The sev­en provocations

What ques­tions should we be ask­ing with regard to women’s role with­in the film indus­try? Are we too soft when we demand over-and-over that gen­der equal­i­ty should be a vital con­stituent of the movie mak­ing scene? Prac­ti­cal solu­tions are hard to come by, but are there more per­ti­nent and provoca­tive ques­tions we should be asking?

On Fri­day 4 Sep­tem­ber, the ICA cin­e­ma in Lon­don host­ed an event inspired by this con­cept. Rather than run­ning off con­fronta­tion­al anti-estab­lish­ment log­ic, it had a free­wheel­ing pas­sion that just hap­pened to be anchored in con­cerns over the con­di­tions for women with­in the industry.

The event was called The Cin­e­ma Exists To Please Women. It took place under the ban­ner of Onwards and Out­wards – a nation­wide pro­gramme of films, talks and events spot­light­ing British female film­mak­ers, which lasts until the end of 2015. The organ­is­ers, Jem­ma Desai (I am Dora) and Kate Tay­lor (She Shark Indus­tries), asked sev­en peo­ple who pro­gramme films in some capac­i­ty to speak for five min­utes end­ing on a provoca­tive ques­tion. The speak­ers’ stim­uli came in the form of these two quotes:

“I am locat­ed in the mar­gin. I make a def­i­nite dis­tinc­tion between that mar­gin­al­i­ty which is imposed by oppres­sive struc­tures and that mar­gin­al­i­ty one choos­es as a site of resis­tance – as loca­tion of rad­i­cal open­ness and pos­si­bil­i­ty.” – bell hooks, 1996

“Now one thing nev­er to be lost sight of in con­sid­er­ing the cin­e­ma is that it exists to please women. Three out of every four of all cin­e­ma audi­ences are women.” – Iris Bar­ry, 1926

My role was to be a ​‘respon­dent’ aka the round-up gal who, after every­one has spo­ken, sum­maris­es key ideas in cir­cu­la­tion and pulls-out the areas of her per­son­al pas­sion. There wasn’t much time to do this on the day and I have been encour­aged to take it to a dig­i­tal place.

Posed by Jo Dun­combe, The Quar­ter Club, LSFF, Birds Eye View

Jo cit­ed the Vir­ginia Woolf book and con­cept of a room of one’s own. Jo has a room of her own in the form of pro­gram­ming Lon­don Short Film Fes­ti­val. She rel­ish­es and cel­e­brates this oppor­tu­ni­ty to exert her cin­e­mat­ic val­ues. This injec­tion of phi­los­o­phy into the mat­ter of fem­i­nist activism res­onat­ed with me. Before I was a self-con­scious adult in soci­ety I was a lit­er­a­ture-hun­gry child out­side of it. Before I knew about the need to fight for equal­i­ty I knew that reflect­ing on the world as it is can bring you some peace with­in it. I now think it’s impor­tant to both strive to make things bet­ter and to take sat­is­fac­tion where sit­u­a­tions allow. Jo’s provo­ca­tion is one of the few I can answer con­fi­dent­ly. Our focus should be both. We should hold two almost con­tra­dic­to­ry ideas in mind: enjoy­ing a flour­ish­ing mar­gin­al life where we can and push­ing to become more seri­ous social and eco­nom­ic forces where we can.

Posed by Jay Bernard, BFI Flare

Jay would like women to dom­i­nate Ocu­lus Rift tech­nol­o­gy. I’m not a good per­son to respond to this idea, as I had to ask my boyfriend about Ocu­lus Rift tech­nol­o­gy (In one fell swoop under­min­ing Jay’s dream.) To my anti­quat­ed mind, Jay’s point made sense as a pro­gres­sion of Jo’s: we might be sourc­ing rooms of our own but what spaces do we have for com­mu­nal gath­er­ing and dis­cus­sion? I think this is a ques­tion that the hive mind needs to rumi­nate upon.

Posed by Maria Cabr­era, Reel Good Film Club

Maria is a film stu­dent who is dis­il­lu­sioned and angered by the nar­row rep­re­sen­ta­tion with­in films shown in the edu­ca­tion­al canon. She start­ed her own film club, The Reel Good Film Club. A recent exam­ple of her work is a screen­ing with Bechdel Test Fest on 13 Sep­tem­ber of The Water­mel­on Woman by Cheryl Dun­ye, the first ever film by a les­bian woman of colour. This action answers Maria’s own ques­tion. She has changed the type of film edu­ca­tion being received for every­one that attends her screen­ings. Per­haps the change is not as for­mal as she would like but ​‘edu­ca­tion’ is rarely com­plet­ed in for­mal estab­lish­ments. It’s where you get start­ed and where you do or don’t receive leads or inspi­ra­tions. At this time, when peo­ple curate the news they receive by who they choose to fol­low online, peo­ple are in a posi­tion to choose (to a degree) who they lis­ten to. If this all scans as wishy-washy phi­los­o­phy and Maria has a fire to cre­ate sys­tem­at­ic changes then she should find a way to issue her very legit­i­mate chal­lenge to the higher-ups.

Posed by Helen Macken­zie, DVD Bang

Absolute­ly. I’d like to defer to the words of indie ani­ma­tor, Signe Bau­mane:
​“If you only con­sume main­stream enter­tain­ment you get fed cer­tain ideas but there is this oth­er space for diver­si­ty of thought. I think my films and thou­sands of oth­er people’s films sup­port that diver­si­ty of opin­ion. I feel that, as a species, we need the diver­si­ty of thought because if you have only one way of look­ing at the world you are not accus­tomed to being con­tra­dict­ed. When you have con­tra­dic­tions in your life and there are dif­fer­ent ways of look­ing at things you are more capa­ble of man­ag­ing these con­tra­dic­to­ry thoughts in your head. And you are also able to find solu­tions to press­ing problems.”

Posed by David Edgar, BFI Southbank

As Cura­tor of Pub­lic Pro­grammes at the BFI, David brought obser­va­tions from a com­bi­na­tion of his ring-side seat at BFI Q&As and metic­u­lous sup­port­ing research. In short: Men ask more ques­tions and receive longer answers at the events he curates. This cor­re­lates with research that shows that in the tra­di­tion­al ​‘vil­lage hall’ set-up women tend to be rel­a­tive­ly qui­et. By pos­ing this par­tic­u­lar provo­ca­tion David is let­ting peo­ple know that he’s recep­tive to ideas. It’s on any inno­va­tor read­ing now to approach him with inclu­sive pro­gram­ming notions. It was pro­found that David raised the mat­ter of cin­e­ma venue envi­ron­ment at this par­tic­u­lar event. The atmos­phere in the room was elec­tri­fied by empa­thy. It’s hard to say whether this was thanks to the chem­istry of Jem­ma and Kate’s com­bined per­son­al­i­ties, or whether rein­vent­ing the con­di­tions for a group con­ver­sa­tion was the big goal of the day. The event was record­ed and I rec­om­mend watch­ing it when it appears on the ICA YouTube.

Posed by Sophie Brown, Elec­tric Bijou Empire Forever

I almost fell into a swoon at this from Sophie. When I first start­ed work­ing as a film crit­ic, I per­formed psy­cho­log­i­cal gym­nas­tics to give my reac­tions the objec­tive dis­tance that I thought pro­fes­sion­al film-writ­ing required. You can feel so alien­at­ed – by not see­ing your­self on screen and by not read­ing your reac­tions in the crit­i­cal press – that you dis­count the pos­si­bil­i­ty of wider unfair­ness and diag­nose your­self as abnor­mal. Alien­ation is a broad church that afflicts peo­ple for all num­ber of rea­sons. Cin­e­ma is solace. I have always been jeal­ous of male peers able to so eas­i­ly express their opin­ions. Mine his­tor­i­cal­ly tend­ed to lodge in my throat, unable to enter the world until thor­ough­ly processed. It’s now dif­fer­ent. Inte­gra­tion is occur­ring thanks to the audi­ence emerg­ing for earnest fem­i­nist film writ­ing and my edi­tor who active­ly encour­ages my per­son­al reac­tions to films. But it still feel rad­i­cal to let the defences down and let my true thoughts out. And I know that there must be many oth­ers in lim­bo with­out a room or plat­form or voice of their own. I wel­come oth­er people’s respons­es to Sophie’s ques­tion. It’s a great ques­tion. I love this question.

Posed by Man­ish Agar­w­al, East End Film Festival

This is a fas­ci­nat­ing ques­tion. Equal rep­re­sen­ta­tion seems like a chimeri­cal goal. I can under­stand frus­tra­tions with rely­ing on grad­ual social evo­lu­tion to take care of equal­i­ty when, real­is­ti­cal­ly, our soci­ety is not going to get to that promised land in our life­times. This brings me back to Jo’s orig­i­nal provo­ca­tion, or to put it anoth­er way: how to fight the good fight but also live a good life. There has to be a cer­tain amount of slack in the rope that ties you to your cause or it will stran­gle the life out of you. There must be scope for let­ting go. As the poet Stephen Dunn put it:

“I told my artist friends who court­ed it not to suf­fer­on pur­pose, not to fall in love with sad­ness because it would nat­u­ral­ly be theirs with­out assistance”

To bring this back to Agarwal’s provo­ca­tion: if there are peo­ple with fires in their bel­lies to pur­sue legal enforce­ment of equal­i­ty in UK cin­e­ma insti­tu­tions, that is won­der­ful. But there are numer­ous ways to live your val­ues. The type of activism that we pur­sue as indi­vid­u­als should chime with the capac­i­ty and incli­na­tions of our char­ac­ter.
A full record­ing of The Cin­e­ma Exists To Please Women will appear immi­nent­ly on the ICA Lon­don YouTube channel.

Onwards and Out­wards runs nation­wide until the end of Decem­ber 2015. Check out the pro­gramme at ica​.org​.uk