TAKING ACTION The gender disparity facing women working in Australian film is worrying, but there is hope on the horizon.
The gender disparity facing women working in Australian film is worrying, but there is hope on the horizon. Here, four incredibly talented women in the industry share how they are making a difference.
There is something incredible and unstoppable about women working towards a common goal. In fact, it can be pretty fierce, a force field, an atomic something. It felt like that at Audi Hamilton Island Race Week in Queensland recently when some serious female freaks – freaks because they’re individually freakin’ good at what they do – came together to have a conversation about this very topic. Of course, it’s always dangerous to generalise about gender and talk about women without sounding like a tub-thumping post-feminist, but the facts of the matter are this: out of all the Australian feature films shot between 1970 and 2014, only 16 per cent were directed by women, 23 per cent were written by women and 32 per cent were produced by women. Spurred on by these sobering facts, Screen Australia is now committed to making a difference to women’s participation in film, providing $5 million in funding over the next three years to Gender Matters, its five-point initiative that television producer Imogen Banks is proudly a part of.
Banks is the kind of producer who makes magic happen with compelling regularity. She has co-produced Tangle, The Beautiful Lie, Puberty Blues and Offspring, to name a few – all of which are prime Australian televisual feasts, dramas with incredible casts, terrific writing, super-memorable moments and great female roles. Banks, then, is perfectly placed to be on the taskforce of Gender Matters. Along with screenwriter and director Alice Bell, who penned scripts for The Beautiful Lie and Puberty Blues, Banks will oversee a writing workshop that will take female writers into the heart of the industry while teaching them a few shortcuts and insider tips along the way.
Banks is something of a ringleader – a charming killer one at that – of a group of equally fearless, arse-kicking women, which also includes Australian actresses Asher Keddie and Sarah Snook. They were also part of the “women in film” conversation at Audi Hamilton Island Race Week. As was Bruna Papandrea, the Adelaide-born producer and co-founder of Pacific Standard, the US-based production company she started with Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon, and has since recently left. Her mission has been to put women front and centre of all her work, which most recently included Gone Girl and Wild. Papandrea is a serious case of “you can do it if you make it happen, and, yes, even in a man’s world”, which would be Hollywood. Papandrea is inspiring. All four women featured in this story are inspiring and so we took the opportunity to chat to them while we were on Hamilton Island. We had fun, we dressed up for the Vogue sitting, we drank Charles Heidsieck champagne and we talked and
mused on role models, fearlessness, great parts, projects and how to put women more meaningfully on the agenda.
They have all worked with some pretty fearless women in their careers. Banks says that Keddie and Snook stand out immediately, but it isn’t just actresses who impress her.
“Firstly, most decent actresses are pretty fearless, and I thought about this a lot when I first started producing – like what is it that separates actors from other people in the industry? And I think it’s that willingness to expose themselves and that desire to rip open and show. I never had that; I’ve always been about hiding. So maybe, essentially, they’re all fearless,” Banks says.
“The people who inspire me tend to be those who I’ve known throughout my life – those still fighting for something they believed in then and are still fighting for now, and I really respect that. My mother also inspires me and my maternal grandmother was quite fearsome. She was around during the war years, she lost her husband and so was a single mother from an early age, unqualified but very bright. She got a job at the library but hadn’t studied. She was one of the women from that era who never complained.”
Banks doesn’t see herself as part of an avenging female posse, however. “I’ve never woken up and thought: ‘I’m a woman and I’m going to do woman things,’” she says. “But when I started reading the statistics about women in film … There’s also been so much research about cognitive bias and the way decisions are made, and thinking about all of that and beginning to understand that there are these institutional problems and pay gaps. You can’t think it’s all an anomaly and so you have to take note of the problems and step up when you get to a certain point in your career.”
Gender Matters is Banks stepping up. “I’m doing it with Alice Bell. We’ve been talking about smart, young, emerging women who are looking for opportunity and there’s nothing to offer them, as development is so expensive and there’s not a lot out there,” she explains. “Then Genders Matters came up and we realised there was a chance to play the numbers game and give some young writers a break into the industry. So we’ll be working with 12 women and they’ll go to the writers’ room, through four cycles of the writers’ room specifically training for television.”
Banks and Bell have also worked together on their own upcoming project, a narrative comedy called Perfect, but they haven’t sold it yet. “It’s hard to sell – in fact, that’s one of the hardest things for women. Traditionally, it’s been men in the buying role, and we aren’t good at selling the ideas we think women will watch to men. So if they don’t get it, they don’t buy it.”
Snook scored the role of Sal Thornhill in the ABC drama The Secret River and cites her as one of the strongest women she’s played. “She was so forthright, confident and so driven. I learnt a lot from that character, as she didn’t back down from her beliefs – she really spoke to me,” she explains. “It’s dangerous to think, in some ways, that she’s a ‘strong’ female character, as that paints her as something we usually associate with a masculine quality. So finding a way to be that female character through a feminine approach has been an interesting journey.” Snook says she’s not bullish at all personally. “I’m much more timid in my own life. I’d definitely choose the path of least resistance.”
The actress worked with Banks on the ABC series The Beautiful Lie and says she was brilliant to work with. “She listens, she takes it in her stride, she lets it flow, she puts trust in creative abilities, she actively believes in the abilities of the people around her,” Snook says. “It’s a great quality. I think we all look out for each other. I find that wherever I work, there is a strong community of women being there for each other. It’s not a new phenomenon, but it’s good to talk about. It’s still crazy that we have to, though.”
Asher Keddie is no stranger to strength, which she displayed on screen in the ABC miniseries Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo, also co-produced by Banks. “Ita Buttrose is definitely the most fearless woman I’ve played; she’s truly fearless,” she says. “Having said that, she was a woman I got to know and she had vulnerabilities and I think that’s why I really liked telling her story and the privilege of telling it.” Keddie adds that she was a little nervous about portraying that side of her, because, like most people, she had only seen Buttrose’s tough, public side. “But it was really great to understand that even a fearless, public person faced these great challenges and struggles,” she says. “It was great to get a sense of someone I thought of as unable to be brought down, so uncrushable, such a strong persona through all of her editing career. It was good to understand that even people like her can have great vulnerability. It made me cry at times, too. I really tapped into that, as it takes a lot of energy and strength to be fearless and unafraid. It does for me anyway.”
Keddie says she always feels a sense of gain when she’s finished a role. “Characters I’ve played have remained with me and formed who I am as a person. That’s the great gift of being an actor: you challenge yourself and learn a lot, absorb a lot and that informs future choices and decisions. The characters I’ve played have all had their own story – they’re not just ‘the girlfriend’. Blanche [d’Alpuget, whom Keddie depicted in the Network Ten telemovie Hawke] is a woman who has her own story. She was a prolific writer, too. She was seen for years as ‘ just the mistress of Bob Hawke’, but I felt really challenged by that perception of her when I was playing her and wanted again to dig deeper and find out who she was.”
Keddie says she’s firmly in a posse of talented Australian women. “We really empower and champion each other, and then there’s Emma Freeman who’s a director I’ve worked with a lot. She did Hawke and [acclaimed drama series] Love My Way – so many greats. Of course, Imogen [Banks] and I work really well together. There’s a great creative rub there – and if that weren’t there, I don’t know if there would be creative fulfilment or the success we’ve had.”
Action films are next on her list. “I’ve been playing my dream roles for the past 10 or 15 years. I’ve been challenged by all of them and I’ve learnt so much from their personalities, the way they attack life, but I’d love to do an action thriller,” Keddie says. “I really admire Charlize Theron, who’s played a diverse collection of characters. Just look at the challenges of [ Mad Max:] Fury Road – so fantastic; and Monster – the incredibly difficult and complex character she played [serial killer Aileen Wuornos] in that was very confronting. I really respect her and the roles she’s played – so fearless. I adore that, it’s great.”
Papandrea knows fearless. “The woman who really stands out the most to me who I’ve worked with is Cheryl Strayed, who wrote the book Wild. She’s like my hero and an amazing writer,” she says. “She lived her life unashamedly and wasn’t afraid to talk about it, which I found very inspirational. She’s unapologetic about her past and the choices she made that make her who she is today.”
Papandrea cites her mother as another big inspiration, as well as the women who forged ahead in the past and “did it in a time when it was really, really tough – female politicians, female writers who wrote fiction when it wasn’t kosher to write, women who spoke out, women who instigated change. They inspire me.
“I have to do more, though, and use the opportunity I’ve been given to help move things forward, as I realised recently there’s still a long way to go. And for the record, I’ve never slept with anyone to further my career,” she says, laughing.
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