn Zuccarelli Austin: By “smaller” I mean budget…and distribution, not importance. And could you get them to sign a pledge to not make any more Sex in the City sequels?

Kaitlin Sansoucie: Oh so many questions…. But firstly, I think things come down to a major set of money problems. Women don’t have money (not that most men have much more…). Where do we look for connections when we want to make a project happen? Men. Meanwhile, in Sweden the government says “Hey, we are giving scholarships equally to men and women – why aren’t women making as many movies? How can we get them to create?” what a dream! Here, there’s that level of competition to get funding that puts women off. How do we change that?

Also, the US barely takes its own business seriously… And art? It’s entertainment. It’s entertaining to watch women suffer their mistakes and relative independence! Some moms buy their daughters shirts that say Allergic to Algebra – they are the same moms who don’t take the movies their kids watch to be anything more than entertainment…yet their sons are learning how to have relationships by watching porn and their girls are failing math thinking they’ll just end up like Katherine – and that’s Heigl not Hepburn.

Kim Voynar: Kaitlin, among the many things you say here that I agree with, for me the most relevant point you make is “the US barely takes its own business seriously.” This is true in more ways than art vs entertainment, or the dumbing down of girls. We don’t take art — real art — seriously anymore. I think most people haven’t an inkling what art is, or what art means to them. And unlike many countries, our government really does not support filmmaking financially, or really even much to do with art generally.

Unfortunately, in a tough recession, the reality is that most people (not all, but most) are more interested in going to the movies to be entertained and escape for a couple hours from their crappy reality, not to ponder or appreciate art. This is clearly evident by the box office numbers I look at every week on MCN. Easy-to-digest entertainment sells and makes a profit, so that’s where much of the investment goes.

Back to the question, Thelma: I would love for you to ask each of them whether they feel there is a real indie film community in the sense of people supporting each other. And whether any of them have ever (or would ever) donate to a friend’s or colleagues’ film through a crowdfunding site.

Kate Sansoucie: Are there any male feminist filmmakers? I would love to hear what they have to say about that. What women in film do they look up to – theorists, writers, directors… Which voices are in their heads when they’re working?

Thelma: Thanks for all the good questions….mulling, mulling. The feature director, Lisa Albright, who I talked to yesterday at Woodstock’s Colony Cafe and has the Bernadette Peters film in the festival, Coming Up Roses, had this question to contribute: How will the digital distribution affect what we can make and how we tell our stories? Who’s going to watch a 90 minute film on an iPhone. How is the format going to dictate how we tell our stories?

III.

Lynn Hershman's B Ruby Rich interview (2006) was a long one, and these extracts come towards the end. I think they're very powerful:

What advice would I give to young filmmakers? Um, the film schools are full of women now. But there also filled with ideology that says that you will fail or succeed purely on the basis of your own talent and brilliance. I would advise women to not believe that? I would advise women to make really strong contacts, with each other and with the men who are willing to be true collaborators. And I would advise them to kick out the stops. To kick through the plasterboard. I would advise them not to spend five years working on their screenplay, like some women I know.

I would advise them not to make polite films. I would advise them to make the lowest budget films they can, and the strongest voices they can, and to learn a lesson from the whole Riot Grrrls movement in music. In the old days I never would have believed that women would have broken through in rock music and not in film. That would have been absolutely inconceivable to me. And yet that's what happened.

And um, you know, I remember when Sadie Benning, first made her Fisher-Price pixelvision videos, and got celebrated all over the world by the time she was eighteen. And then kind of ran away from it. I remember thinking, why aren't more women doing this? Where's all the rest of them? Well, we're in a whole new technological moment again. When You-tube and podcasts are for a minute, just for a minute, scrambling the hierarchies. And I would say, Get in there fast. It's all gonna coalesce again.

The walls of the Red Sea are parting and they come back really fast. But you know, Stuart Hall, in his work in cultural studies has always pointed out, that amidst these hegemonic structures, there's always points of contradiction. There's always windows of opportunity that you can sneak through, when the gears are shifting. And I would say, 'Sneak through and keep going, and don't, like Lot's wife, turn back to see if anyone's gaining on you'.
...

The whole question of critical and popular support is a really crucial one. Part of the reason that the feminist art movement could happen, was that there were feminists writing about art. Part of the reason that the women's film movement could happen was that there were women starting magazines to write about them. Um, part of the reason that underground film could happen way back when was that there was an underground press.

Part of the reason that the anti-Vietnam War movement could happen the way it did was because there was an underground press. So, coverage is really crucial. Debate is really crucial. Um, I think kinship systems are really important. I think networks of/and friends are really important. So I would say, have a lot of parties. Play in traffic. Find backers. Don't be doctrinaire. Accumulate allies. And I think that men have a great ability to do this. Men have a great ability to get their game together, to be generous to one another and you end up with entourage, right?

Where's the women's version of entourage? I don't think it's really Charlie's Angels-maybe that's as close as it gets, but that would be depressing. So I would say that there need to be some girl gangs. That women need to take a page out of the Riot Grrrls' book. Take a page out of the Bitch magazine book. Um, and figure out, um, a DIY system that can work again.

Uh, the problem is, that women never feel safe enough to do that. That women never feel confident enough to do that. There's a terrible lack of generosity because everyone can see there's not enough to go around. They don't believe, that by getting more, everyone can get more. That more is more. Um, I like to think that women's sports helps this. I like to think that women's soccer helps this. That there's a way in which um, u h, team spirit uh can be taught (…?), in schools, in a way that wasn't possible pre-Title IX, when I went through. But so far, I can't say I've seen it. Carried through.

Um, I'm always optimistic, though. I think the technological changes right now, create a possibility, for a kind of amnesiac optimism.

The full interview, on video, is here.
The transcript is here.

Thanks to Stanford University Libraries for these resources, from their !Women, Art Revolution digital collection.

IV.
Thelma Adams says that there will soon be clips from the 2011 Amazing Women Panel on YouTube. Today I found this (interim?) one. I found it very interesting, though I wish the image and sound were better. Will keep an eye out for more--

Zarcquona's story, read by Meryl Streep

2011-09-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

In a moving performance, Meryl Streep reads the words of “ordinary, extraordinary” Afghan woman Zarcquona. This is the best 14 minutes and 51 seconds I've spent this year. I cried. I cheered. I am inspired. And loved the way Meryl Streep contextualised her reading.

Meryl Streep's reading was part of the launch of the Women in the World Foundation, a movement dedicated to advancing women and girls through stories and solutions. I hope that the Women in the World Foundation will link to and support women who tell stories on screens large and small, who are working hard to tell stories by, about, and for women. This morning, I'm thinking about Afia Nathaniel's Neither the Veil Nor the Four Walls, which addresses one aspect of Zarcquona's story, expressed in another woman's life. I'm thinking about Pratibha Parmar's Beauty in Truth, about Alice Walker.

Andrea Arnold and Wuthering Heights at Venice

2011-09-06T15:12:00.000-07:00

Andrea Arnold's one of my favorite filmmakers. One of the most exciting women writer/directors in the world, I think, for all kinds of reasons. Remember Wasp (2003) which won the Academy Award for Live Action Short 2005 and was described by the Guardian as 'social realist film poetry'? Red Road (2006), which won the Prix du Jury at Cannes, and many other awards? Fish Tank (2009) which won multiple awards including the BAFTA for Outstanding British Film last year?

Andrea Arnold at Cannes

Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights has just premiered at the Venice Film Festival. According to the Guardian, Wuthering Heights is

...stripped of its period frills and sweeping score. It comes caked in grime and damp with saliva. The script is salted with profanities, while the plot finds room for brief moments of a nudity and an animalistic al-fresco sex scene. Heathcliff, the Byronic forefather of English romantic fiction, is black.

And the first reviews, in a nice roundup here on Shadow and Act, show that the film's receiving critical acclaim. I'll be first in line when it reaches New Zealand.

Because I've been following the festival's press conferences on YouTube, most recently the one for Tusi Tamasese's O Le Tulafale/The Orator, this morning I watched the Wuthering Heights press conference. I know that a press conference with two people (Tusi Tamasese and producer Catherine Fitzgerald) and about a first feature is always going to be different than one for a third feature, where actors are also present. But I was sooo disappointed and frustrated, by the comparative lengths of the clips (23 minutes 34 seconds for O Le Tulafale; 3 minutes 38 seconds for Wuthering Heights), in the way Andrea's responses are presented (her voice accompanied always by the simultaneous translation and some distracting camera movements), in the way the entire clip's shot, though I guess the sexism, especially in shots of the photo opportunity, is not unusual. Is this an example of women writers and directors being taken less seriously than men? Would love to know what others think. But, at the end of the clip, some shots from the film itself. That part's a treat.

Andrea Arnold's so sharp and funny, I could listen to her for hours. I hope that someone like Charlie Rose (I wish there was a feminist version, much as I love watching Charlie's interviews) will interview Andrea at length, soon.

Here's the O Le Tulafale/The Orator press conference, to compare, and because it's great to see.

I can't wait to see this film either, the first Samoan language feature, funded by the New Zealand Film Commission. Its early development took place at the International Institute of Modern Letters, on the same script-writing MA course that I took, a few years earlier. So that's a thrill, too.

11 September

Happy endings!

Producer Catherine Fitzgerald receives the Orrizzonti Jury's Special mention Award for O Le Tulafale/ The Orator (director Tusi Tamasese must have left for home): look between 5.17 and 7.15—

AND AND AND *more* of Andrea Arnold in Venice, being open and brilliant about her process!

Tx a million, labiennale.tv!

Gaylene Preston Retrospective @Te Papa, Labour Weekend

2011-08-29T15:42:00.000-07:00

Gaylene Preston making Home by Christmas

Gaylene Preston’s so embedded in our New Zealand communities that we sometimes forget that as well as being one of our most prolific and distinguished producer/directors, and a legendary supporter of other filmmakers, she also has global significance as a feminist filmmaker. This Labour Weekend we get a spring-time opportunity to celebrate Gaylene’s life and work, at her retrospective at Te Papa Tongarewa, the Museum of New Zealand.

The retrospective will feature a selection of films, including Home by Christmas and War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us, which foreground the director’s auteurist preoccupations, including the interrogation of documentary form, the interplay of the personal story and the political film, and the use of film to create oral history. Here’s the programme:

Saturday 22 October

EARTHQUAKE! FUND RAISER FOR CHRISTCHURCH
Gaylene Preston has been making feature films and documentaries with a distinctive New Zealand flavour and a strong social message for more than 30 years. Launching our upcoming weekend retrospective, Preston's film, Earthquake!, is a documentary account of the devastating Hawkes Bay earthquake of 1931.

11am / 44mins /
Gold coin donation at the door.

GETTING TO OUR PLACE
This documentary is a view into the crucible that forged Te Papa Tongarewa, the Museum of New Zealand, which opened in 1998. Fascinating moments are captured as a new kind of National Museum is conceived.

1:00pm / 72mins/ free

KAI PURAKAU
Keri Hulme talks about her writing and coping with success. Her nextdoor neighbour claims full credit for the bone people, while Leon Narbey's cinematography makes Okarito look like Paradise.

3:00pm / 27mins / free

LOVELY RITA
Renowned New Zealand painter Rita Angus (1908-1970) lived and worked at a time when to be a full time artist was unusual, especially for women. This is a film for all women artists, and for their families, and when I watched it the other day, I loved watching and hearing other artists of various kinds speak about Rita Angus—especially Grahame Sydney and Jacqueline Fahey. Loren Horsley (Taylor) evokes Rita wonderfully, Alun Bollinger’s cinematography’s its usual lovely self, and I love the story about Betty Curnow’s blouse in this renowned image.

Rita Angus Portrait of Betty Curnow 1942

4:00pm /70mins / free

Film screenings will be followed by a question and answer session with Gaylene.

Sunday 23 October

WAR STORIES OUR MOTHERS NEVER TOLD US
Considered a companion piece to Home by Christmas, War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us is a documentary and an oral history that presents its audience with consecutive portraits of seven New Zealand women, including the director’s mother, Tui Preston.

11am/ 94 mins / free

HOME BY CHRISTMAS
A true story of romance, secrets and terrible adventure in which Ed Preston, on his way home from rugby practice in 1940, joins the New Zealand Army to go to World War II. His new wife, Tui, is pregnant and distraught, but he tells her not to worry, he’ll be home by Christmas. A remarkable memoir of resilience, determination and love. Chelsie Preston Crayford, Gaylene’s daughter, plays Tui Preston.

1:30pm 95mins / free

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION: GAYLENE PRESTON AND GUESTS
A round table discussion with Gaylene, Dr Mary Wiles, Lecturer (Cinema Studies, University of Canterbury), Dr Bruce Harding (Ngai Tahu Research Centre, University of Canterbury), and author Dr. Deborah Shepard, with other associates and friends. The discussion is designed to encourage exchange between scholars and film professionals from throughout the New Zealand film community and will offer audiences an exceptional, behind-the-scenes glimpse into Gaylene’s life and work.

3:30pm

4:30 Book signing of Her Life’s Work: Conversations with Five New Zealand Women (Auckland University Press, 2009) with Dr. Deborah Shepard

Monday 24 October

GAYLENE PRESTON MASTER CLASS
Join Gaylene for a discussion about the film restoration and refurbishment of her mini-series, Bread and Roses, followed by the premiere of the restored work.

1pm

BREAD AND ROSES
Originally released to mark the 100 years of women's suffrage in New Zealand, Bread and Roses is based on the autobiography of Sonja Davies. This moving epic story of one woman's experience spans twenty years from 1940 and captures the hopes and aspirations of a young nation.

2pm / 200mins / free

Now and then over the last eight years I’ve helped out with Gaylene’s extraordinary and extensive archive, walking through the Town Belt to her place, to prepare some of her treasures for deposit at the New Zealand Film Archive. And looking at the retrospective in the context of this experience, it’s so so Gaylene. The fundraiser: she’s done many of these over the years. The stories about women, though I wish her features Mr Wrong and Perfect Strangers were included—all Gaylene's work is informed by feminism, but these two have a distinctive dialogue with feminist counter-cinema (and probably deserve their very own retrospective because of this). The discussion's very 'Gaylene' too; it includes her and representatives of her communities, alongside academics. It’ll be a very special weekend. Don’t miss out!

A Drama Queen Sings, Briefly

2011-08-25T20:45:00.000-07:00

lisa gornick i am singing on a large stage

Lisa Gornick’s seduced me again-- When I saw this drawing, I thought There’s Me! Thin and Alone and Exposed and Worried about my Voice and my Song! There’s the outcome of This-Harshest-Winter-Ever at Our Place!

And then I laughed. Settle Down, Drama Queen! There are Freesias on the Kitchen Table! Put down your Tiny Violin! & Step Up!

Lisa's drawing’s inspired me to round up this week’s news about New Zealand’s women directors. They're pretty special.

First, Kathy Dudding. At the New Zealand Film Archive there’s a series of evenings commemorating her death a year ago and celebrating her life and work. Wednesday’s, which I missed, was called Bathe in The Light of the Pale Blue Moon. Still to come, this evening and tomorrow, screenings of Asylum Pieces, Kathy's final film, which I found very moving.

Still from Kathy Dudding's Asylum Pieces

Then, Gaylene Preston. Mary Wiles at Canterbury University, who published a lovely interview with Gaylene a while back, has organised a retrospective, originally for the Christchurch Art Gallery, closed because of the quakes. The retrospective will be at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand at Labour Weekend, 22-23 October. Some great films, a round table on the Sunday with Gaylene, Mary, Bruce Harding of the Ngai Tahu Research Centre at Canterbury, and Deborah Shepard—who’s written extensively on Gaylene, most recently in Her Life's Work (that's Gaylene at top left in the image below).

On and off over the years I’ve helped out with Gaylene’s archives and I’ve just finished a wee filmography and two paragraphs for the catalogue, connecting Gaylene to her place in the world among feminist filmmakers, thanks partly to Corinn Columpar and Sophie Mayer’s There She Goes Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond and its discussion of feminist auteures as 'nodes' or 'agents' who participate "in a poetics of exchange through cinematic labour of all kinds".

And then there’s director Rosemary Riddell and The Insatiable Moon, which has just won a top prize at Moondance, the Atlantis Award for feature films made outside the United States. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it got US distribution?

And wait, there’s more, courtesy of the New Zealand Writers Guild!

Writer/director Roseanne Liang’s film My Wedding and Other Secrets won the Audience Choice Award at the Asian American International Film Festival in New York last weekend and had this review. It was also shown to a sold out audience at the Feel Good Film Festival in LA.  And Variety reviewed My Wedding at its international premiere at the Melbourne Film Festival!

Simone Horrocks (writer/director After the Waterfall) is in to China, where she has been invited to direct a feature length drama Unforgettable Love with a Chinese crew, and in the Chinese language. She believes this may be a first for New Zealand, and a unique opportunity for a non-Chinese director.

And, this weekend, writer/director Fiona Samuel's Bliss, on TVOne Sunday at 8.30pm, a telefeature about Katherine Mansfield. Fiona’s most recent television drama was Piece of My Heart, a telefeature that won Sunday Theatre’s highest ratings of the year when it screened in 2009. The Listener describes Bliss as having “an excellent script by writer and director Fiona Samuel, who allows her Mansfield to be witty, passionate and outspoken.”

It’s 1908, and Katie Beauchamp is bored out of her mind in New Zealand. She’s desperate to leave home and become a writer. Against her parents’ wishes she sails for London at the age of 19, with a small allowance and big dreams. The next year of her life will change everything. In one year, Katie Beauchamp becomes Katherine Mansfield, and out of first love, disgrace and heartbreak, she forges the stories that will begin her career as a writer.

Kate Elliott as Katherine Mansfield in Bliss

And, Zoe McIntosh has won another award for her short film, Day Trip. This time, it's for Best Short Subject, at the Montreal First People’s Festival 2011.

And, finally, a wee mystery. Who are Tamsyn Harker and Esther Venning? Am I the only person asking this question? They're New Zealanders–and Tamsyn is a WIFT member–who are regularly doing well in script competitions in the United States, most recently as semi-finals in Final Draft's Big Break, after being finalists in Moondance's feature script section with the same script, The Dark Light, last year. AND in the Top Ten with Olympian, another drama, in the AAA Screenwriting competition 2010-11. Anyone out there alert to Peter Jackson's advice to find, train and support creative individuals, tracking down Tamsyn and Esther to ask what, if anything, they need?

Interviews on Wellywoodwoman
Rosemary Riddell
Roseanne Liang and Angeline Loo (co-writer)
Simone Horrocks

2011-08-03T20:31:00.000-07:00

Oriental Bay-Winter 2011-Night

South Pacific Pictures (SPP) produces television drama series (The Almighty Johnsons, Outrageous Fortune, Go Girls, Nothing Trivial, Being Eve, Mercy Peak, Shortland Street) telefeatures (Stolen, Spies & Lies) and feature films (including Whale Rider, Sione’s Wedding, My Wedding and Other Secrets). And I loved it when I saw that half those selected for SPP's Emerging Writers Lab were women. Warm congratulations to them: Lucy Zee, Rosetta Allan, Hannah Banks, Shoshana McCallum, Miriam Smith. Who knows what projects these writers will be involved in, and as media converge, does it matter as much as it used to? But chances are, because SPP makes movies as well as television, some of the women in the lab will go on to write features. And that excites me.

I'm even more excited to know that about half of the Emerging Writers Lab applicants were women: (86 out of 175). This is a record to celebrate. Somehow, SPP’s established a culture where women writers are welcome, and flourish. And somehow, women screen writers know that, and want to participate, in a way that doesn’t happen in the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) programmes, or in the V48 Hours.

For almost seven years to date I’ve researched women’s participation in scriptwriting for feature films and on the various pathways to feature films in New Zealand. Although I haven't explored writing television drama as a pathway to feature films, because from the outset I thought—like Jane Wrightson the CEO of New Zealand On Air (NZOA, the state funder of television)—that “…feature film people are often not at all interested in making television—and the reverse is also true”, I've followed the New Zealand Film Commission’s (NZFC) short film and feature film development and production programmes, the now defunct Screen Innovation Production Fund funded jointly by the NZFC and Creative New Zealand and the annual V48 Hours. With intermittent exceptions, in all these initiatives, women writers have participated less than men. In particular, the NZFC doesn’t attract us or invest in us in the same way it attracts and invests in men. In the years I've recorded, I believe that the NZFC's invested equally in women writers only once (though it's come close in one short film round): in its first Escalator Te Whakapiki low-budget feature film programme, where women wrote and directed two of the four greenlit projects—now in post-production. And even that time, there were few women writers and directors among the applicants.

When I emailed SPP to explore why half their lab members were women, I’d completely forgotten what I wrote, a year ago, about John Barnett, SPP’s CEO:

He's also the only [New Zealand producer] to embrace New Zealand's diversity in his feature filmmaking, cannily, over a long period, and to benefit from this. He knows about audiences. And I'm always grateful to him for his support of the script programme at the International Institute of Modern Letters [that other New Zealand writer bastion of gender equity] because I benefited from that.

I’d also noted, in my thesis about women and feature film development in New Zealand, that a number of women who wrote and directed feature films–or who would write and direct them–were employed at SPP to produce, write and direct television. For example, credits for first season (2001) of the award-winning and Emmy-nominated SPP series Being Eve included Vanessa Alexander (who wrote and directed the feature Magik and Rose) as producer, Niki Caro (Whale Rider, The Vintner’s Luck) and Briar Grace-Smith (The Strength of Water) as writers and Armagan Ballantyne (The Strength of Water) as a director.

And having forgotten all this, in my email I asked (*blush*) whether SPP had taken on board that it was good business sense to produce stories written by women, and with women as central, complex and active characters, for television and for film.

Here’s part of the response to my email, from Jo Johnson, SPP’s development executive. In the nicest possible way she told me off for my dim-witted question, because, as she reminded me:

For more than ten years, at least half of South Pacific Pictures’ television series and feature film output has been created and written by women and have women as central characters… [She lists the titles.] … This is not ‘good business sense’, but because the women involved are the best creative talent available and the stories depict a mix of characters from the real world.

We have never found gender to be an issue with respect to employing creative personnel, be they writers, directors, production designers, editors, composers etc.

We did not choose the successful applicants for our Emerging Writers Lab based on their gender or ethnicity; they were chosen on their writing ability and previous industry experience – it is by chance that we have ended up with an even balance of women and men.

Why does SPP employ women who are the ‘best creative talent available’ as script writers, in contrast to other producers, here and overseas? Why does it create so many interesting women characters? (I’ve written before about the reality that there is no woman character in New Zealand film who is as unforgettable as Cheryl West in SPP’s Outrageous Fortune.) How has it created a culture that takes women seriously as creators, as central characters, and as audiences?

One reason, as I wrote a year ago, has to be John Barnett himself. A Sunday Star Times clipping from 2009 highlights his attention to women’s roles, and adds more evidence to support Jo’s staunch response about the centrality of ‘by and about women’ to SPP’s work. In the article John Barnett’s comments refer to three SPP features. In two of these comments, about Whale Rider and Sione’s Wedding he refers to the role of women in those movies.

Whale Rider is about the role of women, about the role of power—is it inherited or shared. People in Korea, people in South Africa said ‘That’s about us’.

Of Sione’s Wedding:

We’ve done a deal with a very big American producer who wants to shoot the same story in Irish Catholic Boston. Because he says it’s about immigrants, it’s about mothers who are strong, it’s about priests who give the boys a hard time, it’s about boys who misbehave.

Another significant reason for SPP's culture, although Jo Johnston denies it in her initial email, is likely to be that it makes ‘good business sense’ I think; SPP’s attention to gender enhances SPP’s business, where losing money is apparently a rare thing. (The third feature film mentioned in the Sunday Star Times article, We’re Here To Help–about one man’s fight with the Inland Revenue Department–is discussed because it lost money.)

Has it made a difference that SPP has been a central provider of television drama funded by NZOA for a long time? Have NZOA’s responsibilities influenced or reinforced the SPP culture?

Legislation requires NZOA to consider the interests of women, “to reflect and develop New Zealand identity and culture by promoting programmes about New Zealand and New Zealand interests and by promoting Maori language and culture” and “to ensure that a range of broadcasts is provided that reflects the interests of women, youth, children, persons with disabilities and minorities (including ethnic minorities) and also the diverse ethical and spiritual beliefs of New Zealanders”. And it’s noticeable that between 2007 and 2011 women wrote a high proportion of the telefeatures that NZOA funded: 50%. Except for Fiona Samuel’s work, they appear to foreground stories about men; and women direct only 30%. But that 50% of women writers is much higher than the 26% of writers in the theatrical features NZOA co-funded with the NZFC within the same timeframe.

And there's apparently no change forthcoming at the NZFC. In its latest newsletter, it recorded development funding for 13 feature projects. A man and a woman co-wrote Photos of Loving Summer (Katie Wolfe and Hone Kouka). And of the other twelve projects, women wrote only two: Vanessa Alexander’s Showband, which she will direct, and Fiona Samuel’s The Perfect Woman, which I wish she’d direct, but it has a male director. That’s 16% of the projects and 15% of the investment and follows a funding round where the NZFC didn’t invest in development of a single woman-written project. As I've written many times, this matters, because New Zealand ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1985; as a state, New Zealand—and its agencies, like the NZFC—must encourage the participation of women in public life on equal terms with men (article 7). And screen-based storytelling is certainly part of public life.

I’d love to know why so many women writers applied for the SPP Lab, and whether their reasons were any different from those of the men who applied. At it’s simplest, here was a career opportunity. For the women, a much more accessible career opportunity than in feature films funded by the NZFC. But were they attracted to writing for television only, or perhaps webseries? Rachel Lang, one of SPP’s two lead writers describes this kind of writing as:

...all to do with characters, and the way they take on a life of their own in a television series, tell you where they want to go, end up writing you rather than the other way around.

Kate McDermott, who also writes for SPP and has written a telefeature, supports Rachel’s view and compares television writing with writing feature films and short films:

Writing characters for TV series is what I know best, and I agree with Rachel about the enjoyment of spending more time with the characters. Obviously that is going to be satisfying as you are developing them for 13 hours, and then (hopefully) another 13, and (again hopefully) another and another, whereas you only get around 90 minutes with a feature film character. Having said that, we usually meet a feature film character at the most important, significant time of his/her life, so it's a very different write. And a short film is another challenge altogether as you've only got a matter of minutes to get the audience to engage with or invest in your character.

Whatever the answers to my questions, because I want New Zealand to be the first place in the world where women write and direct half of all feature films, this seems to be a good place to stop writing in this blog. Or to pause. To celebrate SPP's work, which I think is globally unique. To place it alongside NZOA's achievements, and the work of the women whose telefeatures the NZOA funds. To acknowledge Gaylene Preston, who's moved between television and film, and between documentary and narrative features in a way that no other New Zealander has. To remember that Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens write Peter Jackson's films. To celebrate the mixed gender teams that have made this a great year for New Zealand independent film-makers. To hope that Women in Film & Television will take up advocacy for women in the industry, as 72% of its membership wants it to do. To hope that the NZFC and V48 Hours will learn from SPP and NZOA. That we'll all reflect on the artistic contributions of all-girl schools like St Cuthbert's, and consider whether all-women teams might also enhance New Zealand's film-making reputation. To hope that next year more than 12 1/2% of the films that the New Zealand International Film Festival selects will be written and directed by women, and more than 9% of the films selected by OutTakes. To reflect on whether feature films, made for that beautiful big screen, matter as much as they did. To finish some projects and take some risks. I may be back.

(And I'll keep updating the sidebar and the Development project FAQs. HerFilm's Kyna Morgan and I plan to work more closely together for a bit and I'm going to micro-post at the HerFilm FB page, as well as the Development FB. Her Film is now on Google+, too (just). If you have a film coming out and would like a feature here at Wellywoodwoman, let me know! Many thanks to Jane Harris for giving me permission to include the photograph below.)

Oriental Bay-Winter 2011-Night
photographer: Jane Harris

Nearly over--

2011-07-22T22:26:00.000-07:00

I’m going to stop posting here. I’ll abandon a few part-written posts, finish one more–which may take a while–and tidy-up the sidebar. Keep the Development project FAQs page updated now and then. And that’s it.

Lately I’ve struggled to manage everything I love and everything I need to do. I’ve been making too many errors during simple processes, making foolish assumptions, asking unnecessary and inappropriate questions. (Once, I believed that no question was unnecessary or inappropriate, but I've changed.) My dysnumeracy bites in winter, too. Tax return. This year, the necessary analysis for Grow Wellington’s wonderful Activate course, almost done. AND the New Zealand International Film Festival (#nzff) gender stats. And GUESS WHAT? This year, the #nzff Wellington catalogue has a Genre Guide which includes a Women Make Features sections, so I could cross-check my counting. (Women wrote and directed 12.5% of the features selected, down from 13% last year.) I’ve noticed that the #nzff films I most want to see are written and directed by men: Michelangelo Frammartino’s Le Quattro Volte, Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s A Cat in Paris, Nuri Bilge Cylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. That tells me something about where I’m at. And I’m tutoring on a women in film course, where I have to read unfamiliar and challenging material. That uses up a high proportion of my limited left-brain capacity.

Most of all I’m desperate to write scripts and work with a camera again, inspired by some of the film course reading. Desperate to give the right side of my brain a work-out.

Still there on the Development FB page and as devt on Twitter. Micro-blogging, which I sometimes use as a kind of book/film/idea-marking, will do, for a while at least.

There’s just two things left to include. First, a useful reminder from producer Ted Hope, in a post entitled It’s NOT About Art: The Film Industry Is About People Keeping Their Jobs. He asks:

Can we change our thinking to aspire towards great work above all else, even at the risk of losing our precious job? ...What can we do to help both the creators and the audience demand originality and ambition from the entertainment industry? It’s both a macro and a micro issue, political and personal: I know I have a problem meeting people that are considerably different than me, yet still hold common interests and principles. How do we break out of our small social & professional circles? Isn’t that what the promise of the internet was, and still is? It can be done. I need to work harder. Do you?

I'm not in the film industry Ted Hope describes but I like his challenge, because it is partly about embracing difference and the rich potential of the internet.

And finally, Erica Jong. I fell over her Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir at the library a while back. Her definition of feminism made me think, and her exploration of an issue that connects to Ted Hope's ideas–why women hurt other women–made me think (and feel), too. I was saving these for a post about women working together. First, the feminism definition:

I define a feminist as a self-empowering woman who wishes the same for her sisters. I do not think the term implies a certain sexual orientation, a certain style of dress, or membership in a certain political party. A feminist is merely a woman who refuses to accept the notion that women’s power must come through men.

And here's her view on women’s ill-will towards other women, which I’ve experienced as both donor and receiver:

Why are women so ungenerous to other women? Is it because we have been tokens for so long? Or is there a deeper animosity we owe it to ourselves to explore? ...Women have been abused for centuries, so it should surprise no one that we are good at abusing each other. Until we learn to stop doing that, we cannot make our revolution stick. Many women are damaged in childhood, unprotected, unrespected, and treated with dishonesty. Is it any wonder that we build up vast defences against other women, since the perpetrators of childhood abuse have been so often women? Is it any wonder that we return intimidation with intimidation, or that we reserve our greatest fury for others who remind us of our own weaknesses–namely other women?

This is a grim note at the end of the 200,000 or so words I’ve written here during the last two years and eight months, but it describes one aspect of what I want to explore now, elsewhere. Which I couldn’t and wouldn’t have considered writing about without the generosity of all of you who’ve shared information with me in interviews and other ways, and who've read bits of what I’ve written and been in touch about them–in the comments, by email, on the phone, in person. Thank you. Very much.

Merata Mita's Mana Waka, coming to the NZFF.

2011-07-03T19:16:00.000-07:00

Merata Mita's Mana Waka (1937-40/1990) will be a high point of the New Zealand International Film Festival this year. In 1937, the Waikato leader Te Puea Herangi engaged cameraman RGH Manley to record the building of two waka taua (canoes), for the 1940 Waitangi centennial commemorations. Manley's footage was not printed. In 1983 Te Arikinui Dame Atairangikahu gave Nga Kaitiaki o Nga Taonga/The New Zealand Film Archive (NZFA) permission to repair and restore the nitrate negatives. Merata Mita (1942-2010) was appointed to construct a new film, and she, editor Annie Collins and NZFA founder and director the late Jonathan Dennis moved to Turangawaewae Marae to edit it. The festival will show a new print, courtesy of the Te Puea Foundation, and made possible through the Saving Frames Project, a partnership between the NZFA, Park Road Post Production and the Government of New Zealand.

There's no trailer for Mana Waka as far as I know. But this morning, as I looked for one, I found a 1997 interview with Merata Mita, made by Karin Williams for Pacific Perspectives on Hawai'i Public Television, and started viewing at Part 3 of three equally rich parts. I wept. Laughed. And was inspired. Here are the clips, with Merata talking about the importance of knowing who you are, about teaching film and demystifying technology, about her experiences of acting, about her journey to becoming a director, about stereotypes, about beleaguered women on Hollywood sets and her experiences there (she didn't want to be a Hollywood director; among other things "I just don't have the testosterone"), about colonisation, and being an activist, about her favorite of all her films. In these clips, Merata's heart, her clarity and courage, remind me all over again of how much the world's lost because of her early death. And made me long for a full retrospective of her work.

Mana Waka on a big screen in a crowded cinema will be very special. It's the first film on my festival list.

More about Mana Waka from 1989, via Peter Calder at the New Zealand Herald.

More about Merata Mita here (a duet from Cushla Parekowhai and me).

V48 Hours: Women filmmakers working together?

2011-06-16T18:08:00.000-07:00

I’m a convert: V48 Hours is FUN. This year, I was marginally involved with two teams that had women directors and producers: Loaded Gunn (Francesca Jago) and Squidwig (Rebecca Barnes). And loved watching Francesca and Rebecca at work, each very different in style but each quite similar in their focus on doing the best work possible and their care for their casts and crews, all with boundless enthusiasm.

And the heats were fun too, in a crowded Readings cinema. And the discussion boards and Facebook page. And then the Wellington final. The Embassy Theatre almost full with excited people, there for screening of the twelve finalists plus The Best Incredibly Strange Film (formerly known as The Best Worst Film, won this year by Crane Style for Daemon, a Horror). Lots of applause and celebration, hugs from every prizewinner for Dan Slevin, the amazing Wellington co-ordinator and emcee for the night. Laurie Wright from the gin joints team that made Intervention, a Horror written by Gavin McGibbon—won the Wellington WIFT/Gaylene Preston Best Film by a Woman award, which she also won in 2008. Many congratulations to her!

But, as last year, I wondered “Where are the women”? This is so much a team-oriented event that it’s impossible to be certain about any demographic details. But far fewer women than men participate on the V48 discussion boards and in the V48 Facebook comments. And during the finals I took notes as we went, and a woman was a co-writer in just one of the finalist films, and Laurie Wright was the only woman director. When various teams went to collect their awards and their hugs, the proportion of women in the groups onstage was very low. Even the audience seemed over two-thirds men. I’m thrilled that there’s such a stunning creative sport available for them and loved witnessing and sharing their enjoyment. But.

The evening started late, because of a special Bridesmaids preview, one of the Embassy’s Chick at the Flicks showings. My mate and I watched the women leaving that screening, goodie carrier bags in hand, lots and lots of them. Do most of us really just prefer to watch movies, rather than to make them? Even though that means we miss a whole lot of fun?

I have a feeling that women who do participate in V48 do so mostly as producers, in wardrobe and makeup, and as actors, the same areas where they participate most strongly in the film community as a whole. If the V48 does reflect the film industry, at a micro-level, could an increase in women’s V48 participation as writers and directors—the storytellers—help increase our participation in the industry as a whole? What would help more of us become involved in this risk-free and fun event? Do we need something more than fun and possible awards—for the WIFT/Gaylene Preston Best Film by a Woman and the New Zealand Film Commission’s National Best All Female Team? What would make participation attractive to us? Do we need a goodie bag or two for every woman who participates?

I’ve thought a lot about women working together lately and the environments where we do and don't support one another. And a few weeks back, Francesca, who won the 2010 WIFT/Gaylene Preston Best Film by a Woman, agreed to talk with me about one aspect of V48, the All Female Team award. At the moment, to qualify for an All Female Team, only the writer, producer and director must be women, so a team can qualify even if the everyone in the crew is male, except the writer, producer and director.

Here’s the interview. A big big thank you to Francesca for agreeing to be interviewed and for doing the editing and uploading. I’d love this to start more conversations about V48 and women, especially women working together in key roles.

(This year, sadly, Team Loaded Gunn missed the V48 hand-in deadline by half an hour. But they’ll be back! Squidwig won the Audience Vote for its heat, and was a finalist for the Best Makeup award. They'll be back, too!)

Page Left: women playwrights working together

2011-06-12T19:18:00.000-07:00

The International Institute of Modern Letters’ (IIML) MA scriptwriting programme is now in its tenth year. Taught by Ken Duncum from the beginning—except for last year, when David Geary took over while Ken was the New Zealand Post Mansfield Fellow in Menton—the programme takes ten students through an intensive eight-month writing experience. There have been equal numbers of women and men on the course, and the prizes awarded have been shared among women and men, too.

Until now, because I was an IIML scriptwriting student who wanted to write screenplays, I’ve focused on the MA students who write for primarily for film. I was intrigued that although the women who take the course are strong writers, once they graduate they are underrepresented in projects that the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) funds, in comparison with the male graduates. But after years of observation and inquiry, I am sure that this happens for the same primary reason that women who write screenplays, wherever they are in the world, have more difficulties than men. Getting a screenplay produced is challenging for every screenwriter, because film production is expensive and risky. But people with resources to fund films are always more likely to fund a golden boy than a golden girl.

In contrast, far fewer resources are necessary to publish works written for the page, and most women graduates of IIML’s parallel MA programme for writers for the page have their work published. I’ve speculated before that this programme's influence explains why there are few gender issues in New Zealand's literary community, including its prize lists. For example, this year three women graduates of the MA (page) programme, now on IIML’s PhD programme, feature in the most recently announced awards. Pip Adam won the New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) Best First Book of Fiction. Lynn Jenner won the NZSA Best First Book of Poetry. And Laurence Fearnley is one of three finalists in the New Zealand Post Book Awards Best Fiction Award.

To date, because I don't write plays, I haven’t thought much about the scriptwriting students who write for the stage, usually only one or two out of the ten Ken teaches each year, though a couple of years ago an article by playwright and MA scriptwriting graduate Branwen Millar added to my understanding of the conditions for women playwrights in New Zealand. It had "some grim statistics about women playwrights' representation in productions and awards". And I learned a lot from some American research into playscripts and gender. But this week Page Left's first production opens at Bats Theatre in Wellington, Hannah McKie's McKenzie Country. And I think that the highly strategised organisation behind this production may change things for women playwrights in New Zealand for ever.

When I saw Page Left's website and its promo clip for McKenzie Country, naturally I wanted to interview the women involved, especially as I'm in the middle of writing about women working together. And I was also interested that multi-award-winnning actor and poet Michele Amas, who was part of Development-the-movie, is in the play.

And now I know more I'm going O WOW. Page Left's framework and philosophy comes through well in the interview that follows, I think, and is an inspiring model for women playwrights working in twenty-first century New Zealand. And Michele's association with this first production enhances their project enormously through her implicit advocacy of Page Left's strategies, her capacity to mentor the group, and her presence as an actor.

Page Left is a group of four women graduates of Ken's course: core members Hannah McKie, Kate Morris and Rachel Callinan, and associate Whiti Hereaka. All with impressive credentials.

According to their mission statement:

Page Left is an all-female New Zealand playwright-producers group that bridges the gap between script and stage. We believe there are two key elements to producing great theatre a) a solid script and b) the right creative team. We will deliver both.

This isn't the first women's theatre group in Wellington of course. There was Hen's Teeth, for many years. The Magdalena Aotearoa Trust is based here. But I think it is the first group initiated and run by writers, and Page Left differs from these groups in other ways, too. Kate Morris kindly answered my questions, except for one that Hannah McKie has answered.

How did the women in Page Left meet?

Kate Morris: We are all graduates of the MA in Scriptwriting at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University. Rachel and myself were in the year previous to Whiti and Hannah.

However, that's not exactly how we met - Hannah approached myself and pitched the idea of creating a production company in NZ based on the tenants of 13P over in America (and then I pitched to Rachel). You can find some more information about 13P here, but it's about doing plays not just developing. I feel there's a tendency in NZ for writers to get stuck in cycles of development, when what they really need is a light at the end of the tunnel—to see their work up on stage. Otherwise your script may just end up collecting dust in your drawer for five years and you end up with the nickname 'paper playwright'. It's a bit of a futile exercise to write a play that no one may ever see.

Why did you decide to work together?

KM: Well we all get along together! That helps, chemistry whenever you're creating is important. But primarily we decided to work together because we found ourselves in a similar position career wise. All of us had a pretty impressive string of awards and scripts to our name, but we found that that wasn't actually equating to getting our work produced in NZ.

When you're emerging you're a risk to professional theatres/existing production co's because your name and your work is your brand—which needs to be marketable so you can guarantee audiences. When you're new or emerging you're pretty much invisible brand wise, but how do you actually become visible when they're just so few opportunities to get your work up?

I think it's important to stress that above anything else we are WRITERS first. We are a writers group, which became a production company in order to guide work to fruition.

So I guess our point of difference then is that our work is always script based and kiwi written, Page Left is dedicated to getting new New Zealand script work up on its feet. We don't devise.

This year we have McKenzie Country debuting at BATS Theatre June 14-25 and then another debut, Sketch, by myself—Kate Morris, also at BATS Theatre September 6-17.

Is it chance that you are all women? If not, do you have any ‘feminist’ intentions, view yourselves as being within a feminist historical continuum? As an all-women group, do you perceive/experience any women-specific benefits or disadvantages? Are there challenges working together that might not exist in a mixed gender collective?

KM: I'm glad you asked this question because we've been asked about it before. It was completely coincidental. We didn't set out to be an all female group at all, it just so happened that we wanted to keep it to four members, we all happened to be female, and we all happened to be in the same position in terms of dealing with the frustration of not being able to get scripts of proven merit from emerging writers up on stage.

If that says something about theatre at the moment in New Zealand I don't know, but certainly we never set out to say 'females only', it just turned out we were all female.

What are the key elements of your collaboration(s)? How does the collective work, and how do the relationships work, including the relationship with your ‘associate’?

KM: Key elements, what Page Left stands for and what we want to achieve. We had a lot of discussion about that. We also help out with each others' productions be it publicity, front of house, co-producing, website admin etc... We're all friends so the working relationship is pretty smooth.

Whiti is our associate member and our guru. She has a bit more experience on us so we often flick her questions.

I would also say one of the things I particularly love about Page Left is that you can fire off drafts to the other members and get feedback on it from an opinion you trust. We've all come from the same training programme which teaches you how to read critically and live and breathe story, so we critique each other's work over coffee—maybe a bit like Tolkien and Carroll's old group the Inklings—but somewhere Courtney Central way, not Oxford and minus the tweed!

Do you think that women writers have things in common, and if so what are they and are they manifest in your writing and choices?

KM: I wouldn't want to hazard a guess at this point about what we may or may not have in common. That sounds like a three year thesis at least!

However, I think one thing Page Left as writers consciously think about is creating complex female characters. There does seem to be a lack of good meaty female roles and a tendency to write women in a 2D manner—in relationship to their male counter part e.g. wife, mother, lover/love interest etc... I think that still crops up in a lot of work we see out there today.

So in some respects yes I think being female and a writer does inform our work, we want to write female POV where possible, include more female characters and endow them with the complexity that lifts them out of stereotype.

Has it made a difference in the production of McKenzie Country that Michele Amas is a writer as well as an actor, and very supportive of women’s projects?

Hannah McKie: Michele has been very supportive of McKenzie Country from the outset of this project and we're incredibly privileged to have her on board. Without more funding there's no way we could afford to pay her what she's worth, but Michele signed on with us regardless as an active choice of supporting a young woman writer starting out in a new group of young women writers. Michele's writer background comes through in the care she shows the text and the in-depth questions she comes up with in relation to it. She's a pleasure to work with and it's a pleasure to watch her work. I can't thank her enough for joining McKenzie Country.

Why did you invite a man to do your lovely promo clip? To what extent are men involved in your projects?

Kate Morris: It's just the best person for the job, we have no gender specifications.

So you may have men directing your plays in future?

KM: Absolutely, if someone comes to us with a killer vision for one of our scripts, I wouldn't hesitate in signing them on. We are interested in getting the best result for the production. Best person for the job, best combination for the job. It just so happened—again—that we have female directors on both McKenzie Country (Rachel Henry) and Sketch (Eleanor Bishop), on Sketch we also have the amazing Alice Hill on set design. So looking at the stats, it is a bit of a female affair, it didn't set out to be, but it's actually pretty great that it turned out that way. It's nice to see more females helming behind the scenes.

You’re all astonishingly productive and successful as writers. Are any of you going to branch out into directing?

KM: For me personally—and probably all the Page Left members are in the same boat, we're primarily writers. That is what we are above anything else. Producing is something we made ourselves learn out of necessity. Certainly my preference would be to just write, I don't want to be a 'jack of all trades and master of none'. If I can come away in life knowing one thing really well I think that would an achievement in itself.

Never say never, who knows, but certainly at the moment our career paths are focused on the writing side.

Do all of you have a primary commitment to theatre? Your screenplay, Myself by Other Mothers has been selected for the NZFC's 2011 Alan Sharp Mentorship. I imagine that the others write screenplays, too. What ambitions do you have for the screen, as individuals and as a group? Are you likely to extend Page Left into film-making? Or television? Or webseries?

KM: As far as Page Left is concerned our main focus is theatre at the moment. That's not to say we won't branch out in later years into other projects in various mediums. Certainly as individual writers you will see our credits run across novels (Whiti wrote The Graphologist's Apprentice), radio, TV, film etc... So the possibility is definitely there and we're always open to a good idea/proposal, but Page Left is centrally focused on theatre at present.

For a complementary view, check out The Gender Agenda at Australian Plays. Has some great links to other articles.

Help an 'activist' today-- Questions please! (EP 4)

2011-06-02T19:59:00.000-07:00

lisa gornick where are the women?

Market validation, I've learned at Activate, identifies where people feel pain, in order to provide a product that relieves the pain. Help An ‘Activist’ Today: Questions Please (EP 3) explored some questions about niches that aren’t well served, where people might feel pain and go in large numbers to films that were made with them in mind. But women are not a niche; we’re half the population. Within all those niches, are there any common kinds of pain that will be relieved by films about women? And if so, what kinds of films? As I research questions to ask in my survey about films for women, am I faced with an impossible task, just as I was when trying to create questions about films that women write and direct? I hope not. While I know that it’s possible for women to DIWO (Do It With Others), to make and distribute a film with mates, I still dream of finding a sustainable way to do this, where the team gets paid and there are audiences who will pay to watch, and there’s money generated to fund the next film. So I have to give these questions my best effort. Because that best effort is part of working, as Andrea Bosshard (Taking the Waewae Express; Hook, Line & Sinker) put it in her comment the other day

...to change the culture of film-making, financing and distribution…to work towards a sustainable way of making and distributing films SO THAT MORE INDEPENDENT FILMS CAN BE MADE with a little more grace and ease than has been our own personal experience in making two feature dramas...an enormous challenge in such a money-hungry industry where notions of sustainability are not part of the language, (in fact there is a positive resistance to it) because, I believe, it challenges the entire dominant filmmaking culture.

More grace and ease. I like that. Inspires me to identify—tentatively—some possible pain categories among audiences for films about and for women.

1. Relationship movies

When Anne Thompson of Indiewire interviewed Massy Tadjedin about her new film Last Night (starring Keira Knightley) recently, Anne talked about needing ‘product for women’, stated that Last Night is a ‘real relationship movie’, and that ‘we’re starving’ [for films like Last Night], implying that for her relationship movies are ‘women’s’ movies. Merlene’s and Desiree’s comments after my original post support this.

These relationship movies are often about women in groups, and tend to be comedies. Think Sex & the City, Mamma Mia, and now, Bridesmaids. According to a box office analyst for Hollywood.com:

Women like going out in groups to watch women interacting in groups. And they are very loyal. If they discover something they like, they tell their friends about it. Women were social networking way before Facebook.

I enjoy many films in this category, and like Anne Thompson would like to see more. And in greater diversity, because they sometimes fall into another category of entertainment about women, where Linda Lowen identifies another kind of pain, from constant exposure to formulaic relationship movies. Writing to acknowledge that it’s twenty years since Thelma and Louise was released, “so bold, so different, so exhilarating and frustrating and heartbreaking and unexpected” she claims that

There’s an audience and an appetite for the kinds of movies about women’s lives that [like Thelma and Louise] almost hurt to watch; and what endless Sex & The City sequels and meet-cute romantic comedies offer us is the exact opposite. Most movies aimed towards a female audience lull us into a stupor of temporary satiation, but they’re ultimately not satisfying…are like bingeing on heavily processed high fructose corn syrup snacks. After the initial rush, you crash because there’s nothing there to digest. As Thelma says at a key point in the film, “I don’t ever remember feeling this awake”. When was the last time you exited a movie theatre feeling that way?

So here's an additional relationship movie pain for some viewers. It stimulates a longing for stories that jolt us awake in different ways than a sugar rush. This kind of awakening may lead to reflection and action.

2. Movies that represent women in ‘real’ ways

Very often, filmmakers follow a variation on the Jean Luc Godard recipe, which defines a woman both as a ‘girl’ and an object: "All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl." Note, he places the gun first. (Tx again, to the friend who told me about this!) Here’s Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, on the pain that Godard-recipe representations can cause:

I complain about the representations of women, but I’m more offended when in movie after movie there are no real representations to eviscerate, when all or most of the big roles are taken by men, and the only women around are those whose sole function is, essentially, to reassure the audience that the hero isn’t gay.

Here’s another take on women as ‘real people’, courtesy Feminist Frequency:

3. Movies with complex, diverse, women and girls as role models

This is an extension of the last category, I think. Emma Farley wrote about these the other day. The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media works hard to encourage awareness and action around this category, as well as the previous one, a nice continuity from Thelma and Louise because ‘aware’ is a synonym for being ‘awake’. Feminist Frequency has a related vid on how toy ads teach gender:

BUT. The story of a ‘role model’ won’t attract audiences just because it’s about a strong (young) woman. There appear to be problems with biopics like Amelia, about Amelia Earhart, and with dramas like Drew Barrymore’s Whip It, about an interesting young woman. Why? Loryjones wrote in a comment a while back that made me think:

Nobody--not even most women-- want to watch something as bland as Amelia, no matter how brilliant the script is, because at least 50% of women are already leading their lives, either as independent singles or single parents. Why should women watch reality for ‘entertainment’ when they’re already living the story? There are TONS of courageous women out there. It doesn’t mean their lives would make great films. Conflict, sexiness, relationships, suspense, and unpredictability with a touch of relate-ability--these are the components of great stories. Not just throwing a female into a lead part. Hollywood doesn’t need to work harder. It needs to work SMARTER.

These first three categories are problematic because of the strength of television drama and, now, media convergence. What can film provide to relieve the pain described that television dramas (and characters like Outrageous Fortune’s Cheryl), and the growing number of excellent webseries about women's lives, don’t already provide?

4. A kind of double negative category, a desire for fewer films where women are hyper-violent.

You’ve seen or heard of some of these films (I really liked The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, partly because of her revenge.)

Manohla Dargis again, in a duet with A O Scott:

It’s no longer enough to be a mean girl, to destroy the enemy with sneers and gossip: you now have to be a murderous one…I’m leery of how [these films] fetishize hyper-violent women.

AO Scott:

It seems to me that what fuels these fantasies is also a deep anxiety — an unstable compound of confusion, fascination, panic and denial — about female sexuality, especially the sexual power and vulnerability of girls and young women.

What about more films that celebrate women’s sexual power and that explore the strength of girls and young women, without the hyper-violence, and with the elements that Loryjones identified?

5. Comedy: ‘women’s’ humour

What is ‘women’s humour’? And how are women hurting, beyond experiencing the obvious and gross ways that we’re portrayed in many comedies? Jamie Denbo’s Bridesmaids article is about the “whole can of worms about women and comedy…what male and female audiences will and won't see,” comedy by women (as writers and performers) as well as about women. Beyond Hollywood there are already many women’s webseries that rely on humour, and there’s also the well-established Broad Humor Film Festival. But comedy is, I think, more culture specific than other genres, though New Zealand’s very own Topp Twins and Flight of the Conchords have certainly made people laugh all round the world. I need to think more about comedy.
I’m not sure how to approach comedy and other genres except in a very general way. There are so many issues, large and small. Women in horror is another example like comedy, a huge genre with lots of sub-issues (see Women in Horror Month for lots about these). For instance:

6. Movies with women in refrigerators

Feminist Frequency is on to this (of course).

And then there’s the pain about the numbers of women represented, as well as the way we’re represented.

7. Women in disproportionate (low) numbers

Remember that new research into how even the animals in children’s books are predominantly male? Feminist Frequency has a great clip that relates to this, too.

This week, as I think about how the disproportionate numbers exist in all the niches, and about Johanna’s comment about the queer niche at Help An ‘Activist’ Today: Questions Please (EP 3), I went through the programme for Out Takes: A Reel Queer Film Festival, on in New Zealand right now. And I counted. ‘Queer’ is a term that aims to undermine the usual gender binary. But somehow that binary elbows its way into the programme. Twenty-two narrative features. Fifteen about queer men’s lives, 75%. Five about queer women: 20%. There are also two about queer women and men. (And, wait for it, men wrote and directed twenty of these twenty-two features, 91%. And, as far as I can see, the filmmakers and actors are almost overwhelmingly pale.) These statistics hurt me, at the core of my identity as a woman, as a lesbian, and as a storyteller, especially as I know that there are films the selectors could have chosen to avoid this imbalance. What about Cheryl Dunye and The Parliament Film Collective’s The Owls and Anna Margarita Albelo’s documentary about The Owls, Hooters (how many films are there about women making movies, what a rare and exciting opportunity?)? Dee Rees’ Pariah? I’m focusing on narrative films because there are usually more docos by women in every festival programme, and Out Takes is no different, but I saw this very beautiful trailer for Sonali Gulati’s doco I AM the other day and would LOVE to see the whole film, so can't resist adding the trailer here. (There are also clips from an I AM screening Q & A available.)

I hope there'll be lots of people in Wellington and Auckland who go to every movie about and by queer women over the next few days, to demonstrate the strength of this audience.

And, there’s the hurt that we don’t hear enough women’s talk in films, what a friend calls ‘women’s changing room’ conversations, immortalised in the Bechdel Test:

8. The Bechdel Test pain

This generates longing for films with women who talk to each other about something other than men. Just in case this is the first you’ve heard of it, here’s Feminist Frequency again. They really are just the best.

Then there are more of my own specific pains:

9. Women’s clothes

This might be just me. I’m hungry for films that integrate a greater diversity of stimulating ideas about and images of women’s clothing as part of their mise en scene. Beyond the clothes that star in Sex & The City, or The Devil Wears Prada. Or the school uniforms that feature in films like An Education. I remember how Fanny Brawne’s sewing delighted me in Bright Star, including that reference to a ‘triple-pleated mushroom collar’. Clothes mean a lot, and I wish more films used clothes in a more complex way. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the silhouettes of the characters in Development-the-movie, what they mean and the designer who can provide them. I’d like to do a Courtenay Place movie with all the women characters in long black Chinese scholar gowns. This morning as I was hanging out the washing I decided that my desire for more films that explore the potential of women's clothing has something to do with daily practices that go far beyond costume and body adornment, what we and those around us wear to present particular messages and to give pleasure to ourselves and others. There's a whole range of daily visceral experiences around clothing and colour and texture and movement, from wearing clothes to making them—choosing fabric and sewing it—to the endless washing, drying, folding and mending of clothes and other household fabrics. It’s no accident that so many (New Zealand only?) women’s films have washing and washing lines in them? The repetitive and meditative action with clothes pegs turns them into prayer beads, sometimes, and the washing into prayer flags. Am I alone in this category?

10. Women and sex

Kinda hesitant about this one, unlike the incomparable Lisa Gornick, who will I hope translate her recent erotic drawings into cinema that makes me laugh and feel as effectively as the drawings do. Most sex scenes highlight how secondary women are in film generally. And don’t convey anything of the anarchistic, messy, complex series of conversations, learning, conflict and laughter that sex often is. They don’t contribute anything to the film’s plot, to its themes or to an understanding of its characters. And the only sex scene in a theatrical movie that I’ve had any kind of visceral response to, over a long period of time (I know I’ve written about this before), was in Andrea Arnold’s Red Road. I went to I Am Love with a mate who had no problems with its sex scenes, and in the dialogue that followed, I finally understood why I didn’t like them, and many similar scenes in other films: for me, they’re like reading National Geographic. (Though I’d like to see I Am Love again, because I saw it when I had residual jetlag and think I missed a lot.) Mostly, sex scenes could be replaced by a simple text: THEY HAVE SEX. Does anyone else feel pain over sex scenes, I wonder?

11. Pain because so few resources are invested in films that relieve the pain generated in all these categories

This is a fragmented list. The hard evidence is fragmentary. Because so little is invested in filmmaking by —can’t help going back to women storytellers, always—about, and for women.

11. Your pain

What hurts you about women in films, or the lack of them? Please, let me know!

Nearly There?

2011-05-23T18:39:00.000-07:00

I like the way New Zealanders play with names. A couple of years ago, our young neighbour jumped down the bank to visit after a long absence. “Where've you been?” I asked. “L’AshVegas”, he said. Down in Ashburton for the summer, at the freezing works. In the middle of the wide Canterbury Plains, without a neon in sight. Where gambling used to be done for meat packs—maybe still is. On Screentalk, Temuera Morrison talks about going from Rotovegas—Rotorua's a little more like Las Vegas than Ashburton—to Hollywood. There's Sam Cruickshank's Horiwood's blog, ("Hollywood's 1st Entertainment & Celebrity News Website Published by a Maori New Zealander"). Search for Wellywood at NZOnScreen, and there are at least three interesting examples. Down the hill is the Wellywood Backpackers. And here I am, Wellywood Woman. So what do I think of the proposed Wellywood sign, on the hill above Wellington airport?

“Wellywood” is really useful shorthand for this blog. It shows where I live. It explains what I write about. It places the blog alongside its big sister blog Women & Hollywood. It places Wellington's film-making alongside those other traditions that complement Hollywood and enhance the world's cinema: Nollywood, Bollywood. And Wellywood, like L’AshVegas, makes me smile. So I smile when I see the sign.

But is there something better than Wellywood? A large McCahon-ish I AM, great to meditate on during yet another wild ride onto the tarmac: Is there any victory over death? Or another text from one of his landscape paintings?

Colin McCahon Victory over death 2 1970
synthetic polymer paint on unstretched canvas  2075 x 5977 mm

Or I am Scared I STAND UP? (Help! I have to stay put in my seat belt!)

Colin McCahon Scared 1976
acrylic on paper 730 x1095 mm

Or Te Whanganui-A-Tara, to remind us of tangata whenua issues that affect every New Zealand hillside? Or neons? A thin and flashing blue line and Tsunami Safe Zone, also in flashing blue? Or Stop Asset Sales in red, since Air New Zealand’s one of the state assets being sold? After a little thought, as an air traveller who is terrified during every rough arrival, I've decided I’d most like a rainbow neon sign that flashes Nearly There. So when we rock in at the end of a flight and I'm stuck in my seatbelt and frightened, I can look out the window and be reassured. Nearly There. Nearly There. Nearly There. But if the sign says Wellywood, that's OK. I'll get a smile, whew.

Help an 'activist' today-- Questions please! (EP 3)

2011-05-13T13:40:00.000-07:00

lisa gornick the round table

Limping my way towards questions that will help validate a market for films about women, I fell over the United States release of the comedy Bridesmaids. Written by Anne Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, directed by a guy, and produced by Judd Apatow. In an article in the Huffington Post, Jamie Denbo expressed concern about the consequences if Bridesmaids doesn’t do well, for the writers, directors and actors that she refers to as

…every creative, brilliant, funny woman in Hollywood [who] is (unfairly) being held hostage to a single film's opening weekend box office. Meaning no studio is likely to take any sort of chance on any new projects perceived to be ‘female driven comedy’ unless they have proof that it can perform. And perform well.

I know that I’m now concentrating on films about women, and here I’ve strayed back into the territory of women writers and (maybe) directors. But I think that one of the issues about audiences for films about women is about the division between ‘Hollywood’ movies and ‘the rest’, who have been working hard on strategies to get their (our) work out there. And in the comments that followed Jamie’s post came a suggestion I’ve never seen before, from InedaName, who wrote:

If Bridesmaids doesn't 'do' well, why don't the women in Hollywood pool their re$ources and do their own projects outside of the studio system? A quality feature film can be made for thousands, not millions of dollars. There are any number of ways for films to get seen; hundreds of film festivals, straight to DVD, online, etc. You can be just as creative in marketing, promotion, and distribution as in the actual making of the film. Think outside the box!

What would happen if women writers and directors and producers in Hollywood pooled their personal resources and thought outside the box, if they crossed over to ‘our’ side (I’m not talking about already well-resourced and powerful Hollywood actor/producers like Sandra Bullock and Jodie Foster)? I may be over-romantic about the resources available to Hollywood women who want to make movies, but when I think of Los Angeles I think of prosperity: residuals, alimony, spare houses, networks. All pooled. Or is that an irrelevant idea? Would their thinking outside the box help the rest of us? How? Is it already happening? Just this week, Real Girls Guide to Everything Else webseries announced a couple of serious new producing partners, Diane Charles and Antonia Ellis, so maybe it is.

This is a great time for everyone to think outside the box about new ways of working.There's evidence of a 10% drop in overall spending on entertainment, and a drop in takings for Hollywood films. And changing distribution models are affecting even Hollywood's major directors—including presumably their budgets. The other day, a powerful group of directors—including Kathryn Bigelow, Peter Jackson, and James Cameron among others—expressed concern that studios' plans to release movies simultaneously through video-on-demand and in cinemas would close cinemas and increase piracy. According to the Guardian article, the directors' letter to the studios said that "changing release patterns could irrevocably harm the financial model of our film industry". And now, research shows that 46% of all peak-hour downloads in the States come from online video sites like Netflix and YouTube, as people watch movies and TV shows on their laptops, game consoles and smart phones. Netflix's share is up from 20% six months ago, to 30%.

When I thought about all this, I also thought about what is and is not working for people who go the DIY route, and the DIY upgrade, Do It With Others (DIWO).

DIWO, Ava DuVernay & AFFRM
DIWO has certainly been a wonderful way to go for Ava DuVernay, founder of the African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement (AFFRM) a black film distribution collective. She made her feature, I Will Follow, for $50,000 and founded AFFRM to release it and other black films. I Will Follow has just completed a 7-week theatrical release in 20 major US cities including NY and LA with no studio or corporate backing, no formal P&A, no four-walling, no touring, no service deal. It made $11,235 per screen and DuVernay tripled her investment. She wrote, in a recent post that invited indie film-makers to extend their worlds to include black film-makers (I’ve often wondered why Christine Vachon’s Killer Films hasn't done this):

With AFFRM, we sought to take the DIWO approach a step further, to give it infrastructure and branding. To align like-minded regional black film organizations and push them to go beyond their existing mission, to a renewed vision with national reach. It worked. Like, really worked.

And how and why did Ava DuVernay take this route? According to an article posted on the AFFRM website:

In essence, what we’re doing is empowering ourselves by distributing our own images. There are robust black film organizations all over the country. Our goal was to organize ourselves into a releasing entity, and our mission is to support black cinema in a very specific way–by offering a handful of black indies a theatrical release. We simply want to offer African-Americans quality black films, while at the same time create a safe haven for filmmakers of color to share their stories, their way.

In another article, DuVernay identifies elements that work for her. They seem very similar to those that worked for recent New Zealand films produced outside ‘the system’(The Insatiable Moon and This Way of Life which have made their way beyond New Zealand, Operation 8, Hook, Line & Sinker, Desert; and The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls, now finding its global niche, starting in the United States). Tell stories from the heart. Focus on getting the work done to a high standard, and on your audience(s), not on big profits:

What we're doing with AFFRM is saying 'Tell that story that's true to you, tell the story that's in your heart that the studios don't want.' Are you going to make a million bucks? No. But are you going to get people to see your film and appreciate it? Yes. And as an artist, that feels really good.

This post galvanized me, and I especially loved this: “There are riches in the niches. Both monetary and cosmic.” Here’s wisdom, I thought. But there are also a couple of major problems to resolve.

The Audience Pain Problem
A few days later, another comment on Jamie Denbo’s Bridesmaids post took me back to fundamental truths about films by and about women who are not African-American. GoingApricot (I read her to be a woman, but may be wrong of course) wrote:

Hollywood makes movies for people who regularly go to the movies, and the average movie is, well, average. It's mediocre. It's so-what. But that audience is 14-30-year old males. They see comedies, horror, superhero, and they don't care. They just go. Women do not show up for movies just because they have other women in them. Witness last year's Amelia or Kristen Wiig's appearance in Whip It. So the studios won't make those movies.

In fact, the under-25 male audience that Hollywood makes movies for is relatively small, and women over 25 are about half the movie-going audience in the United States. The depressing reality articulated by GoingApricot may mean that many women cinema-goers don’t care whether Hollywood movies have women in them, any more than they care about the gender of the people who write and direct those movies. They certainly don’t feel pain that will be relieved by more films about women. But among and beyond that audience maybe there are audiences who want something different than what Hollywood offers, or in addition to what Hollywood offers?

Ava DuVernay provided a little more information about the audiences for I Will Follow in a Women & Hollywood interview:

It (I Will Follow) is infused with people of color because so often we don’t see ourselves as regular people and that might sound strange hearing but for folks who love films and only see themselves as caricatures or in very broad comedies, it’s nice to see and make a film that was not about heightened situations. This is about an everyday situation and this is why folks of all colors and backgrounds have appreciated it but especially the African-American community where we hear again and again the common refrain is thank you for showing us as we are.

So, a large segment of this audience appreciates being shown as they are. I thought Great, many women, and men who love them, would like films that show women as we are. But GoingApricot presents another dimension of 'being shown as we are'–audiences other than black audiences may not care:

Go see Bridesmaids. It'll make it a *little* easier for women. And every little bit helps. On the other hand, look at the power of the black audience. By and large, that demographic supports its filmmakers and its actors in other movies, good, bad, and fair-to-middlin'. You do not see similar trending among Latino or Asian filmmakers. You do not see similar trending among gays. You do not see similar trending among Christian, ‘family-friendly’ audiences.

And when I asked GoingApricot “Why do you think that the black audience supports its filmmakers and actors and other groups do not?” her answer–which seems to imply that she’s also an African-American–conveyed a view that was similar to Ava DuVernay's:

Black people were so starved for images of themselves in drama for so long, I think, they show up wherever their dramatists are. There are actors I watch – movies or TV with those actors in them – that I enjoy watching, and hearing, that I can disregard the ‘quality’ of the rest of the production. It began in earnest with blaxpoitation and mushroomed once that audience was proven. You cannot say the same about Latino-Americans or Asian-Americans.

Is this true? And is it true that 'you cannot say the same about Latino-Americans or Asian-Americans'? I asked GoingApriciot another question, about whether she knew of statistics about the audiences she refers to, because I’m interested to know the extent to which black audiences’ choices may be based on different criteria than the other audiences she refers to—women, gays, families, Christians, Latino-American, Asian-American. I didn’t hear back (and if you have this info, I'd love to hear about it).

Is there pain among audiences starved for images of women? Does it compare to black audiences' pain? And if so, where is it most intensely felt? Are there women who will show up wherever 'our' dramatists are (yep, the storytellers again)? Perhaps not, because we haven’t been starved of images of (usually white) women. Are we satisfied with merely ‘being there’, however we’re portrayed? Are we content with stories that place men at the centre? Is that one reason why we don’t show up for movies just because they have women as central characters? And do the 'Hollywood boys' know this? Do they look at the figures and say "Well, women come to our movies regardless, so let's keep making the films we want to make, aimed at the male audience aged under 25"? Suddenly I’m back at the idea of Hollywood cinema as being a kind of violence towards women, a kind of violence that we’re desensitized to, that we expect and tolerate, so long as a story pulls us along with it. Back to remembering that even in children’s stories about animals, most of the animals are male. And then straight back to wondering what questions I can ask to discover an audience for films about women among people who want to see them/our selves as they/we are.

DIWO & The Women's Organisations Problem(s)
And when I took another look at what Ava DuVernay had said I found another problem here:

There are robust black film organizations all over the country. Our goal was to organize ourselves into a releasing entity.

What might DIWO mean for women? Are there women’s organisations might organise themselves into a releasing entity? There are many robust women’s film festivals and organisations round the globe (see sidebar) but even the very robust Women Make Movies, already a releasing entity, cannot easily gather voting support to help it with funding, and anyway may already have its hands full with its existing programmes. Women in Film & Television organisations round the world tend to focus on events and professional development. Furthermore, although many women have a lot in common with other women, we are also very diverse and that often makes organisation problematic, as every feminist knows.

On the other hand, African-Americans must also be very diverse, and maybe we can learn something from the way they’re organising. And in each country in the world we also have a variety of national resources and networks that we could share with those who live in other countries; I do think that women could get together cross-nationally to take advantage of state film incentives. How can any of us best find our shared niche(s) to sustain us and get our work to our shared audiences? Is there some way to cross borders with a brand, or a cable channel? Is this something those Hollywood women might help with if and when some of them move outside the Hollywood system? Or the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which is going from strength to strength? Or Oprah Winfrey? In the meantime, I treasure the global links with women who want to make movies, and women who write about films by and about women, whose FB and blog posts I share, whose tweets I rewteet, who share my posts and retweet my tweets. I think of these generous networks, and am optimistic that there are lots of people who want diverse films that show women as we/they are, and our worlds as we/they experience and imagine them. Back to those market validation questions! Still delighted to receive suggestions and comments!

Many thanks to GoingApricot and to InedaName, and to Ava DuVernay, because they’ve each helped me inch forward with my thinking. In my next post, I’ll write about niches I'm familiar with, where DIWO might work for people who want to make films about women. In the meantime, here are some trailers, as a reminder of our diversity. And, if you check out the numbers of YouTube viewers for each of them, a reminder of the gap between films that benefit from Hollywood advertising resources, and films that don't.

The original version of this post disappeared when Blogger went down for a while. And now, it looks as though Bridesmaids is going to do very well. Great. But I think it's worthwhile to continue to explore the problems. They won't disappear with one success in one genre.

Help an 'activist' today-- Questions please! (EP 2)

2011-05-08T17:05:00.000-07:00

lisa gornick the female gaze

Fixing pain, I’ve learned, is what every entrepreneuse aims to do. After measuring the pain through the market validation process. But when it comes to entertainment and the arts—as Luci Temple and Meg Torwl explained in their comments the other day—market validation doesn’t work in the same way. If it works at all. So what am I to do?

I have an intimate acquaintance with women filmmakers’ pain, so powerfully conveyed in today’s Lisa Gornick image. I also have an intimate acquaintance with the imaginative ways that they/we transcend the pain—we assert our right to tell stories, develop myriad problem-solving strategies, and forge creative alliances. But the reality is that it’s consistently harder for women than men to make and distribute their feature films, in every country except perhaps France, because of the entrenched industry preference for (often white) men’s projects. It’s especially hard if women want to tell stories about women. It’s old news that women storytellers—of every culture—inherit centuries-long story-telling traditions where central characters who are male appear far more often than central characters who are female, where male characters are more active than female characters, and female characters are often referred to in terms of their ‘beauty’ or lack of it. Just this week, I read a fascinating article* about how even the animals in children’s books are far more often male than female.

But women filmmakers’ pain is irrelevant in the market, even to women filmgoers who are interested in films by and about women. When it comes to buying a ticket, or paying for a download or a DVD, it’s the story that counts, and the quality of its execution. If I had any doubt about that, it went away this week, when Women Make Movies (WMM) campaigned on Facebook, seeking online votes so they could win money. Here’s how the organisation describes itself:

Established in 1972 to address the under representation and misrepresentation of women in the media industry, WMM is a multicultural, multiracial, non-profit media arts organization which facilitates the production, promotion, distribution and exhibition of independent films and videotapes by and about women. The organization provides services to both users and makers of film and video programs, with a special emphasis on supporting work by women of color. WMM facilitates the development of feminist media through an internationally recognized Distribution Service and a Production Assistance Program.

Pretty terrific, huh? Delivering its unique services for almost 40 years. Not surprisingly, WMM has 10,111 FB members when I last looked. Women from all round the world love its work, including me. But did lots of women vote, so that WMM could carry on its great work with a little more ease? No! 698 votes, 7% of its Facebook members. (Fortunately that got WMM a slot in the top 100 (at 51), $25,000, and a chance at more, in the next voting round. Look out for it!) I don’t know whether the demonstrated indifference was because those FB members didn’t care enough about movies by women, or didn’t care enough about movies about women, but it’s bad news for women filmmakers who hope that women will support their work.

I’m going to make a big effort now to put women filmmakers’ pain aside (most of the time). Forget about films by women and concentrate on potential audiences for films about women. I hope that if I do this I’ll move further towards questions that will help validate at least something about the market.

Next episode coming asap. Please, keep those questions & comments coming!

*An easier read re animals in children's books, from the Guardian.

Mothers Day: New Zealand cinema makes history; & the NZFC breaks a record!

2011-05-07T22:27:00.000-07:00

This is an historic weekend for New Zealand cinema. Three New Zealand feature films have opened in cinemas to great reviews. And as far as I know the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC), our state funder, did not invest in the development or production of any of them, although I understand that it contributed to post-production costs for two. There’s Operation 8, directed by Abi King-Jones and Errol Wright:

There's Hook Line & Sinker, directed by Andrea Bosshard and Shane Loader:

And there's Stephen Kang’s Desert, which premiered at the Pusan International Film Festival last year:

(And Stephen Kang’s short Blue, also independently made, has been selected in Competition at Cannes, for La Semaine de la Critique).

Exciting times. But they’ve been coming for a while, and they reflect exciting times in global cinema. Feature films developed and produced outside the NZFC have well outnumbered those made with NZFC support for some years now, and it was inevitable that in time any differences in quality would diminish. The precursor of this trend was last year’s The Insatiable Moon, now on release in the United Kingdom. But THREE films on one weekend. That’s amazing. Many congratulations to all involved.

I like it that women co-directed two of this weekend's three films, and that Mike Riddell wrote and Rosemary Riddell directed The Insatiable Moon, and that another mixed gender team Tom Burstyn and Barbara Sumner Burstyn made This Way of Life, short-listed for an Oscar this year. There’s a fascinating study in there somewhere, about mixed gender domestic and professional partnerships, which I wrote about a while back, in another context (I have no idea whether Abi King-Jones and Errol Wright’s professional partnership is also a domestic one). And another study's in there too, about the various ways these partnerships conceived, funded and are now distributing these features.

Operation 8 had some funding from Creative New Zealand’s now-defunct Screen Innovation Production Fund. Hook, Line & Sinker’s funding depended on a strong community developed over years of work (their last film was Taking the Waewae Express). They’ve paid everyone the same and some cast and crew share ownership of the work. The Insatiable Moon’s funding started conventionally and went through many transformations, wonderfully documented in Mike Riddell’s blog (see sidebar). I don’t know about Desert, but Stephen Kang is a commercials director at Curious Film, who are his producers, and I imagine that this has helped him resource his work.

By coincidence, this week the NZFC announced a New Zealand season at the Barbican in London, in association with the New Zealand High Commission, New Zealand's Ministry for Culture and Heritage and NZ-UK The Link Foundation. It is part of the City of London Festival. Films included are Taika Waititi’s Boy and Eagle vs Shark, Roseanne Liang’s My Wedding & Other Secrets, Chris Graham’s Sione’s Wedding, Leanne Pooley’s The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls, Ian Sharp’s Tracker and Brad McCann’s In My Father’s Den. Only one (16%) of the six narrative features written and directed by a woman.

It seemed a slightly odd selection to me. Why Tracker, currently on release in the UK? Why one film released in 2004 (In My Father’s Den), one released in 2006 (Sione’s Wedding) and another in 2007 (Eagle vs Shark)? After some feedback from others, I wrote on the NZFC’s FB wall:

Is this the complete list? My London friends are really disappointed that Home By Christmas isn't included, because of its current relevance and because they're interested in innovative film-making. And also want to see This Way of Life, because they've heard so much about it and it was short-listed for an Oscar. Who selected the programme, and what criteria did they use? Will there also be short films, and if so, how will they be selected?

The NZFC’s response, unsurprisingly, was incomplete:

Hi Marian, yes that’s the complete list selected by the organisers in London.
[Who were the organisers? The Barbican all on its own? And/or others in London at the time?] Home by Christmas wasn’t chosen this time around as had already screened at the BFI London Film Festival, which was great. This Way of Life isn’t on the list either as has already played at the Barbican. Thanks for asking about short films – Take 3 will be screening too. It’s a short from Roseanne Liang the director of My Wedding and Other Secrets, which is of course also showing. So lots to see you Londoners – get out there!

I was left to work out possible criteria for myself. One criterion seems to have been that the selection should prioritise particular New Zealand producers. I inferred this from the way the films are paired. Two from Whenua Films, two from South Pacific Pictures and two from T.H.E. Film, including Tracker, which seems to fall squarely within the same category as Home by Christmas and This Way of Life, since it’s not only been shown in London but is still showing there, right now. The choice-by-producer would make sense if those involved in the selection wanted to introduce New Zealand producers to new possible funders in Europe. If that’s the reality, or part of it, why not say so? And if people at the Barbican selected the films, who advised them? The ‘new’ NZFC has often talked about transparency, and some transparency would have been good here.

It would also have been good if the Ministry for Culture & Heritage and the others in the partnership had stepped back a bit to take a wide view, and asked “Where are New Zealand’s points of difference to showcase to the world?” “What’s happening right now in New Zealand cinema?” “What other new movies match the warmth and vitality of Boy, The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls, My Wedding & Other Secrets?”

On this weekend’s evidence, one of New Zealand cinema’s points of difference is that a diverse group of skilled filmmakers is using New Zealand’s famous number 8 wire techniques to make inexpensive films-from-the-heart that are finding appreciative audiences. Doing just what lots of others are trying to do around the world. And doing it very well indeed. To showcase them in London would make us all proud and give New Zealanders and others there a real treat.

New Zealand also has a strong cohort of women writers and directors. And Home by Christmas, popular as well as innovative, is arguably Gaylene Preston's best work; she's in her prime. Including only one narrative feature with a woman director isn’t good enough, and isn’t compensated for by including a woman-directed documentary, The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls. The Barbican programme, no doubt funded in part by the taxpayer, isn’t doing justice to the vibrant world of the second decade of twenty-first century New Zealand cinema.

My sadness about the Barbican selection is compounded by the latest NZFC newsletter. It details its recent feature development investments and provides another historical moment. For the first time since I started my research six years ago, in this round the NZFC has invested ZERO in development of projects written and/or directed by women. ZERO. As I showed recently, NZFC investment in the development of women’s feature projects has been dropping steadily for a while, so I guess that this dismal news is as inevitable as this weekend's strong releases. But is it acceptable?

The newsletter also details the 13 narrative features that the NZFC’s funded in some way, but are not yet released, from one for which financing has closed, to one which is coming soon. Two (15%) have women writers and directors. One more has a woman writer.

lisa gornick there is no revolution without women making the agenda

What can be done? At our state funder's place here in New Zealand the celluloid ceiling is firmly in place, though it’s easy to ignore it when there are intermittent gains, which appear to be unsustainable because the NZFC has no coherent gender policy. I think it’s time for Women in Film & Television NZ (WIFT) to step up, with strong support from the other professional guilds, all of which have many women members. I hope that NZFC’s funding of WIFT does not preclude the organisation from working for change, especially as it seems that its members would like WIFT to advocate for them. A recent WIFT survey showed that 70% of its members believe that advocacy is the most important issue for the organisation, even though its strategic plan lists events and professional development above advocacy. And members’ desire for WIFT to engage in advocacy is not new; when WIFT canvassed its members before contributing to a pan-Guild response to the NZFC review last year, members wanted gender equity to be included in the WIFT response. If WIFT needs one, Nga Aho Whakaari provides an advocacy model that works, and it retains its NZFC funding. If women aren't applying for development money, perhaps the NZFC needs to reconsider its approach, as MOFILM is doing. Alternatively, perhaps the NZFC is no longer necessary. A film-maker lottery could replace it? But that’s a discussion for another day. Today belongs, really, to Operation 8, to Hook, Line & Sinker, and to Desert. To The Insatiable Moon. To This Way of Life.

Finally, Mother’s Day offers an opportunity to express love and gratitude and respect to two national 'mothers'. Warm greetings to our pre-eminent writer, Patricia Grace. I hope that by this time next year a film adaptation of her novel Cousins will be in production, as longed for by the late Merata Mita. Warm greetings to Gaylene Preston, too, now New Zealand’s senior film-maker, who has mothered many other film-makers, while continuing to produce her own remarkable body of work.

Coming soon: the next episode in Help An 'Activist' Today - Questions Please! It's complicated...

Help an 'activist' today-- Questions please!

2011-04-30T16:21:00.000-07:00

lisa gornick woman and sun

Every Wednesday evening I run down the hill to central Wellington, to spend three hours with a small group of people who have amazing ideas that they want to develop for the market. I love being with them, go WOW a lot. Grow Wellington has brought us together on a course it calls Activate. And it calls us all ‘activists’, which makes me smile. I’m there to develop my ideas about sustainable structures that will support women who write and direct feature films, so they can do their work and get it to their audiences. Especially if they want to make movies with women as central characters. I want women filmmakers to have their place in the sun (thanks for the image, Lisa). And I want their various audiences to see the films that I believe they are hungry for.

Last week, a visitor introduced us to market validation, and I came up against some hard questions. How do I know that there’s a market for movies by women? Who cares if a woman writes and directs a movie? Isn’t a good movie just a good movie, regardless of who makes it? There are already films about women, what’s the problem? Where’s the research that shows that there’s a market for films by and about women? Or films that pass the Bechdel Test, are about women who talk to each other about something other than men? Women make up about half the movie-going audience in the States, in roughly the same proportion as in the community as a whole, so doesn’t that mean that women are happy with what’s already on offer? And if they’re not, don’t they have television and the net?

For the first time, I’ve realised that the research to date—as far as I know—has focused entirely on concerns about gender representation among film-makers and within films. For example, there are few women writers and directors of studio projects. State funders (see sidebar for New Zealand examples) and others run programmes that don’t attract many women participants who are storytellers, and rarely seek out women who might participate if the conditions were different. Women and girls are under-represented and misrepresented as characters in most movies and in most movies women rarely talk to each other about topics other than men. Maybe it’s time to find out whether there’s a market for the films that women might make, especially films that that represent women as central, active, and diverse.

Perhaps more films by and about women are being made. The costs of making long-form films has dropped and it seems that more women now engage with crowd-funding on Kickstarter or Indie-Go-Go to generate just enough money to make their films but not enough to pay all the cast and crew. Many others create webseries, some so they can tell a long story in manageable bits. Others, from The Age of Stupid to Pariah and on, are connecting with their audiences in ways that inspire. But my understanding is that few of these projects generate income for their makers, and income is necessary if they are to sustain their work. And I think that the distribution and monetisation problems that currently affect the entire industry often affect women more, partly because investors lean on the tried and true (white guys’ projects) in hard times, but also because we’re not often enough closely connected to our various audiences. And that may be because we haven’t asked the hard questions about who these audiences are, have made assumptions that we haven’t checked.

What kinds of long-form screen stories by women and about women and girls will people pay for? Feature films? Games? Transmedia experiences? Web-series? Tele-movies and series? And on what screens? In theatres? On television? Computers? Readers? Phones?

So, I’m going to develop a simple online survey—ten to fifteen questions—and I’d love some help. My thinking is primitive at the moment. At the beginning stage, like Lisa Gornick's new movie (somehow Lisa always comes up with images just when I need them).

lisa gornick my new film

I'm considering questions like:
Are there films about girls and women do you really really want to see? If so, what kinds of films?
Do you/would you pay to see feature-length films because they are written and directed by women?
Do you/would pay see films with women and girls as central characters?
Do you/would pay to see films with women who talk to each other about something other than men as central characters?
If your answer is ‘yes’ to any of these questions, do you have a preferred genre for these films?
What platform would you most like to watch them on?

What do you think? How could I improve on these questions? Do you have questions about the markets for feature-length films by and about women (narrative or documentary) that you’d like me to ask? Are there genre questions? Questions about delivery platforms? Audiences you’ve wondered about? Questions about men as audiences for films by and about women? If you don’t want to write in the comments here, please email me at wellywoodwoman(at)gmail.com (ASAP).

The hard truth may be that film-goers don’t care who writes and directs a film so long as it’s entertaining. And there may be only a very very small market for films that pass the Bechdel Test. But I really want to know.

image from Nikyatu Jusu's blog about her first narrative feature

REFERENCES

Who watches movies?
Lisa Wade on movie-goer stats

Research on women writers and directors
Martha Lauzen at the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film
Writers Guild of America West Hollywood Writers Report 2009
Stacy L. Smith and Marc Choueiti from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism (also about content)

Content
Feminist Frequency on The Bechdel Test
Feminist Frequency on Tropes vs. Women: #3 The Smurfette Principle
Geena Davis Institute, Stacy L. Smith and Marc Choueiti again, on Female portrayals in family films (link within great, optimistic, article)
Miss Representation

Crowd funding
Film-maker Meg Pinsonneault with up-to-the-minute info

PS (When I hear Anne Thompson of Indiewire say "We need more films for women, we're starving", in this part of a great three-part interview with writer/director Massy Tadjedin, whose Last Night with Keira Knightley and Sam Worthington has just been released, I think "How can I turn that statement into a question that will be useful?")

Yes, We CANNES Do It!

2011-04-15T21:55:00.000-07:00

I long for the day when women write and direct 50% of all feature films. And this week, I had a moment or two of optimism and celebration, with many others working towards the same goal, especially all of us who were in some way involved in last year’s You CANNES Not Be Serious campaign. Why? Because when Thierry Fremaux announced the Cannes Film Festival line-up the other night, we learned that, for the first time, four films with women directors are in competition.

The directors are Julia Leigh with Sleeping Beauty, an Australian, and already a successful novelist, Naomi Kawase (Japan, who won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2007 for Mogari no Mori) with Hanezu No Tsuki, Maiwenn (France) with Polisse, and Lynne Ramsay (England) with We Need To Talk About Kevin. 21%. Warm congratulations to them all, and to the people who work with them. And to Ruth Torjussen (FilmDirecting4Women) who initiated You CANNES Not Be Serious, Melissa Silverstein (Women & Hollywood) who adopted it, and to the generous women and men outside the public eye who worked, and continue to work, for change. When I saw 'Jane Campion presents' in this Sleeping Beauty trailer, I imagined that she is one of these people.

Sleeping Beauty from Pollen Digital on Vimeo.

This week an interview with Geena Davis about research at the Geena Davis Institute of Gender in Media also fuelled my optimism. Geena Davis talked about the institute’s research, the largest ever done, on G-rated movies and television shows made for children aged 11 and under. The research found that for every one female character, there were three male characters, and that if it was a group scene, it would change to five to one, male to female. She said:

Of the female characters that existed, the majority are highly stereotyped and/or hypersexualized. To me, the most disturbing thing was that the female characters in G-rated movies wear the same amount of sexually revealing clothing as the female characters in R-rated movies. And then we looked at aspirations and occupations and things like that. Pretty much the only aspiration for female characters was finding romance, whereas there are practically no male characters whose ultimate goal is finding romance. The No. 1 occupation was royalty. Nice gig, if you can get it. And we found that the majority of female characters in animated movies have a body type that can't exist in real life. So, the question you can think of from all this is: What message are we sending to kids?

Geena Davis reported that the institute took these facts

...back to the people who are creating the media… to the studios and the producers, the Writers Guild, the Animators Guild, the Casting Directors Guild... The fascinating thing that we found from the beginning was that they were absolutely shocked. The fact that, in general, all of their movies are so lacking in a female presence is stunning to them. That makes it, obviously, not a conspiracy, not a conscious choice, and leaves them very open to rethinking it and saying, 'Now that we know, we're going to make some changes'. And we feel certain that when we update [our research] in 2015 that we will have seen the needle move.

I so hope that ‘the needle will move’, but have lingering concerns that temper my optimism. Every two years, the Writers Guild of America West produces an excellent report on diversity in the industry. The statistics in these reports consistently show precisely whose stories are being told, and the reports include discussion about the gnarly facts that work against programmes that seek to make change. Was the Geena Davis Institute’s research really such a surprise to the guild (or the others involved in creating media)? It would be wonderful to see the Writers Guild and the institute put their research and experience together and come up with some joint suggestions for working further with studios, producers, the Animators Guild and the Casting Directors Guild.

Against this background, I’m back with the latest New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) statistics. And it’s wonderful that the NZFC now keep some applicant statistics, though they're not yet as comprehensive as I’d like.

First, the NZFC’s development investments since their December 2010 announcements. The good news: two out of five Writers Development Loans went to women: to Kathryn Burnett for Mike and Virginia, and to Frances Edmond for Emerald Curse.

The bad news: the rest of the NZFC’s feature film development investment, from early to advanced development. This continues the trend from 1 July 2008: less and less investment in development of feature films that women write and direct. In the year ending 30 June 2009, projects with women writers attached received 32.4% of the development funding. From 1 July 2009-December 2010, the percentage dropped to 27.8%. And this time, it’s 16% for projects with women writers ($31,500 of $195,240), and 11% for the projects with women directors ($20,000 of $179,000—only nine of the eleven funded projects had directors attached). What are the factors that contribute to this decrease? What will reverse the trend?

The results for recent short film funding are also mixed, although taken overall they show a record investment in projects directed by women. Across all the shorts programmes, projects with women directors attached have been allocated $430,000 of the $790,000 total funding: 54%. Terrific. Short films are the classical pathway to feature filmmaking, so it matters that women are well represented in the NZFC short film programmes.

The good and exciting news: women wrote and will direct half the six Premiere Shorts, the shorts programme with the largest budgets, $90,000. Loren Taylor is writer/director of Bee, Zia Mandviwalla writer/director of Night Shift. Sarah Boddy wrote Tiger Country and Pietra Brett-Kelly will direct it. And, because Maria-Elena Doyle will direct Inorganic, written by Nick Ward, the NZFC will invest $360,000 of the $540,000 total allocated for Premiere Shorts in projects that women direct.

The NZFC devolves Premiere Shorts to three Executive Producer teams, who are not required to keep applicant statistics, so there’s no way to know how many applications were made for projects with women writers and directors. This year Tom Thumb, the executive producer for two Premiere Shorts, advertised that they would read submissions ‘blind’. I thought this was the first time this had happened, but Tom Thumb’s Polly Fryer put me right:

I don't think that blind reading is that unusual, I think we were just the only group to advertise it. I think Tui's group [Tauihu Media] did it too and several Exec Producers that I spoke to from past years also mentioned that they did it. The logic is simple: it's a very small industry here and the three of us [in Tom Thumb] are very actively involved in many areas of it so we know a lot of people who are potential applicants. We wanted to be able to read the stories that were written and have them speak to us without any element of personality clouding that perspective. Once we had our shortlist of stories we then discovered who the applicants were and read the supporting material that they had sent, met them to discuss the stories and the selection process went from there.

It would be great if the Executive Producer teams were required to read blind, and to keep applicant statistics. It would be even better if the NZFC started to read blind, too.

The other two NZFC shorts programmes are Fresh Shorts 30 ($30,000 budgets) and Fresh Shorts 10 ($10,000 budgets). The NZFC administers these programmes and kept statistics only for directors.

There were 113 applications for Fresh Shorts 30 and eight projects were funded.
Women directors were attached to 23% of the applications, and 25% of the funded projects.

There were 115 applications for Fresh Shorts 10. Women directors were attached to 28.7% of the applications and to 12.5% of the funded projects.

Why are so few women applying for these programmes, and why the proportional mismatch in Fresh Shorts 10, between projects with women directors who applied, and the funding allocated to Fresh Shorts 10 projects? Across the two Fresh Shorts programmes, state investment of $250,000 in directors who are men and $70,000 in directors who are women seems inadequate.

Then there’s Escalator. Last year, women writers and directors were attached to only 16% of the short-listed projects and to half of the green-lit projects. This year, in the 133 teams that applied, there were 373 team members, and 97 of those were women (26%). Twenty-seven of the teams (20%) have members who identify as Maori, but it’s impossible to tell whether there are any all-Maori teams. There’s no way to know how many women in the teams are the story-tellers, the writers and directors, and the figures from the NZFC do not include details about the gender of principal applicants in the 133 teams. Historically, in film projects, women are more likely to be producers than storytellers, but anecdotally there seems to be an increase in individuals who are writers and/or directors and producers, so it would be useful to have more details. But the bottom line is, not enough women are involved. I stand by my conclusion last year that Escalator is very male-oriented in its approach, including the "Boot Camp' language.

This year, women are the principal applicants in three of the twelve short-listed teams, and in two of the four teams with applicants who identify as Maori. There are 26 men in the twelve teams, and 7 women (21%). Again it's necessary to know who the storytellers are.

So, what’s my take on all this? My view hasn’t changed. Equity and market reasons together provide compelling arguments for the NZFC to develop a gender policy. As a state organisation, the NZFC has a gender equity obligation, which at the moment is not being met. And as an investor of public funds, it makes sense for the NZFC to consider market issues around women as audiences. Others are doing this. For example, commercially oriented MOFILM wants to improve women’s participation in its programmes and is developing strategies to attract women applicants.

At a minimum, I think that the NZFC must

Be more consistent and rigorous with its gathering of statistics
Take note of the global concern about the numbers of women who write and direct features and about female characters in feature films, and research ways to improve their investment in stories by and about women, across ALL programmes
Brainstorm about how they can attract women applicants, and come up with some imaginative experiments

But as well, and most of all, I’d love the NZFC to develop a formal policy about their investment in women writers and directors. That way, we’ll all know what’s happening. And who knows, if the NZFC gets it right, before long New Zealand may have women in competition at Cannes, too. And, of course, be the first place in the world where women write and direct 50% of all features.

Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media research

Writers Guild of America West Hollywood Writers Report 2009

Earlier Escalator posts
Equal Rights, Equal Opportunity, Progress For All

Big Picture: could i do that?

Horror Stories

2011-03-15T01:29:00.000-07:00

There was a panel called 'Directing the Dead 2' today, at the South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW). It included Scott Weinberg, James Wan, Simon Rumley, Ben Wheatley, Jason Eisener, Nicolas Goldbart. And one woman, Emily Hagins. And WHAT a woman she is. Emily Hagins is 18 and has made three features. My Sucky Teen Romance is premiering today at SXSW ('today' around the world goes on rather a long time, as you know).

Anyway, I was up early, and fell across a live twitter feed from Scott Macaulay, @FilmmakerMag. And laughed, several times. I loved it that Scott's few tweets managed immediately to capture/attract so many of the different points of view about a complex issue. What a great way to start the day, some light relief from the real-life horror stories of Japan. (I can't get this image out of my head, dream about it. Long to help. Hope that over time there will be plenty of opportunities to do so.)

Japanese tsunami March 2011 (from Stuff)

I edited Scott's first few tweets a little, when I was about to re-tweet them, but then became caught up in the conversation.

@FilmmakerMag Scott Macaulay

Weinberg asks why there aren't more women horror directors? Lots of female horror fans. #sxsw 'Directing the Dead 2'

Eisener: "Don't know why -- I had babysitters growing up who could tell me scary stories better than any of my current friends." #sxsw 'Directing the Dead 2'

Rumley: "Well, forget horror, why aren't there more women directors?" #sxsw 'Directing the Dead 2'

@AyeQue .A.W. Quinn

@FilmmakerMag damn good question

@FilmmakerMag

Female audience member says women separate themselves through women's film festivals-everyone should be in one big pot. #sxsw 'Directing the Dead 2'

Wheatley: "Technology has freed up stuff -- there is no barrier to anyone making a film. So why isn't there equal amounts m/f directors?"

Wheatley says the biggest thing he had to get over at start of career was mental barrier that he needed "permission" to make a film.

Wheatley: "Is there cultural hardwiring that makes women think they can't give themselves permission to make a film?"

@mariannapalka Marianna Palka

@FilmmakerMag There must be. I didn't feel that way but the numbers speak for themselves. Let's all be audacious, male or female.

@FilmmakerMag

Nicolas Goldbart: "In Argentina, women are not fond of the genre. Lots of female directors, but not more women making genre films."

@ellenmaguirenyc Ellen Maguire

@FilmmakerMag Oh, come on. Did anyone laugh out loud at the idea that women filmmakers are holding themselves back?

@FilmmakerMag

James Wan: Says in his L.A. horror clique there lots of female directors, women who want to be producers. Sees more women coming out for horror.

Xavier Gens, dir of "The Divide," says he is seeing the same thing in France. He shouts out Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Gaspar Noe's partner.

@ellenmaguirenyc I'm just the messenger, but no one laughed. Although one female audience member said "women were more cerebral" for horror.

ellenmaguirenyc Ellen Maguire

@FilmmakerMag Lucile Hadzihalilovic ("Innocence") told me once that as a relatively new director she was, at times, uncomfortable.... ½

@FilmmakerMag (con't) confronting conflict. (And yes, I know you're the messenger, not the opinionator; thanks for the live tweets.)

[MOVING RIGHT ALONG NOW, STILL SMILING]

@FilmmakerMag

Eisener: Not a fan of current remake trend. Why don't producers remake old films with good ideas but bad execution?

Hagins says bad remakes at least direct young viewers to the good originals

Eisener: there are groundbreaking horror films now, but not from studios. Good horror has to risk alienating audience. Studios can't do.

Wheatley: Current "rehabilitation of the creature" trend is interesting. True Blood, Twilight -- monster as hero.

Wheatley: "I think that's wrong. They should all be fucking killed!"

Wan: If studios aren't making quality films we want to see, that's good -- inspires indie filmmakers to make what they want to see. #sxsw

Wan: Back in the day, the best horror films were all studio films. #sxsw

Weinberg: Have people watch 10 remakes and then the 10 originals. If they prefer remakes, they are not writers. #sxsw

Hagins: As someone who has had to sell her possessions to make movies, has problem with big-budget remakes. #sxsw

Audience member says producers asked him about his horror movie, "Where are the tits?" Wheatley: "Where were the tits?" #sxsw

Rumley: Finding a good producer is key. Few people can raise money and be creatively good too. Most on this panel have done it ourselves.

Wan: "To a large degree, you can control the business yourself. Oren Peli proved you can make a movie on your own." #sxsw

Rumley: If producers don't get your vision, just do it yourselves. #sxsw

Wan: Says he shot one scene from SAW to use as calling card. Off strength of that short, that made them read script. Producers came to us.

Wheatley: First film, 'Down Terrance," spent six thousand pounds and shot it in 8 days. #sxsw And on that note, the panel is over.

@FilmmakerMag didn't report any comment from Emily Hagins about the 'gender issue'. But she's on to it. This is what she says in a great interview on Fatally Yours, by Sarah Jahier:

Emily Hagins (photo: Fatally Yours)

SJ: Do you ever feel you are taken less seriously in the film industry because of your gender and/or age?

Emily Hagins: Sometimes, but I feel like the best way to get around that is to prove any negative assumptions wrong by making more movies. Technological developments have made it easier for people interested in filmmaking to start at a younger age. One of my goals with my movies is to tell stories that stand alone, instead of being brought down by my gender or age.

SJ: Why do you think the horror genre has primarily been a man’s domain?

Emily Hagins: I think women tend to gravitate towards romance or dramas, which is probably why romantic comedies have been dubbed “chick flicks.” Horror films (and action) almost seem like the opposite of romantic comedies, so they have become the “guy flicks.” I think studios feel more comfortable hiring a guy to direct a movie of a genre with an audience that is mainly men.

SJ: As a woman, do you think you are viewed differently than your male counterparts in the horror genre? If so, how and why?

Emily Hagins: I think so, mainly because I try to tell stories about what I know- and right now I know what it’s like to be a teenage girl. Pathogen is from the point of view of a teenage girl during the zombie outbreak, so it probably feels a little different from a horror movie told from a guy’s perspective.

SJ: Even though women seem to be getting more and more involved behind the scenes in horror, why do you think there are less female horror directors, writers, producers, etc. in the genre than males?

Emily Hagins: The filmmaking industry is dominated by men in general, and as a result I think a lot of things about the filmmaking process are intended for a guy’s way of working. I think it’s a challenge for women to make movies, but entirely possible.

SJ: What elements can female filmmakers/authors/journalists/etc. bring to the horror genre that are lacking in males’ perspectives?

Emily Hagins: I believe writing what you know is any writer’s inherent strong point, so I think female filmmakers/writers have the potential to provide realistic and strong female characters.

SJ: Do you think it’s harder for women to be taken seriously in a genre that seems to be dominated by males?

Emily Hagins: In a way, yes. I think the common misconception is that girls don’t like gore or horror movies, so some people think a female filmmaker would skip out on those things. However, I think filmmakers of both genders understand that to make a successful movie one must love their story and genre.

SJ: Do you ever get annoyed at how women in horror movies always end naked or with their clothes ripped off?

Emily Hagins: Haha, yeah. But I usually just think, “A guy probably made this movie or insisted on this scene.” It depends on how good the movie is for me to be distracted or not distracted by it because it’s pretty common.

SJ: Do you feel you’ve become desensitized to stereotypical scenes in horror like the half-naked girl screaming and running for her life in slow motion? Or are these types of familiar horror tropes still effective and necessary?

Emily Hagins: One of the things I love about horror movies is how there are pretty specific elements that are interpreted as “rules”, but they can by broken or used to have a different meanings from film to film. For example, nowadays a stereotypical scene where a woman gets her clothes ripped off could be intended to be a comical homage to old horror movies.

SJ: Do you feel that other people view women as being “soft” and not able to endure horror as well as men? How do you fight this stereotypical view?

Emily Hagins: I’m sure some people do think this is true, but I can’t speak for all women and say that it isn’t. When I go see a horror movie (new or vintage), there tend to be less women in the theater. While I don’t hate the shorter bathroom lines, I won’t say that there isn’t a line. I know plenty of women who enjoy horror movies, and I think our best way to fight the stereotype is to keep showing up at the theater for horror movies.

SJ: What women in horror do you admire and why?

Emily Hagins: I think I would say Lexi Alexander, though I don’t know if her films would qualify as horror. She’s an independent filmmaker who doesn’t shy away from gore or action, I guess like Kathryn Bigelow too. I saw her speak at a Q & A for her film Hooligans at SXSW, and she’s very determined and passionate. That’s the kind of filmmaker I try to be.

SJ: What are your goals for yourself within the horror genre?

Emily Hagins: With any horror movies I make, I hope that people aren’t thinking “A girl made this.” I don’t like thinking “I bet a guy made this,” when I watch a movie. I’d rather just be lost in the story.

And now—with a sense of celebration—from the remarkable Emily Hagins, the trailer for My Sucky Teen Romance. Long may Emily flourish—she's an inspiration!

Media Convergence, MOFILM & Strategies

2011-03-03T22:58:00.000-08:00

Development: Viv (Madeline McNamara) & Greta (Pinky Agnew) outside the New World supermarket in Chaffers Street Wellington

In the world of media convergence, collaboration with brands has become more important than ever to filmmakers. However, even though women account for 85% of all consumer purchases in the United States, and probably elsewhere, individual women storytellers whose work is about women and for women audiences rarely benefit from partnerships with brands. Illeana Douglas' relationship with Ikea in her Easy to Assemble web series is an exception.

Development-the-movie has benefited significantly from relationships with various community and commercial entities (see Development Project FAQ tab above) and I’d welcome more partnerships, so I’m very interested in branded entertainment. Because of this interest, I had this little Twitter exchange with MOFILM, an organisation which offers competitions and mobile distribution to budding filmmakers around the globe. As I understand it, MOFILM started out in association with Sundance, and now has links with brands like Chevrolet, who want ‘quality creative content for their ads’, and with the filmmaker organisation Shooting People. Our conversation went like this:

devt (me)
Congratulations Rebecca Clayden, a winner in latest @MOFILMugc comp: http://tinyurl.com/45fqdyo. But why are there 8 men & just 1 woman?

MOFILMugc
@devt we'd love more female winners, we need more females to enter first

devt
@MOFILMugc Aha. I wondered abt that. Have been rec. this wherever few women enter: http://tinyurl.com/4jlomdy. How can you attract us?

MOFILMugc
@devt Will give it a read, perhaps we need to get closer to some Women in Film associations - any recommendations?

devt
@MOFILMugc Sure have! But longer than 140 chars. Shall I write you a blog post on Wellywood Woman in the next few days?

So here’s the post. It’s taken longer than a few days, because we had the Christchurch earthquake. Like most New Zealanders I have beloved friends and family in Christchurch. So my head and heart have been absorbed. They still are, but an offer is an offer. And I was touched by MOFILM’s positive response, thought of it when I read a tweet from New Zealand Top Model’s Colin Mathura-Jeffree (@NZTopModelColin), who has been a champion tweeter throughout the aftermath of the earthquake. The tweet read:

Dont let someone wander off without checking on them. It can be so humiliating being an outsider. Takes 2 secs- "hi, hungry?’ #eqnz

MOFILM took those two seconds to respond to this outsider, and I salute them. The evidence from round the world shows that women storytellers are usually outsiders in the film industry. People and organisations with resources are often happy to ignore us, but not this time.

The link I sent MOFILM went to Annie Finch’s article How To Publish Women Writers: A Letter to Publishers about the VIDA Count. (The VIDA Count is about the small numbers of women published in literary pages and magazines.) I think Annie’s article is great, for any organisation that wants to increase women’s participation. Annie suggests six strategies and these can also be adapted, I think, to increase participation by other under-represented groups. It’s worth reading the whole article, but here’s a summary, amended a little for this film competition context:

1. Actively solicit women entrants: research individuals and send them individual invitations
2. Educate yourself: research what women writers and filmmakers say about their (diverse) influences, ideas, aesthetics, aims, strategies, and traditions—even a couple of hours online can make a huge difference. I recommend Helen Jacey’s new screenwriting book The Woman in the Story as one place to start.

3. Read (watch) with double awareness: if you’re reacting against a pitch or a story or an ad, ask yourself if it may be because of gender. According to Annie, women’s work is often rejected by —female or male—decision makers because it has an “overly personal” or “too emotional” tone; “sentimental” diction or imagery; or “trivial” themes. Pitches, scripts and clips sometimes raise similar issues.
4. React like a woman: take note of the status of women in your project and in the work you reward—the numbers of women participants, the positioning of their work in the project, the way women are portrayed through the project as a whole
5. Create a context where women’s contributions as well as men’s will feel at home and make sense.
6. Advertise: Once you have a gender-aware programe, make the most of it by mentioning it in discussions on listservs, websites, and other venues that focus on women’s filmmaking. You can be sure that your efforts will be appreciated, and that it will become easier and easier to attract offerings from women filmmakers.

I think it’s a great idea if MOFILM people get closer to women’s film organisations, though some they approach will have other priorities, or not enough resources to engage in great depth. So, here goes with the suggestions. But they have limitations. When I ran through the list in the sidebar to choose groups that might be useful for MOFILM, I found that some organisations' sites are now unavailable (will update asap). As well, my list and the list below are very European and North American-oriented. Organisers at the listed film festivals and conferences listed in the sidebar may be able to help with groups in Asia, the Pacific, Africa and South America. Women in Film & Television may also be helpful.

The Birds Eye View Film Festival, currently with a competition of their own, could be one place to start. Also in Britain, Film Directing for Women. In Europe, CIMA, the Spanish organization that co-ordinated the Compostela Declaration. Doris Film is based in Sweden and I find them really interesting. In the United States, the Geena Davis Institute of Gender and Media (the gender and film matriarch, as far as I'm concerned), the Women’s Media Center, POWERUP Films. In the Trenches: Women Over 40 Rock is a group which works with short film. Realisatrices Equitables is in Canada and I love what they do. Women working in animation are pretty special for me: Animating Women and Tricky Women. There's the Shashat Women’s Film Group in Palestine. And the Women & New Media in the Mediterranean Region Conference in Morocco this June would be a terrific place to visit, listen, watch, learn, and network (take me with you!). Digital Chick TV has its finger on the pulse of women's web series.

And I have more suggestions which I hope are helpful for MOFILM. If you have some too, please add them in the comments. And if you think I’ve got it wrong, please please let me know about that too. It’s a difficult topic, and it needs more, public, discussion.

Possible problems

If MOFILM follows Annie’s suggested strategy, I think they’ll also be able to resolve some potential problems which preclude women’s involvement in the MOFILM competitions: with some women’s definition of ‘community’; with the status of women in advertising, and with issues around brands; and with women’s ‘reluctance to compete’.

1. Definition of community
MOFILM and their sponsors talk a lot about their ‘community’. But many women have an understanding of ‘community’ that is at odds with MOFILM’s use of the word, because our view of community is primarily people- and social action-oriented. For instance, when I put the MOFILM link on the Development Facebook page, this is how recovering Sundance filmmaker and web series (The Louise Log) creator Anne Flournoy responded:

Thx for the link abt the branded entertainment, Marian. That they consistently refer to 'community' kind of bugs me...almost like they're trying to put a veneer of social action or something on profiting from indie filmmakers making ads for fast food chains... not that I'm not trying to figure out 'sponsors' and 'advertising' myself...

And I responded to Anne:

I feel concerned abt the language too. It took me a while to get used to using 'friend' here on FB, where I have friends like you I've never met in the flesh, & some I've never directly communicated with, though I enjoy their posts. This branded use of 'community' is another kind of problematic redefinition for me, where I have to keep asking 'who benefits, and how?' because I have the same kind of interests you have, in exploring partnerships with brands, for filmmaking. I dream of an association like the one Shane Meadows had with Eurail, for Somers Town. & this morning I'm feeling very happy about Development-the-movie's association with the New World supermarket chain, because all their checkout staff are wearing t-shirts that say 'Different, like you'. Also like it that they support netball: New World's larger 'community' is one I'm very happy to be part of.

Development: Louise (Michele Amas) & Emily (Nancy Coory) inside the New World supermarket in Chaffers Street Wellington

If MOFILM uses Annie’s list of strategies, Annie’s items 2 and 3—education and a double awareness—may help find a solution? I’d be interested to know if more women participated in MOFILM’s Red Cross competition than in the others, because I think many women would be interested in contributing to that, and to other social action campaigns. If women didn’t participate in the Red Cross competition, it may be because it wasn’t advertised in the right places (see Annie’s item 6). Birds Eye View has partnered with Divine chocolate in a short film contest, and it seems to me that this is an ideal competition for many women. Many of us love chocolate, and the Fair Trade and other ethics-oriented elements of Divine's story are likely to appeal to our people and social-action understanding of community:

Divine is the only Fairtrade chocolate company which is 45% owned by the farmers. While Fairtrade ensures farmers receive a better deal for their cocoa and additional income to invest in their community, company ownership gives farmers a share of Divine’s profits and a stronger voice in the cocoa industry. That’s good business!

(And I imagine that there are many men who feel the same appeal as many women do for this product and brand, but perhaps fewer men for whom the MOFILM definition of 'community' is an issue.)

2. Status of women in advertising, and problematic brands
Many women are uncomfortable with the way some advertisers portray, or have portrayed, women and girls. We are often wary of brands if we think their products damage human beings or the environment. Again Annie’s strategies can help with these problems: education, double awareness, and the creation of a context that helps women feel at home.

3. Women’s ‘reluctance to compete’
When I started my research into women writers’ participation in feature filmmaking, five years ago, no-one believed that there was a gender problem in the New Zealand industry, because we have high-profile New Zealand women filmmakers. And some women in the industry said to me that if women weren’t making feature films it was their own fault, because they didn’t compete.

Some of the statistics I recorded and analysed seemed to support this view. But when I looked more closely, I learned that other issues are involved. Sure, there are women who decide that the obsession necessary to make feature films isn’t for them; they choose to use their creativity in other ways. Others with family responsibilities don’t have the level of support that allows them to fulfill those responsibilities and focus on their filmmaking. But often we don’t compete because many decision makers in the industry associate ‘success’ with stories by, about, and for men. The resulting deeply embedded and measurable discrimination has made us 'outsiders'. And that's not our 'fault'.

I believe that Annie’s strategies provide a good starting point for anyone in the industry who wants to counter this discrimination, as well as for MOFILM. And then, when an organisation does the work suggested by Annie Finch, and follows Colin Mathura-Jeffree’s advice and asks us ‘Are you hungry?’, I think it’s up to us to step forward. This is sometimes very difficult to do. But, great news! This week Birds Eye View invited actor Rosamund Pike (Die Another Day, Pride & Prejudice, An Education, Made in Dagenham) to launch their festival, and what a breath of fresh air she is. She encourages women to be ambitious and redefines ‘ambition’ to make it more attractive to women. She makes me smile, makes me laugh and now I’m redefining ‘ambition’ for myself. Present me with an appropriate context, and I’ll be there.

And then

devt Marian
@MOFILMugc Morning MOFILM! Your very own Wellywoodwoman post is up now: http://tinyurl.com/4hlzfho. Let me know if it's helpful? Was fun.

MOFILMugc MOFILM
@devt Hello, only just picked this up - it's very helpful indeed. Will let you know what we do and how it works. Thank you!

devt
@MOFILMugc Thank you! I'm soooo pleased it helps, and I'd love to know what you do and how it works. Every good wish--

devt
@MOFILMugc & here's an even better suggestion, Annie Lennox's @WeAreEQUALS. Seen their amazing James Bond clip?

FOOTNOTE
After the September earthquake in Christchurch I wrote about its effects on my work, and referred to Rosalind Houghton's PhD thesis "We had to cope with what we had" : agency perspectives on domestic violence and disasters in New Zealand. After the latest earthquake in Christchurch there is again a surge in domestic violence and the local refuge needs all the help it can get. You can donate here. You can also donate to the New Zealand Red Cross, here.

Cheryl Bernstein's wonderful post about the dangers of forgetting about earthquakes, "A song from under the floorboards" is here.