A Note on the State of Women in Film
Note: This Article was originally published on December 28, 2016, on medium.com/@gabriellabregman
I’ve seen a lot of effort from women to improve the fate of women working in film in general. A lot of working female directors have stepped up to cooperate on a gender wage gap lawsuit filed against Hollywood by the ACLU and a lot of lesser known women run a lot of women’s events, such as female films viewing parties orchestrated online, and websites to promote women working in film, including very practical things like databases of filmmaker profiles, and lately (in the aftermath of a Trump election) there have been more political rallies as well.
I think these 10 things can still be done, or done more and better, to improve the future of female filmmakers.
1. Female film critics should review and/or interview more female filmmakers, (and those critics can be filmmakers themselves as well,) and take this rather seriously, treating film like the art form it really is and having meaningful discourse about a work of art, something almost in the vein of Cahiers du Cinema, (and it would be cool to see something like this in actual print.)
2. Female filmmakers should establish some sort of banner name for women in film, like the French New Wave filmmaking group behind Cahiers du Cinema, in a more orchestrated effort to improve both the quantity and quality of work available to women, treating it like an actual, political movement.
3. Female filmmakers should establish a sort of manifesto, potentially to be signed by female filmmakers, and not so much to establish filmmaking aesthetics but rather to focus on the quantity and quality of work for women in film. That is, focussing on statistics of women hired on all levels of filmmaking and actively improving those numbers by hiring more women, as well as focussing on the treatment of women, both in front and behind the camera, making sure women are treated as relatable subjects instead of (sex) objects, that is fully respecting them as individuals with valid needs, dreams and fears, no matter how positive or negative a film’s overall subject matter.
4. Female filmmakers should engage in overall better publicity for a film in the press, making sure people know what a film is about and how they can see it and why it would be important for them to see it to begin with, rather than spending those 5 minutes or so in the spotlight answering what they did for the weekend, just because some interviewer prefers to ask about those type of things to suit their own ratings agenda. Most of patriarch society runs on intimidation tactics, which you have to confront head on and early on, and with all the risks involved, or else their agenda will turn into laws against you.
5. Female filmmakers should make efforts to reach out to, or mentor, female film students, and in some cases even let them “shadow” them while working on set.
6. Female filmmakers should make efforts to informally get together to discuss issues affecting them in transparent ways.
7. Female filmmakers should urge female audiences repeatedly and often to invest, both financially and emotionally, in female filmmakers and female works of art, to establish women’s visibility, validity and to ensure women’s equal human rights. Filmmaking is the business of getting to the heart of the dilemma of human insecurity and violence ultimately, and solving it with truth and love.
8. Female filmmakers should call out misogyny wherever encountered and stand in solidarity against it.
9. Female filmmakers should not forget to recognize the problem of women discrimination in film as part of a much larger problem in society and tackle those larger problems as well.
10. Female filmmakers should continue to work on solving the gender wage gap by also focussing on ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment.
(I wrote earlier on in a Facebook post that I thought it would be a good idea for women who are invited to the Academy Awards, or any other major awards show for that matter, to show up in tuxedos instead of more traditionally feminine dress, not as any gender identity statement obviously, but just as a symbolic gesture to drive the point of gender equality home. If you think that’s an extreme measure, just think about all the real discrimination still going on against women. It’s just one day out of the year. #FemalePowerSuitsOscars)
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And please check out my other articles at medium.com/@gabriellabregmanon mainly LGBTQ- and Immigration Issues, and the State of Women and LGBTQ People in Film, and at medium.com/queerwomenfilmmakersmagazine , on Lesbian/Queer Film and Intersectional Feminism as well as Queer Female Sexuality and Gender Identity.
Here are a few titles:
A Few Notes on US Immigration Exclusion Policies Towards Women- and LGBT Immigrants (2014)
A Few Notes on LGBTQ Filmmaking (2017)
On ‘Moonlight’ and the Subject of Positive Representation (2017)
The 2016 Valentine’s Day Filmmakers Manifesto (2016)
THE ROOT CAUSE OF MISOGYNY, AND THE NECESSITY OF FREE WILL(Gender Binary System notes, part 1 of 7)
THE MALE AND FEMALE BRAIN, AND THE CAUSE OF TRANSGENDERISM (Gender Binary System notes, part 2 of 7)
THE REASONS I AM NOT TRANSITIONING (Gender Binary System notes, part 3 of 7)
MY PRONOUNS: THEY/THEM/THEIRS (Gender Binary System notes, part 5 of 7)
ON LOOKING ANDROGYNOUS THROUGHOUT MY YOUTH, WHILE ALSO BEING GENDER NONCONFORMING (Gender Binary System notes, part 6 of 7)
Click for Complete List of Articles (2016)
My name is Gabriella Bregman, I am a Hollywood-based writer, filmmaker, producer, currently in post-production of a feature documentary called ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights,’ through my film production company ‘Queer Women Filmmakers Center, Los Angeles.’
You can find me mostly on Facebook for right now, (facebook.com/gabriellabregman,) where I also maintain a Facebook Group called ‘Queer Women Filmmakers Center, Los Angeles’
In September of 2017 I founded a nonprofit organization, ‘Queer Women Filmmakers Magazine,’ a Media Site and Magazine Publication for Queer Women Filmmakers.
In early 2018 article submissions will be accepted for paid publication on the site and in the print version, (quarterly.)
The publication medium.com/queerwomenfilmmakersmagazine exists in conjunction with the Queer Women Filmmakers Magazine website queerwomenfilmmakersmagazine.org
