We Make Movies, Too
The invisibility of female film directors in Google search results around the world…
Part I
Last week I made a startling discovery: when I Googled “film director” (using the French version of the search engine), the first photo of a “female” director that came up was “Barbie Film Director”… and it was buried a bit in the results, after many, many rows of photos showing famous male directors, and after stock photos and illustrations of pretend male filmmakers.
Intrigued, I then dug deeper: I ran the same search, using the standard English search engine (google.com); I took a screenshot of the results and I counted how many photos I had to go through to see 10 female film directors. You can read about my findings here and on IndieWire’s Women & Hollywood, where the article was cross-posted.
I find it incredible that, with the abundance of brilliant female film directors and daily news about efforts in the industry to have more diversity, I had to go through 155 photos in Google Images to see 10 female film directors (they were 7, actually, if we’re not counting stock photos). And the amazing Ava DuVernay — arguably the most talked about / sought after female director working in the American film industry today — wasn’t even in the top 10. Shockingly, my own photo popped up in the results (89th photo from the top, while search for “film director”) because I had been profiled a while back by Meredith Lepore on the website The Grindstone, in a post from 5 years ago titled “Career Lessons From A Young Female Film Director.”
I’ll tell you later why this is an important element to consider.
But first: a more in-depth look into the invisibility of female directors in Google search results around the world.
This morning I ran an experiment: the same search for “film director” in countries around the world that have a thriving film industry… and where the word “film director” could apply to both genders. For instance, the translation for “film director” in Italian is “regista”; it applies to both male and female directors; on the other hand, in French you’d call a male film director “réalisateur”… and a female film director “réalisatrice” (so France was unfortunately not included in my experiment; ditto for Spain, for the same reasons). More on my methodology: I used the Wikipedia pages of Sofia Coppola and Martin Scorsese as references, to verify the correct word for “film director” in various languages and see if there was a different term for a woman director versus male director. I used their profiles because they are two of the most popular film directors in the world, with their pages translated in dozens of languages. When the term for “film director” was the same, I copied it, switched to the local Google search engine for each country, ran a search for “film director” and boom! Went to see the results in Google Images, and finally took a screenshot.
As I mentioned in my original blog post, this is by no means an accusatory post directed at Google. I am very conscious of the fact that the search engine has no editorial power when it comes to the ranking of photos that show up at the top. Google results are based on a powerful algorithm that relies on, amongst other things, (1) the relevance and prestige of the original publication source (2) titles and meta elements of a page and its photos (3) the prominence and number of external sources that link to each page (who is talking about it, and how many sites).
Ultimately, I am interested in the Google Image results that show up when one types “film director” for two reasons. Number one, Google shapes our vision of the world. When a young girl or a young boy runs an online search for film director, which images are they going to see? And if they only see photos of white male directors, is that going to influence the way they perceive the profession? Number two: Google has the finger on the pulse of the internet. When we talk about film directors online, who are we talking about? That’s something that fascinates me — especially from a global perspective.
Here is what I’ve found.
Italy
The first country on my wish list for this type of analysis was Italy… Not just because it’s my dear home country, but also because Italian female directors like Lina Wertmüller and Liliana Cavani have been very prominent in the world cinema landscape and are household names for cinephiles. And now, there is an exciting new generations of young filmmakers making waves: I’m thinking of Alice Rohrwacher who, in 2014, when she was only 31 years old, had her second feature film (“Le Meraviglie”) in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and ended up winning the second prize there. This is particularly meaningful considering the chronic lack of female film directors invited to have films in competition at Cannes — at best, they are two out of twenty filmmakers any given year. There’s also Sabina Guzzanti, a brilliant actress who has directed thought-provoking political documentaries like “Viva Zapatero!” and “Draquila”. And I’m in awe of the work of Alina Marazzi, who makes lyrical, deeply evocative films. Out of the thousands of films I’ve watched in my life, I can’t think of anyone else who uses archival footage so masterfully. Her 2005 documentary “Un’Ora Sola Ti Vorrei” had me mesmerized and made me bawl from start to finish. These are only a few examples; Italy has plenty of female talent. Alas, the search for “regista” (“film director”) didn’t produce any of their photos.
The top results for “regista” were illustrations from stock photo sites of director’s chairs, followed by photos of famous male directors: Federico Fellini, Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Bay, Quentin Tarantino.
A photo of a woman did appear in the top results… she was shown from the back, topless, sitting in a director’s chair. Further digging revealed that it was the still photograph from a short film… directed by a man.
Further down, there was the picture of a woman in a red minidress and high heels sitting on a director’s chair. I clicked on it and found out that it was from a website that rents director’s chairs.
Moving on… The first photo of a female film director was the 84th photo from the top — an old, black and white archival photograph simply titled “donna regista” (“female film director”) from the website of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Affairs.
To actually see a real female film director, I had to sift through 142 photos. It was Angelina Jolie, on the set of her third film “Unbroken”. I had no idea Italy would do so poorly — my analysis of American search results was incredibly rosy by comparison.
Denmark
Next up, I was curious to see results in Denmark. I attribute my desire to become a filmmaker to the Dogme 95 movement, which was started in Denmark by Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg and predicated a return to simple means of filmmaking — shooting on location, handheld, with no special lights. Most of my favorite films are from the Italian neorealist movement of the 1950s and I had found the Dogme manifesto so refreshingly radical in its approach, after decades of sophisticated productions that often lacked depth and meaning.
Dogme 95 propelled Danish filmmakers onto the international scene. The most famous female director to emerge is probably Lone Scherfig, who made “Italian for Beginners” following Dogme’s rules. It was a commercial success, widely distributed around the world, and Scherfig went on to direct bigger and bigger films like the Oscar-nominated “An Education” and “One Day,” based on David Nicholls’ bestseller.
Susanne Bier is another prominent Danish female filmmaker: she has directed more than a dozen feature films and won an Oscar for best foreign film with “In a Better World.”
Another reason why I find Denmark so interesting for this analysis is that the country is regarded as a model for gender equality, consistently earning top placement in the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Gender Gap Report — which analyzes over 140 countries and scores them on factors like economic participation, educational attainment, life expectancy and political empowerment.
So, imagine my surprise when I Googled “filminstruktør” and found… rows upon rows of white men. The usual suspects: from Scorsese, to Hitchcock, Lynch, Polanski, Von Trier… as well as multiple photos of Finn Nørgaard, who died last year during the 2015 Copenhagen shootings. The attack shook Denmark and understandably, many news reports were related to it and to Nørgaard’s death.
The women?
The first woman who showed up in results was Kathrine Windfeld (32nd picture) on location, standing next to an actor. Windfeld was also the third female result (67th picture from the top).
Barbara Topsøe-Rothenborg — writer/director of “Love at First Hiccup” (2009) — appeared as the 50th picture from the top.
The results of Danish Google were kind of similar to what I found in Italy — and I would not have expected such an outcome. I was a little stunned, to be honest. Actually, I should reserve the word “stunned” for Japan. But it’s not what you think.
Japan
My fascination with Japan started when I was a teen, studying English at UCLA every summer. I would spend all my free time with fellow students from Japan, dreaming about visiting them one day. In the years since, I have studied Japanese on and off, I’ve watched tons of classic Japanese movies and read many contemporary authors. I had the chance to visit Japan twice and shot films there on both occasions. To this day, Kyoto and Tokyo are my dream travel destinations.
As much as I revere Japan, I’m also very much aware of its issues with the gender gap. Despite being the world’s third biggest economy, Japan always scores very poorly in the WEF Gender Gap Report, hovering near the 100th position out of 140 countries. Women’s participation in the labor market and political representation are big issues there.
As a result, I expected to only see male directors while looking up “映画監督” (“film director”) in google.co.jp.
Well, it wasn’t the case — far from it.
Here are all the female directors who showed up in Google Images:
#1: Yukiko Mishima — director of many feature films and TV series — was the 24th pic from the top.
#2: Miwa Nishikawa (“Wild Berries,” “Sway” and “Dear Doctor”) showed up as the 36th picture and 50th from the top.
Let me repeat that: in Google Italy, I had to go through 142 photos to see a female director. For Japan, it only took 24 photos.
Other photographs of female directors populated the results further down, including several photos of young female directors behind the camera. Amazing.
And then Sweden, unsurprisingly, did even better.
Sweden
Type “Filmregissör” in Google.se (Sweden) and the third photo you’ll see from the top is… Saudi director Haifaa Al-Mansour, behind the camera. She showed up in results even before legendary director Ingmar Bergman — making my jaw drop.
And she isn’t the only one: in the third row of photos — 19th picture from the top — is actress/filmmaker Anna Azcarate, who directed the short “Karda Katt” in 2014.
Other women:
24th pic: a B&W stock photo of a female director (the same that I saw in Google.com results last week).
35th pic: writer/director Linda-Maria Birbeck
41st: 30 year old filmmaker Maria Eriksson, who has directed 6 short films
49th: Maria Blom, director of 4 features.
67th: Sanna Lenken, writer and director of the critically acclaimed feature “Min lilla syster” (winner of the Crystal Bear at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival).
68th: Anette Sidor
70th: another photo of Maria Eriksson from the same article as before
92nd: another photo of Sanna Lenken
and many more…
In all: 18 photos of female film directors out of 116 pictures. I wouldn’t call this equal — not by far — but considering the proportion of female to male directors working in the industry, these are astonishing numbers and a reason to be optimistic about the future.
In Part 2 — coming soon — my proposed solutions for improving the current situation.
