Film festival’s panelists seek on-screen diversity

BENTONVILLE — Increasing the number and diversity of roles for women and minority-group members on-screen is about more than the film industry, panelists said Saturday at the fourth annual Bentonville Film Festival.

“My theory has always been that the lowest-hanging fruit is representation on-screen. That can make dramatic changes. It’s particularly important what we are showing kids,” Academy Award winner Geena Davis said on “The Time is Now” panel.

Davis pointed to the “Scully Effect” as an example of how important representation is on-screen. Dana Scully, played by Gillian Anderson, was a medical doctor-turned-paranormal detective in the ’90s show The

X-Files, which returned to TV in 2016. Scully was known as one of the first multidimensional female characters in a science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, field to be featured on a popular television show, and the first to play a leading role.

Nearly two-thirds — 63 percent — of women who work in STEM fields said Scully served as their role model, according to a survey by 21st Century Fox, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, and J. Walter Thompson Intelligence. Female fans of the show were 43 percent more likely than other women to have considered working in a STEM field.

“If she can see it, she can be it,” Davis said.

Davis and Inclusion Companies Chief Executive Officer Trevor Drinkwater founded the film festival in 2015 with the mission to champion female actors and filmmakers. Its mission has expanded to advocate for diverse voices and inclusion in all forms of media.

The festival had 75,000 attendees last year, rivaling the numbers for the Tribeca and Sundance film festivals. Although the number for this year hadn’t been tallied because of a few events planned for today, organizers expected about 100,000 people to attend the various screenings of 90 feature films, 33 short films and 13 episodics.

Barbara French and her friend Linda Brown said they drove in from Kansas City, Mo., for Saturday’s panels and to see RBG, a documentary about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It was co-directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West.

“We happened upon [the film festival] last year when we were visiting and had to come back. I love the message of diversity and equality. We’re addressing issues that we should have been addressing years ago,” French said. “The only issue is getting to everything you want to go to.”

Many attendees also said they were there partly to see all the celebrities. Davis was accompanied by actors Meg Ryan, Alysia Reiner, Stephanie Beatriz Bischoff and Natalie Morales during panels at Record Downtown.

A sold-out audience watched the women act out scenes from movies like Fight Club, Die Hard and Napoleon Dynamite, exploring the idea that complicated and interesting characters are not gender-specific. The message was that equity on-screen can be achieved by changing the gender of a character, without changing any dialogue.

“I think we have a tendency as an audience not to ask for more, so we get delivered what we are OK with,” Bischoff said.

The actors encouraged the audience to be more than bystanders, showing their preferences through ticket sales and social media.

Many filmmakers said the festival has been an inclusive place to display work that doesn’t necessarily fit into what is typically seen on the big or small screen.

“I showed up to Arkansas expecting who knows what, but it has been the best thing in the world,” filmmaker Raj Trivedi said. “The message is inclusion, and they’ve done that.”