How I broke into the film indus­try: Five women share their stories

At times it can feel like the film indus­try is a nev­er-end­ing cor­ri­dor of locked doors. You can rat­tle the knobs all you like in the vain hope that some­one will relent and let you in – but some­times you’ve just got to kick the door down. To cel­e­brate Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, we asked five women across the film indus­try to share their per­son­al jour­neys, as proof that there are more ways in than you might think.

Natasha is a cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er. Her work includes The Rover, The Neon Demon and Hon­ey Boy.

“When I was 10 I was a dancer and a gym­nast. My dad had this Super 8 cam­era that he would use to film our birth­days and hol­i­days, and I had this idea to film myself and my sis­ter danc­ing in dif­fer­ent styles. First we had to choose the styles and cre­ate the chore­o­gra­phies, but then I realised I had to have a good wardrobe, and good sets. So my grand­moth­er became the cos­tume design­er, my sis­ter and I the pro­duc­tion design­ers, my dad was the cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er and my mum held one of those hand­held spe­cial lights, blind­ing us with front light to get the film exposed correctly.

“I prob­a­bly didn’t realise back then that I was the pro­duc­er, writer, chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, direc­tor and main dancer of my six-minute musi­cal. Two rolls of film that had to be played at the same time as the accom­pa­ny­ing cas­sette where I record­ed the sound­track. I prac­ti­cal­ly did every­thing except cin­e­matog­ra­phy! But I def­i­nite­ly got the film virus back then.”

Cor­ri­na is the founder of Bechdel Test Fest, and also works in film mar­ket­ing, pro­gram­ming and criticism. 

“As a young buck enter­tain­ment jour­nal­ist, I would get invites to the most ran­dom things. Lip­stick launch­es, kitchen­ware par­ties to restau­rant open­ings. I would accept the invites because what the hell – I got fed, tip­sy and I could usu­al­ly bring along my best mate who by now was toy­ing with the idea of writ­ing a book called ​‘The Diary of a Plus One’. When the chance to go to the Flat­pack Film Fes­ti­val arrived I was lured by the trip to Birm­ing­ham over the films and accept­ed it as anoth­er adven­ture. I’d nev­er been to a film fes­ti­val and my under­stand­ing went as far as Cannes. Birm­ing­ham was not quite the south of France but for a girl more used to mouldy tents than Trav­elodges I was spoilt.

“I was told to come and meet Alice Lowe for a screen­ing of Sight­seers. I hap­pi­ly went along and con­se­quent­ly found a new love of old cin­e­mas, inde­pen­dent film and an inspi­ra­tion in Lowe. Sight­seers revealed what inde­pen­dent film tru­ly was. It was com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent in tone and nar­ra­tive and I’d nev­er seen a woman in such a deli­cious­ly dis­gust­ing role. After an engross­ing Q&A – some­thing else I’d nev­er seen – I left invig­o­rat­ed and thirsty for more expe­ri­ences like this.

“That after­noon I saw a bunch of exper­i­men­tal shorts in a café moon­light­ing as a cin­e­ma, Joan Of Arcin a can­dlelit church and had a lit­tle dance in The Cus­tard Fac­to­ry. I loved how the whole city laid out its car­pet to embrace inde­pen­dent film and its fans; any­thing and every­thing went when it came to the pro­gram, and every­one belonged. I left want­i­ng to cre­ate more events like this; to cham­pi­on films that were off the grid of com­mer­cial­ism and out of the park of the multiplexes.

“I lat­er found­ed Bechdel Test Fest, cham­pi­oning pos­i­tive roles for women on film and five years on am run­ning it with some seri­ous­ly awe­some women. For the day job, I help open new cin­e­mas across the UK for Pic­ture­house Cin­e­mas and work with an incred­i­ble team of pas­sion­ate peo­ple bring­ing Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val to Lon­don. I also do the odd bit of film writ­ing and pod­cast­ing and am all about that pan­el life. It’s exhaust­ing but reward­ing and until some­thing beats stand­ing at the back of a sold out screen wait­ing for the cred­its to go up on an excel­lent indie film, I’ll be here for the long run.”

Jen­nifer is a film direc­tor. She made her debut in 2016 with The Babadook, and her sec­ond fea­ture, The Nightin­gale, will be released lat­er this year.

“It took for­ev­er for me to get here, and that’s impor­tant for peo­ple to realise. Some peo­ple think, ​‘I’ve worked on this for a year, why hasn’t it hap­pened?’ But it takes a long time – you com­mit your whole life to film­mak­ing. I remem­ber as an actress being very dis­il­lu­sioned with the work that I was hand­ed, and I thought, ​‘Am I going to spend my whole life doing this?’

“As a child, I’d writ­ten and direct­ed plays and sto­ries, but I lived in an era when as a child and as a teenag­er, I didn’t think I could direct films. I didn’t even know that was pos­si­ble. So through my frus­tra­tions with being an actress, I decid­ed I was gonna make films. My own films. And it took me a long time, but I’m so hap­py I persisted.”

Cather­ine is the head of Chan­nel 4’s Ran­dom Acts, and a co-founder of Loop. She is also a film jour­nal­ist and a board mem­ber of Tyne­side Cin­e­ma and Wys­ing Arts Centre.

“I always think of myself as a work-in-progress, so there was nev­er one moment where I thought, ​‘Film: it’s what I must do,’ or, ​‘Hey, I’ve made it in the film indus­try!’ And I actu­al­ly have a sus­pi­cion that it may be more sat­is­fy­ing to think that way; it hope­ful­ly means you’re rarely pin­ing for some future ide­al or wor­ry­ing about hav­ing imposter syn­drome because you think you don’t deserve to be here yet (not to say that I nev­er feel inse­cure about a project or fan­ta­sise about the jour­ney to come!).

“I’m guid­ed pri­mar­i­ly by curios­i­ty, cin­e­ma is an excel­lent con­duit for that, and also by a fair degree of prag­ma­tism about what works for who I am, more so than focussing over­ly on exter­nal cues like what my peers are doing or what’s ​‘nor­mal’ – that stuff is pret­ty irrel­e­vant. ​‘What’ is nev­er very inter­est­ing com­pared to ​‘how’. I do have a prob­lem with say­ing yes to too much because every­thing sounds inter­est­ing and then not hav­ing enough time for everything!

“If you’re try­ing to make your way into the indus­try, you should exploit peo­ple like that – ask them for a cof­fee or a chat and they will often feel oblig­at­ed to help, even when they real­ly should be writ­ing that arti­cle out­line/proof-read­ing someone’s pitch they agreed to help with/​thinking about talk­ing points for a pod­cast next week. You can take advan­tage of these people’s urge to procrastinate.”

Marie is a free­lance film pro­duc­er. She most recent­ly served as Unite Pro­duc­tion Coor­di­na­tor on Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell.

“I went to school at NYU, and I nev­er felt con­fi­dent enough to make my own work there. Instead of direct­ing, I end­ed up pro­duc­ing shorts for my boyfriends. That sort of ​‘pro­duc­ing’ basi­cal­ly boiled down to order­ing meals and hand­ing out band-aids. It wasn’t until I end­ed up as a pro­duc­er in the adver­tis­ing indus­try that I learned that pro­duc­ing wasn’t just being an on-set caretaker.

“I had this won­der­ful men­tor named Sher­ri Levy, who showed me that being a pro­duc­er meant demand­ing a seat at the table, and earn­ing it by being a ter­rif­ic prob­lem solver and com­ing to a project with cre­ative ideas. Film­mak­ing is such a col­lab­o­ra­tive medi­um that it demands the pro­duc­er not be a shrink­ing violet.

“It’s still a process for me, to force myself to be more assertive and less reac­tive – to think­ing of myself as work­ing with the crew, not for the crew, and I think that feel­ing comes from a gen­dered con­fi­dence gap. But with each project, my voice gets a lit­tle loud­er and my place with­in the indus­try a lit­tle more concrete.”