This Is What a Film Director Looks Like
I often think about what it must have been like to be Greg Grant. At 5'7", the former professional basketball player was one of the shortest men playing in the NBA. There’s a famous photo of Grant in front of Manute Bol, towering over him at 7'7". I wonder if Grant, when he introduced himself to people that didn’t know him, was ever met with skeptical looks when he said he was a professional basketball player. Did people dismiss him because of his stature? Did anybody ever laugh in his face, thinking he was joking?
See, I am a filmmaker. I write, produce, shoot, direct, edit and distribute films. I’ve been doing this for over a decade and every time I introduce myself as a film director, I am always met with incredulous looks. People typically ask “Oh, are you a film student?” or “Ah, do you make short films?” There’s often an aspect of dismissal and minimizing of what I do, the instantaneous assumption that I could not possibly be a real film director. Thing is, unlike the NBA, where a short height can be a challenge, filmmaking doesn’t have any physical requirements. Yet, somehow, it’s hard for people to believe that a woman under the age of 40 could be a filmmaker. This phenomenon has a name: “implicit bias” — unconscious stereotypes shaping how we perceive the world. I am reminded of the words of Arlan Hamilton of Backstage Capital (and I’m paraphrasing here): women and minorities are not just underrepresented; they are also underestimated.
Why should you care about this? We should all be rooting for more women to get hired as directors in films and advertisements (currently we’re less than 10% of hired directors) in order to see more empowering stories of women on screen. We would all benefit from it. Following the release of Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman, one of my favorite tweets read: “NO WONDER WHITE MEN ARE SO OBSCENELY CONFIDENT ALL THE TIME I SAW ONE WOMAN HERO MOVIE AND I’M READY TO FIGHT A THOUSAND DUDES BAREHANDED”.
And yet, and yet. As women, we also have a tendency to underestimate other women’s capabilities, often with a simple glance. I’ve been encountering this daily — since leaving school and entering the professional world. Little incidents that seem insignificant by themselves, but if you add them up over more than a decade, they can sting (and hurt your career chances — if people don’t believe you are capable of a job simply because of the way you look). I have hundreds of examples, but a particularly telling episode occurred earlier this week. I attended an event in London; an international crowd of women in film was gathered to celebrate the accomplishments of trailblazers in the industry: women who have paved the way and advocated to promote the work of women directors. There was a wonderful energy in the air, a palpable sense of sisterhood and kinship. My chosen outfit for the event? A sweatshirt I had designed that read, in big bold letters: “This Is What a Film Director Looks Like”. Throughout the evening, attendees smiled at me, giving me a thumbs up when they saw the message on the sweatshirt. Many asked where I got it. But then, time and time again, a startling exchange would occur. Attendee, reading the message on my sweater: “I love your sweater, it’s so cool… So tell me, what do you do in life?” I would point at the words “film director” on the sweatshirt and my interlocutor, embarrassed, would apologize saying “Oh I’m so sorry, of course, I just didn’t think…” This happened a dozen times at an event attended by prominent women in film, who are passionate advocates for the advancement of women in the industry. Good hearted, well meaning people. The cognitive dissonance caught me by surprise, every single time.
Why is this a problem, you may ask? At the same event, many women shared with me stories about how their credibility was constantly challenged: “nobody believes I am a film producer” or “the way male grips talk to me was so condescending”. Even Gurinder Chadha — best known for her film Bend It Like Beckham — shared a story on stage about how she would be on the receiving end of patronizing talks by financiers… with her crew then telling her: “nobody would ever talk this way to a male director.” It’s worth repeating: women and minorities are underrepresented and underestimated. And we all suffer from it as a result.
I have mentioned experiencing implicit bias in various interviews I have done with journalists and bloggers. For YEARS. But I realize now that it’s not enough to talk about a problem without offering solutions or doing something proactive about it. We need to normalize the success of professional women. To show them in action. I know for a fact that there are not that many images of women on set available online. I know because I’ve been working on a series of animated GIFs of women directors for 2 months (a little advocacy side project) and finding photos of female filmmakers on set — even famous ones — is often a challenge. I, however, have lots of personal photos. I’ve made sure to document my work since its early days; I love having those visual mementos and I hope that by sharing them with you, I can normalize what it’s like to be a woman in film.
I also hope my story will help dispel a toxic myth, related to people in the arts: that unless you are a household name, you earn millions, or you have hundreds of thousand of followers on social media, you must be flailing; you must be struggling financially and your work couldn’t possibly have an impact. This is a lie. An illusion that keeps people in creative professions in a constant state of anxiety and insecurity, always unsatisfied and comparing themselves to the 0.001% that make headline news. There are 100 different ways you can be a professional artist (or an entrepreneur, or [insert profession]). From where I stand, I am truly grateful and satisfied of the impact my work is having. Very modest impact — but significant to me and to those in my circles. I made many choices that go against the current (not being on TV or mainstream streaming services); I have bypassed gatekeepers and a system that I find antiquated and opaque, deciding to be in charge of production and distribution of my projects. It’s a different way of doing things that requires a lot of hard work, but it’s also full of rewards.
I’d like to share with you some of my favorite moments from my life as a filmmaker. Hoping that the next time you see someone like me, you will believe them instantaneously when they tell you what they do. Hoping you will not underestimate what they are capable of.
This is what a film director looks like:
In Paris, directing one of my first gigs: a long form commercial for a DVD-by-mail company. Trivia: this photo was used years ago to illustrate my guest post for Women & Hollywood titled “5 Lessons for Young Female Directors”. Because of the magic of search engine optimization, if you look up “film director” in Google Images, this photo of me is in the top 100 results. Of all directors.
The Illusionists
My feature-length documentary The Illusionists — about the dark side of advertising and the globalization of beauty — has been adopted by hundreds of schools, after-school programs, and it’s been shown at professional conferences all around the world. The day I released the film on VHX (now Vimeo OTT), the film was purchased by people in 20 countries across 4 continents. I get regular emails from viewers in places like Nebraska, China, Australia, Finland… thanking me for making the film. It’s an incredible feeling.
In the picture above, I’m with one of my role models: Jean Kilbourne, whose powerful lecture Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women was turned into a series of award-winning documentaries.
Kilbourne is on of the key experts I interviewed in The Illusionists. We now share the same educational distributor: the Media Education Foundation. Their 2017–2018 catalogue has The Illusionists on the page facing Killing Us Softly; seeing them next to each other made my month.
I’ve been invited to show my documentary The Illusionists at many prestigious companies and institutions. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but the screening at Apple headquarters in Cupertino was a career highlight.
I was told that sharing photos of Apple HQ premises is strictly forbidden, so I am blurring this one and letting you imagine what it looks like — my Q&A at Apple after the film.
As an aside, I’m not sure what technology they have inside their auditorium (a giant retina cinema screen?) but the picture quality of The Illusionists has never looked better. I was in awe during the screening!
Other Projects
I have decided to retire my “This Is What a Film Director Looks Like” sweatshirt for a bit. I’m having another one made. It will read: “Change maker.”
If you got to the end of this long post — thank you! — and you are a woman in film or in a male dominated profession, I would love to see a picture of you at work. If you share them on Twitter, please make sure to tag me (@_elena) and I will retweet your message. As my friend Taylor would say: “Ad astra!”
To find out more about me and my work, visit my website elenarossini.com
You can rent / buy my feature-length documentary The Illusionists here: theillusionists.org
