Lights, camera, affirmative action
There are too few women film directors. But are quotas the right way to redress the balance, asks Dani McDonald.
If you’re heading along to the New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) in the coming weeks, chances are the movie you are watching was directed by a bloke.
Despite our now living in a post-MeToo world, less than a third of films playing across the country in the 2018 festival programme had women at the helm.
And to Equal Employment Opportunities and Women’s Rights Commissioner Jackie Blue, the lack of female directors both here and overseas isn’t due to a lack of talent, nor is it accidental. Rather, it’s yet another example of unconscious bias against supporting women to leadership roles in business and the creative industry.
The Human Rights Commission’s recent report, Tracking Equality in the Workplace, states the number of women in senior business roles declined in the past two years, rather than improved.
‘‘To reverse this trend and have as many women as men in the director’s chair . . . there needs to be a shift in culture,’’ says Blue, a former National MP.
‘‘We need a conscious bias and special measures to ensure women are equally represented in decision-making roles at all levels of society. We should also ensure a career pathway for female directors – aspiring film directors not only need good role models but access to education and vocational training.’’
TARGETING TARGETS
Just how to achieve gender parity in the film industry, and whether targets or quotas are the answer, is the subject of a global discussion.
The Cannes Film Festival is considered the most prestigious in the world. But of the 1770 directors who have walked down the red carpet throughout its 71-year history, only 82 have been women – a woeful 4.6 per cent. Against that background, NZIFF director Bill Gosden says New Zealand’s 30 per cent is remarkable.
But there are no plans to increase that number. He prefers the programme to form organically. The festival, he says, supports women’s work by ‘‘showing them’’.
‘‘This has been a really good year. You have to look at everything in the overall context of the difficulties that women face in the movie industry, which I think are familiar to all of us, but all things
considered it’s been a very strong year for women who make movies, and it’s quite well represented in the film festival.’’
During the past three years, women-directed films featuring in the NZIFF programme have steadily increased. In 2017, they made up 27 per cent of the programme. The year before that, it was 22 per cent. Women in Film and Television executive director Patricia Watson says it isn’t so easy to increase the number of female directors featuring in film festivals. ‘‘NZIFF have a charter to represent the best of world cinema, not to represent women or achieve gender equality.
‘‘If they can achieve that, because of the quality of work that’s out there – that’s fantastic. We need more women to come through for films to be directed by women. ‘‘But in some countries, you’re looking at figures of 8 per cent of films directed by women. It’s actually quite hard to achieve parity until there is more product coming through.’’
She believes change is coming. With the help of the Film Commission, she hopes its target of having 50 per cent of women film-makers in the professional development area by 2021 is enough time to see a cultural shift.
It is a lack of confidence, New
Zealand film-maker Jackie van Beek believes, that holds many emerging female directors back.
‘‘Women feel quite confident in the writing roles, but in terms of standing up and leading a large group of what usually is predominantly men, I think it is confronting.’’
Van Beek has just come off an Australian tour promoting her film The Breaker Upperers, codirected with Madeleine Sami. Their film was selected to open the Sydney Film Festival.
During interviews, van Beek found many emerging female film-makers and writers were keen to seek advice on how to get ahead in the game.
‘‘Madeleine and I always say, try to stay confident in yourself and your own potential. Gather a supportive and talented team around you that are supporting you in a leadership role and don’t sit by waiting to feel confident – or don’t sit by waiting to be encouraged by money – especially for younger emerging film-makers.
‘‘We’ve been saying to start small, build your confidence. You don’t need to apply to big funding bodies and be rejected, just start small, self-fund things and gain your confidence like this, and the money will come.’’
In Europe, collective 5050x2020 was formed in France this year to promote gender equality in the film industry. It is working with the French Ministry of Culture to bring an even split between men and women working behind the cameras in France.
As part of its international campaign, co-founder Delphyne Besse has contacted various film organisations in New Zealand hoping they will liaise with the NZIFF to encourage the same target. While she admits that the NZIFF can’t achieve real change on its own, she hopes groups could rally the Government to look into implementing targets here in New Zealand.
Watson agrees that, if targets were in place in the larger festivals, New Zealand would be more likely to host a more gender-diverse film festival. But the pool of female-made films just isn’t large enough.
‘‘I am not aware of many women who actually want to be [included in the programme] just because they’re women. They want to be rightfully included because of the quality of their work so, yes, you might be able to achieve the numbers by pro-
‘‘To reverse this trend and have as many women as men in the director’s chair . . . there needs to be a shift in culture.’’
Jackie Blue Women’s Rights Commissioner
gramming anything, but that’s not necessarily going to play well for women or the audience.’’
Gosden says he won’t support a policy that insists 50 per cent of a film festival’s programme must be directed by women. ‘‘I think films have to be selected according to their merits, and to be turning down strong films simply because they were directed by men does not seem to me like a particularly good idea.
‘‘I think the idea of equal opportunity for men and women to make films is an admirable policy, and I definitely would applaud the Film Commission’s efforts in that direction. But asking a film festival to programme films equally by men and women is sort of like trying to compel an audience [that], for every film they see directed by a man, [they have] to go and see a film directed by a woman.’’
NOT JUST OUR PROBLEM
Film-maker Gaylene Preston released her latest film, My Year With Helen, in the NZIFF last year. For her, the problems lie with distribution.
Stories with guns and violence are more likely to be distributed outside the festival because that’s where distributors believe the money lies. ‘‘As a film-maker having made my first feature film in 1984 [Mr Wrong], I have had a front-row seat watching the international distribution industry get more and more boy-centric and bing, bang, bong.
‘‘This has trained up a global audience with an appetite for loud, shocking, violent films while the more quiet, innovative work gets paid scant attention. Giving the girl the gun doesn’t do the trick, in my opinion.’’
Director Debra Granik is in New Zealand with the NZIFF promoting her latest film, Leave No Trace, starring young Kiwi actor Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie. She shares similar frustrations to Preston.
Originally, films directed by men tended to show violence, and those films performed well with audiences, she says. ‘‘For whatever reason, homo sapiens are creatures of pattern, so once we see something explode, a big skyscraper exploding and big shootouts and lots of automatic weapons, well, that sells. Let’s just make a whole lot more of those, let’s call it a franchise.’’
She says part of the purpose of the Time’s Up movement against sexual harassment was to call out habitual attitudes and thinking. ‘‘What happened to the other stories that there are to tell? What about the stories of everyday life where you can’t save someone with a gun?’’
Granik recalls a meeting she had with a company that wanted to work with her in the production of one of her films. When one of the male bosses excitedly handed her a list of the directors his company had worked with, there were no female names.
‘‘I just said, ‘Excuse me, why am I here? You don’t seem to work with women. I don’t know if you’re allergic to them, or afraid of them, you don’t like them, but something on this list tells me that clearly, empirically, you do not work with women’.’’
CHANGE FOR THE GOOD
This year the Film Commission is inviting submissions for funding for films with a woman director and at least one other woman in a key creative role to apply for 125 Fund, in light of the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage in New Zealand.
The commission proposes to invest up to $1.25 million into up to two feature films.
Last year, two $50,000 scholarships were awarded to actress Rachel House and writer Briar Grace-Smith under a Film Commission scholarship made in memory of Ramai Hayward, the first Ma¯ ori film-maker, camerawoman, and scriptwriter.