How women can improve their lot in the film industry

It’s easy to become engulfed in the quag­mire of what is wrong and why, and how bad and mad it is that 50 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion are still con­sid­ered a cre­ative lia­bil­i­ty in the film indus­try (and beyond). But after a while that becomes exhaust­ing and the sheer den­si­ty of neg­a­tive facts result in an anaes­the­sia that will main­tain instead of upturn the sta­tus quo.

It’s vital that peo­ple do the research and pro­vide the uncom­fort­able facts – Helen O’Hara’s recent impas­sioned arti­cle for Empire on The Future of Film pro­vides an exten­sive break­down of where we are in all its dis­heart­en­ing non-glo­ry. Melis­sa Silversteins’s Women and Hol­ly­wood blog for Indiewire links to damn­ing reports as and when they appear (near-dai­ly).

We also need the con­ver­sa­tion to progress. How do you stay true to your tem­pera­ment while plug­ging into an epic bat­tle? ​“I’m not just black, I’m a woman, so there are two glass ceil­ings I have to break every time I open my mouth,” said Gone Too Far! direc­tor, Des­tiny Ekhara­ga, recent­ly to The Guardian. ​“But if I wake up in the morn­ing and think, ​‘Oh my God, I got two ceil­ings I’ve got to smash today’, that’s no way to live. I’m seri­ous when I have to be; oth­er than that I talk about food a lot and watch Netflix.”

Do women def­i­nite­ly want to be work­ing in the film indus­try? A study by the BFI enti­tled, ​‘Suc­cès de plume? Female Screen­writ­ers and Direc­tors of UK Films, 2010−2012’ reports: ​“Women out­num­ber men at uni­ver­si­ty, film school and cre­ative writ­ing cours­es, yet they are under-rep­re­sent­ed in the indus­try in key deci­sion-mak­ing and cre­ative roles… The prob­lem seems to lie in the com­mis­sion­ing process, where pro­duc­ers of UK films turn to mid-career writ­ers and screen­writ­ers often already known to them, the major­i­ty of whom in the past have been male.”

This quote expos­es how uncon­scious the per­pet­u­a­tion of inequal­i­ty can be. A pro­duc­er turn­ing to an estab­lished male direc­tor for a job thinks he is an inno­cent cog in a big­ger machine. It’s the task of every man work­ing today to have a good think about how much he val­ues equal­i­ty and – if that amounts to any­thing pos­i­tive and seri­ous – to trans­late his val­ues to mean­ing­ful prac­tice. In oth­er words, it is the job of every man work­ing today to be mind­ful with his social power.

Which isn’t to say that overt macho bull­shit isn’t still a thing that women in the indus­try have to deal with. We spoke to a female direc­tor who had a short film ruined by a bul­ly­ing male cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er. He scorned her shot list and made her main actress cry. She is uneasy count­ing the fin­ished work among her canon as it is so coloured by his neg­a­tive presence.

If we are to move away from the dark ages of men as chest-beat­ing alphas who rule over women we need enlight­ened indi­vid­u­als of both sex­es acknowl­edg­ing that equal­i­ty is not sim­ply going to take care of itself. Ours is a world and a cul­ture born out of male dom­i­nance. Just because you don’t do any­thing direct­ly sex­ist it doesn’t mean that you are help­ing to cre­ate a fair­er world.

“The key trend I’ve noticed is that there are now more women com­ing into the film and TV indus­tries. That’s the good news,” says Kate Kin­nin­mont, who became CEO of Women in Film and TV after being a direc­tor mem­ber for 20 years. ​“How­ev­er, there is still a cel­lu­loid ceil­ing,” she adds. ​“We still don’t have equal pay, and many women still suf­fer from ageism behind as well as in front of the camera.“

Is this lack of equal­i­ty a con­tained issue that needs to be solved with­in the closed envi­ron­ment of film sets and stu­dio board­rooms? No. The director’s job has an image prob­lem that the media (news­pa­pers, mag­a­zine, web­sites, film books) all too nat­u­ral­ly per­pet­u­ates. ​“The big issue for me is when you have a gener­ic piece about film­mak­ing there’s always usu­al­ly an image of a man with a cam­era on the front of it rather than a gener­ic pic­ture of woman,” says Lizzie Francke, senior devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion exec­u­tive at the BFI Film Fund and for­mer jour­nal­ist. ​“When an arti­cle about film­mak­ing has a gener­ic pic­ture of a woman with a cam­era and it’s not a piece about women in film­mak­ing then everything’s as fine as it can be.”

A recur­ring prob­lem is that hard­ly any­body wants to be the one that says, ​“Why don’t we use a pic­ture of Agnès Var­da instead of Stan­ley Kubrick?” The media is as in thrall to tra­di­tion as any indus­try, and with­in that, we are all frag­ile humans with inse­cu­ri­ties and play­ing it safe is appeal­ing. The same phe­nom­e­non is as rife in film media as it is in on the pro­duc­tion side: ​“In the UK nobody wants to come first, every­one wants to come sec­ond. They want to watch some­body take that risk, and then do it, ” says Ekaragha.

Of course it’s annoy­ing and claus­tro­pho­bic that gen­der even mat­ters. The idea of ​‘male’ and ​‘female’ as oppo­si­tion­al iden­ti­ties erodes every­one. Emma Wat­son said in her now-famed UN speech: ​“It is time that we all per­ceive gen­der on a spec­trum not as two oppos­ing sets of ideals.” This idea may not be new (it is the fuel behind queer cul­ture) but it is heart­en­ing to hear it espoused on a glob­al stage from a mega star. Whether Watson’s words and the He For She cam­paign will cause sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal advance­ment remains to be seen. What is cer­tain and good is that Wat­son reached mil­lions of young peo­ple who have now con­sumed the belief that iden­ti­ty is not deter­mined by chromosomes.

To arrive at a place of true equal­i­ty, we need all man­ner of dif­fer­ent voic­es from con­trast­ing back­grounds work­ing and cre­at­ing and dis­cussing work. In oth­er words: inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty. For the time being, if you belong to the biggest minor­i­ty in the world and are look­ing for avenues for hope, they do exist.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty has always been a way for minori­ties to oper­ate out­side of dis­in­ter­est­ed insti­tu­tions. ​“No force on earth is weak­er than the fee­ble strength of one, but the union makes us strong,” my trade union nego­tia­tor father used to sing. This mot­to is born out by the New York-based founder of female film­mak­ing col­lec­tive, Film Fatales. Leah Mey­er­hoff has a way of speak­ing and act­ing that makes you believe that she’s going to switch shit up. ​“It seems like human nature that we should strive for equal­i­ty on all lev­els and that includes gen­der equal­i­ty. I’m pas­sion­ate about try­ing to make the world a bet­ter place because what else is the point of us being here?”

Film Fatales came about nat­u­ral­ly and intu­itive­ly in 2012 when Mey­er­hoff was work­ing on her first fea­ture, I Believe in Uni­corns. She reached out to six estab­lished female film­mak­ers for guid­ance. They came to din­ner and from this blos­somed Film Fatales New York. They asked, ​“What can we do active­ly in a grass­roots way to change the sta­tis­tics?” Mey­er­hoff says the answers were prac­ti­cal, ​“We can help each oth­er make our films. In addi­tion to the month­ly meet­ings we host, we have sev­er­al oth­er off­shoots. We do screen­writ­ing groups that meet at the Writ­ers’ Guild where women bring their screen­plays and give each oth­er feed­back. We do mas­ter­class­es where one mem­ber of the group will teach a top­ic to the rest of us on dis­tri­b­u­tion or Kick­starter or what­ev­er. We do field trips.”

Mey­er­hoff is on a mis­sion to bring Film Fatales to the world. When she attends film fes­ti­vals she reach­es out to oth­er female direc­tors present. In some cas­es, they go home and form their own chap­ter. Film Fatales now also exists in Austin, Detroit, New Orleans, LA and London.

The Lon­don chap­ter came about after Rebec­ca John­son read about Film Fatales. She got in touch with Mey­er­hoff and togeth­er with film­mak­ers Jo Coates, Claire Oak­ley and Nico­la Mills, ran their first meet­ing this sum­mer. It’s a small­er oper­a­tion with a less elas­tic admis­sions pol­i­cy but John­son – whose first fea­ture, Hon­ey­trap, is in the 2014 Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val line-up – has all the proac­tive enthu­si­asm of her Amer­i­can coun­ter­part: ​“We absolute­ly don’t want to be sit­ting around going, ​‘Oh woe is us’. There’s noth­ing to be gained from that. We’re all doing it against greater odds than if we were men but we’re doing it nonetheless.”

If big pro­duc­ers and stu­dios are not among your con­tacts then find anoth­er way. Gillian Robe­spierre, a mem­ber of Film Fatales NY and direc­tor of abor­tion com­e­dy, Obvi­ous Child, topped up her inde­pen­dent fund­ing dri­ve with Kick­starter: ​“We didn’t knock on Hollywood’s door. We didn’t ask for their mon­ey or their permission.”

When reach­ing out to the crowd-fund­ing com­mu­ni­ty, Robe­spierre had the ben­e­fit of a short film ver­sion of Obvi­ous Child so poten­tial back­ers could taste what was to come. All the women in this arti­cle made short films before mov­ing to fea­tures. Shorts can func­tion as a call­ing card fos­ter­ing a fan base. Mak­ing a fea­ture is not some­thing a per­son can do alone. If one isn’t going to reach out to main­stream insti­tu­tions then it is nec­es­sary to build one’s own network.

The most gen­er­ous way to engage is in a mutu­al way. Robe­spierre sub­scribes to the com­mu­nal idea at the core of Kick­starter: ​“You can col­lab­o­rate with art and artists that you are excit­ed about. I’m not just some­body who has a Kick­starter cam­paign. I’ve con­tributed to a bunch of cam­paigns… So has my mum!” There are (as ever in this inter­net age) alter­nate, equiv­a­lent plat­forms. Here’s Rebec­ca John­son on the BBC World News expand­ing at length on the mer­it of the IndieGogo cam­paign behind Honeytrap.

“Until we get to a point where we’re equal I think it’s nec­es­sary to have some form of pos­i­tive dis­crim­i­na­tion where­by peo­ple look at their crew and make sure that it’s 50/50.” This is the deci­sive view of Gabriel­la Api­cel­la, now writ­ing her first fea­ture, In This Body, and who pre­vi­ous­ly co-found­ed the female shorts plat­form, Under­Wire Film Festival.

This idea may not appeal to those who believe – as in the roman­tic notion of ​‘true love’ – there is only one ​‘true star’ for each film role on and off-screen. How­ev­er, there’s a buzzy phrase for y’all. Check your priv­i­lege. Chances are that there’s an oppressed minor­i­ty stand­ing in the cor­ner who would do you proud.

Mey­er­hoff is in accord with this belief: ​“Until every­one starts acknowl­edg­ing that women film­mak­ers and oth­er minor­i­ty film­mak­ers are at an insti­tu­tion­alised dis­ad­van­tage, nothing’s real­ly going to change.” She has a fact up her sleeve to give pause to the naysay­ers. ​“In film schools in Amer­i­ca we have affir­ma­tive action laws which have had an impact. Now 50 per­cent of the grad­u­ates are women because it was man­dat­ed by law.”

This type of affir­ma­tive action is start­ing to hap­pen in small ways in the UK. The BFI is one of our major fund­ing organ­i­sa­tions and now has diver­si­ty guide­lines in place. Known infor­mal­ly as the three ticks, these guide­lines require direc­tors to imple­ment on screen diver­si­ty, off-screen diver­si­ty and – long-wind­ed­ly but impor­tant­ly – to cre­ate BAME (black, Asian and minor­i­ty eth­nic) and dis­abil­i­ty oppor­tu­ni­ties and to pro­mote social mobility.

It may sound dry and, again, it flies against the roman­tic mythol­o­gy of movie-mak­ing, but if it shakes up the ridicu­lous lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in this indus­try then it’s a great thing. Until we as a species evolve to become per­fect equal­i­ty-imple­ment­ing thinkers then frame­works in place to help us bet­ter our­selves are essential.

After the neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence with the male DoP, the afore­men­tioned female film­mak­er approached her men­tor, an estab­lished male direc­tor. ​“He was like, ​‘All you can do is learn from this. You’ve got to cast your crew real­ly care­ful­ly and work with the right peo­ple because it’s so impor­tant and it does affect the film.’”

This nugget of advice trans­formed the director’s pro­duc­tion prac­tice. She went on to make anoth­er short which played out total­ly dif­fer­ent­ly. ​“It was a real fam­i­ly atmos­phere. Our pro­duc­er picked peo­ple that she knew were nice and knew were recep­tive to chil­dren and women. It was love­ly, a real­ly nice shoot. It was actu­al­ly a joy.” The result­ing work played at film fes­ti­vals and the direc­tor is now work­ing on her first feature.

This robust­ness of spir­it, this deter­mi­na­tion to learn from neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences, regard­less of what kind of big­otry they may be root­ed in, is key to suc­ceed­ing against the odds in real­is­ing per­son­al visions. Kate Kin­nin­mont received an MBE for her ser­vices to women ear­li­er this year. Her advice to women is: ​“If you want to be a writer, just write; if you want to be a film­mak­er, go make films”.

These words are notable for being as inspir­ing as they are uni­ver­sal­ly applic­a­ble. Women may be a minor­i­ty in the film indus­try but the men­tal­i­ty that gets things done is the same who­ev­er you are. Of course, blink­ered igno­rance of sta­tis­tics is enabling to the con­ser­v­a­tive forces that would keep women and all minori­ties in the shad­ows. Aware­ness and edu­ca­tion is use­ful – it just serves a dif­fer­ent pur­pose to the actu­al mechan­ics of get­ting on.

To return to the prac­ti­cal pro­fes­sion­al urg­ings of Kin­nin­mont: ​“The tech­nol­o­gy has nev­er been eas­i­er or cheap­er. There is a wide vari­ety of fund-rais­ing options like Kick­starter. If you want to be tak­en seri­ous­ly as a film­mak­er, build up your showreel. Get togeth­er with like-mind­ed peo­ple, take turns crew­ing and direct­ing, send your films to fes­ti­vals and do lots of mar­ket­ing. Join a film club or indus­try organ­i­sa­tion, go to fes­ti­vals and network.”

Being alone is not an option when it comes to being a film­mak­er, so reach out to friends or con­tacts who inspire you. Don’t sec­ond-guess your­self. If Michael Bay has the self-con­fi­dence to keep mak­ing films then so should you. If there’s noth­ing in the pub­lic mar­ket that reflects your artis­tic goals then – rather than see­ing this as evi­dence of your irrel­e­vance – realise you could be a fresh morn­ing breeze. If you believe that films should rep­re­sent life in all its forms than go ahead and put your own life out there. Final word from Rebec­ca John­son: ​“The more women that get on and do it, the more women will get on and do it”.

Fol­low on Twit­ter: Rebec­ca John­son, Des­tiny Ekaragha, Kate Kin­nin­mont, Women in Film and TV, Lizzie Francke, Emma Wat­son, Leah Mey­er­hoff, Gillian Robe­spierre, Gabriel­la Api­cel­la, Melis­sa Sil­ver­stein, Helen O’Hara.