How can we active­ly pro­mote diver­si­ty in the film industry?

“There’s not real­ly a diver­si­ty con­ver­sa­tion in the States,” says Joe Hall, Pres­i­dent of Ghet­to Film School, a non-prof­it foun­da­tion cre­at­ed to sup­port young, under­rep­re­sent­ed film­mak­ers. The issue ris­es to the sur­face on an annu­al basis, he sug­gests, pro­pelled by social-media-led cam­paigns like #OscarsSoWhite, only to sub­side again once the awards have been hand­ed out. ​“The Acad­e­my [of Motion Pic­ture Arts and Sci­ences] has made incred­i­ble changes over the last few years,” he adds. ​“But all that was thanks to an African-Amer­i­can woman, Cheryl Boone Isaacs” – the Academy’s cur­rent president.

Hall wel­comes Isaacs’ decades of dili­gence, but believes that the film industry’s issues of rep­re­sen­ta­tion can­not be solved with shiny stat­uettes alone. ​“It’s still about rela­tion­ships, oppor­tu­ni­ties, access,” he says. ​“The tal­ent pool is not near­ly wide enough to effect change.” It was this think­ing that led Hall to found Ghet­to Film School (GFS) in New York’s South Bronx in 2000, lat­er expand­ing to MacArthur Park in Los Ange­les. Its inten­tion­al­ly eye­brow-rais­ing name seeks to reclaim a word that gen­er­al­ly holds neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions. Through its var­i­ous ini­tia­tives, the foun­da­tion now reach­es over 2,000 teenage stu­dents and ear­ly-career professionals.

As a for­mer social work­er, Hall envis­aged GFS as an alter­na­tive to exist­ing state-fund­ed and non-prof­it arts projects. ​“It’s almost impos­si­ble in the States to find an art pro­gramme that is work­ing with Black and Lati­no young peo­ple that is actu­al­ly about the art-mak­ing,” he explains. ​“It’s almost always a scheme that is about drug pre­ven­tion, vio­lence pre­ven­tion, preg­nan­cy pre­ven­tion, some kind of social fac­tor that is used to define these young peo­ple and their com­mu­ni­ties in a bad way.” By fail­ing to chal­lenge their par­tic­i­pants, Hall wor­ries that some pro­grammes also risk per­pet­u­at­ing an even more insid­i­ous kind of big­otry: low expectations.

GFS’s stu­dents are cer­tain­ly not mol­ly­cod­dled: ​“When they fin­ish our fellow’s pro­gramme, which is 30 months, they will have done more instruc­tion­al hours in class than a bachelor’s degree in the States. It’s all about rigour and hard work and dis­ci­pline.” This high-com­mit­ment approach coun­ters the accu­sa­tion – com­mon among crit­ics of pos­i­tive dis­crim­i­na­tion or affir­ma­tive action – that under­rep­re­sent­ed appli­cants are often ush­ered into posi­tions they are not qual­i­fied for. Such argu­ments obscure the rea­son why these prac­tices are intro­duced: to coun­ter­bal­ance the impact that sys­tem­at­ic prej­u­dice and sub­con­scious bias may have on recruitment.

Sim­i­lar chal­lenges face pro-rep­re­sen­ta­tion ini­tia­tives, as their suc­cess is great­ly deter­mined by which mech­a­nisms they use to select par­tic­i­pants. These specifics are rarely the sub­ject of media report­ing – after all, they don’t tend to make for great head­lines. But if this is where the tal­ent pool of the future is being shaped, isn’t it worth div­ing into the details from time to time?

In the case of GFS’s mul­ti-stage appli­ca­tion process, the poten­tial of an individual’s ideas is pri­ori­tised over the pre­sen­ta­tion of those ideas: ​“We’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly look­ing for great writ­ing, and we’re def­i­nite­ly not ask­ing any ques­tions about their grades in school, their atten­dance in school.” Nor does back­ground play a part in the deci­sion-mak­ing: ​“We’ve nev­er focused on income. We don’t tar­get peo­ple by how much mon­ey their par­ents make or where they live.” While fel­lows do tend to come from low­er-income house­holds, this is pri­mar­i­ly a result of where the cours­es are located.

In this respect, GFS’s approach is sim­i­lar to that of Bold Film­mak­ing, a small south Lon­don-based film­mak­ing enter­prise found­ed in April 2016, with which it recent­ly part­nered on a pair of short film shoots. Both are sit­u­at­ed in areas with his­tor­i­cal­ly high lev­els of pover­ty, but – with the excep­tion of stu­dents who attend fee-pay­ing schools, in the case of Bold Film­mak­ing – are open to all. For Sasha Mor­gan, who fronts the com­mu­ni­ty and edu­ca­tion work for Bold Filmmaking’s par­ent organ­i­sa­tion, Bold Ten­den­cies, the main obsta­cle was dis­en­gage­ment: ​“It was hard to get those kids to apply,” she says. ​“Part­ly what we’re doing is con­vinc­ing peo­ple to take a chance on us.”

Of those who reg­is­tered inter­est, Bold Film­mak­ing sought to include all those who demon­strat­ed enthu­si­asm and a will­ing­ness to com­mit. The con­tent of each les­son was ​“bot­tom-up gen­er­at­ed” – dri­ven by the stu­dents’ require­ments – and Mor­gan hopes that any future cours­es will be adapt­ed to meet the num­ber and needs of appli­cants. In this respect, Ghet­to Film School and Bold Film­mak­ing pro­vide con­trast­ing mod­els for work­ing with young film­mak­ers. The for­mer is more rigid­ly organ­ised, tak­ing influ­ence from the USC School of Cin­e­mat­ic Arts course that Hall him­self attend­ed; the lat­ter is more reflex­ive and experimental.

Giv­en their col­lab­o­ra­tive film pro­duc­tions, the results of which were pre­sent­ed to lead­ing indus­try fig­ures at a recent BAF­TA event, the approach­es are clear­ly com­pat­i­ble. At their core, they have a shared goal to both com­bat under­rep­re­sen­ta­tion and, as Mor­gan puts it, strength­en ​“the lifeblood of what the indus­try can do.” As such, it is unsur­pris­ing that film com­pa­nies are will­ing to offer sup­port. Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry Fox, for instance, pro­vid­ed men­tors for the pro­duc­tions. Though Bold Film­mak­ing and GFS both receive pub­lic fund­ing – and the lat­ter also earns its own income through its alum­ni-run pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny – com­mer­cial spon­sors remain valuable.

“Thank god for the com­pa­nies, oth­er­wise we wouldn’t be around,” Hall says. ​“My rule has always been: if you are able and will­ing to give us the mon­ey to do the pro­gramme as we think it needs to be done, then I’m all for it.” If such sup­port is avail­able, why aren’t more ini­tia­tives start­ing up and fol­low­ing suit? In the States, Hall sug­gests, the gov­ern­ment could act as ​“more of a bridge between the two worlds – the on-the-ground com­mu­ni­ty infra­struc­ture and the indus­try as a whole.” In both the US and the UK, an increase in film­mak­ing lessons via pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tems or pub­licly-fund­ed pro­grammes is essen­tial, though unlike­ly to be forthcoming.

“Why would any­one expect a smart, tal­ent­ed 15-year-old to pur­sue this if they don’t know about it?” Hall asks. The ques­tion is at the crux of Ghet­to Film School and Bold Filmmaking’s exis­tence. Cam­paigns like #OscarsSoWhite are macro-scale respons­es to inequal­i­ty in the film indus­try. By improv­ing the vis­i­bil­i­ty of under­rep­re­sent­ed groups – whether through vocal­ly sup­port­ing the sto­ries shown onscreen or the peo­ple behind them – they hope to increase the num­ber of role mod­els that will be seen by a younger audi­ence. This could be termed as a ​‘top-down’ strat­e­gy, in its con­vic­tion that changes made at the film industry’s high­est tier will lead to progress to across the board.

This approach cer­tain­ly has its ben­e­fits. Speak­ing about the impor­tance of vis­i­bil­i­ty, Mor­gan tells us, ​“Some peo­ple say that there are only a lim­it­ed num­ber of arche­typ­al sto­ries that exist out there in the world, but the nuance of how they’re told and the con­text in which they’re told is real­ly pow­er­ful. It’s why we can still lis­ten again and again to the sto­ry of the failed hero, and find some res­o­nance with tragedy in our own lives.” But, much as moments like Moon­light​’s Best Pic­ture win at the 2017 Acad­e­my Awards may be a cause for cel­e­bra­tion among cham­pi­ons of diver­si­ty, they also risk car­ry­ing with them a false sense of vic­to­ry, or dis­tract­ing from deep­er-root­ed, low­er-pro­file concerns.

GFS and Bold Film­mak­ing work on more of a micro lev­el. They are about enabling young peo­ple, in Morgan’s words, ​“to get to grips with the fact that this indus­try, this space, this art form can encom­pass them” as indi­vid­u­als. In a thank you note to the Bold Film­mak­ing team, one stu­dent wrote, ​“This rat has had his choic­es in life infi­nite­ly expand­ed.” The jump made from the start of the sen­tence to the end – strik­ing in its stark con­trast – is tes­ta­ment to the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of work­ing with young under­rep­re­sent­ed film­mak­ers. There are no ​‘quick fix­es’ when it comes to pro­mot­ing diver­si­ty in cin­e­ma. Though the annu­al media furore may sug­gest oth­er­wise, the future of the film indus­try rests on more than a well-mean­ing hashtag.

Find out how you can get involved in your local film com­mu­ni­ty at ghet​tofilm​.org and bold​ten​den​cies​.com