Is Cannes Any Better?
Women’s Film Activism at Cannes 2010 - 2016
Women film activists are busy at #Cannes2016.
Who knew that the actors would be among them? I love it that Kristen Stewart and Julia Roberts went barefoot.
And then there was Sasha Lane at the photocall for Andrea Arnold’s new work, American Honey.
‘I wonder if they had to give oxygen to Thierry Fremaux [president of the festival] when Julia took her shoes off on the red carpet. Big feminist message’, tweeted Women & Hollywood’s Melissa Silverstein who’s been there this year and last year. (This year she also wrote about Woody Allen and his new film and why she won’t be watching it.) Here’s Melissa in the thick of it at another festival.
And Susan Sarandon wore flats. And, like Melissa, spoke out against Woody Allen.
And on the red carpet for the American Honey celebration, the cast and director wore a pretty amazing range of footwear.
And then they all danced.
The Telegraph reported that a Cannes spokeswoman said officials on the red carpet had been ‘reminded’ that ‘there is no specific mention about the height of the women’s heels as well as for men’s’ and that Thierry Fremaux tweeted that the idea that women must wear heels on the red carpet is ‘unfounded’. (I couldn’t find his tweet).
So there’s a change. And now maybe there are more bare feet to come. Yes!
Then there’s the baby issue. Earlier this week, Toronto-based film producer Lauren Grant, went to pick up her market badge for the Cannes film market [Marche du Film], held in conjunction with the fest, and was told she couldn’t bring her baby inside the registration office.
This issue was resolved by giving the baby her own registration card. But it shouldn’t have been an issue at all.
In the meantime, the activism continues. Here’s the European Women’s Audiovisual Network (EWA) programme that gives an idea of 2016's range and interconnections.
Thanks to activism from former years, for the second time there’s the Kerling Women in Motion Award. This year it went to Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon.
Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon also chose the recipients of the Young Talent Women in Motion Award, from a shortlist of individuals compiled throughout 2015, each award is accompanied by financial support for an ongoing film project. It went to three film-makers who come from the Middle-East: Tunisian director Leyla Bouzid; Syrian director Gaya Jiji and Iranian writer and director Idan Panahandeh. So good to see this group!
Kering also supports the Women in Motion talks. Jodie Foster’s Kerling talk has just had a lot of press. Here she talks about women in the industry, from her 50-year perspective.
And here she talks about writers who make rape a motivation for women’s behaviour (it looks like the same clip but it’s completely different).
We Do it Together, a non-profit film production company ‘created to finance and produce films, documentaries, TV and other forms of media, uniquely dedicated to the empowerment of women’, launched its first project. What a classy invitation.
We Do It Together has an amazing, multicultural, advisory board. It also has a beautiful manifesto–
We believe that we can create a movement, with women and men, with actions behind words, that will change the utterly outdated and discriminatory paradigm that we see in media, and its marginalization of women worldwide. If we want more representation, we need to make more product, and only then will we be able to compete on an even playing ground.
The first project, Together Now, will be a feature of seven short films, each pairing a woman director with a prominent actress.The directors include Robin Wright, Catherine Hardwicke, Katia Lund (All the Invisible Children), Patricia Riggen (The 33), Haifaa Al Mansour (Wadjda), Malgorzata Szumowska (Elles) and Melina Matsoukas (Beyonce’s Formation). Pinto and Binoche are among the actresses.
Beyond Borders is there again, as it has been for at least six years.
But Women & Hollywood’s infographic shows that women directors’ inclusion in the festival isn’t much better than it’s ever been. I don’t think it will be, until things improve industry-wide. And maybe when Thierry Fremaux retires.
And it’s important to remember, thanks to this Shooting People infographic, that not one women director of colour has made it into Cannes this year.
After all the info from this year, I want to pay a brief homage to some of those who set this activism in motion. My earliest memory is 2010, but I bet there are earlier activities. I would love to hear about them. Or about any key events and individuals and organisation I’ve missed out.
To start with, another Women & Hollywood infographic that covers the women-directed films that made the Cannes competition, the most prestigious section with the Palme d’Or as its prize, between 2005 and 2014.
And then, to start–
2010
Remember 2010, the year Kathryn Bigelow won the Oscar? There were no women-directed films in competition at Cannes?
Ruth Torjussen who also ran the Film Directing 4 Women festival in London that year initiated You Cannes Not Be Serious!
You could buy a t-shirt, with all profits from sales to Film Directing 4 Women’s soon-to-be-launched production fund which was to back short films directed by women directors (I don’t think political t-shirts make much money, but I could be wrong).
I remember a tweet, from @Campbellx, referring to a Telegraph article (with a closeup of radiant Kathryn Bigelow with her Oscar — though I can’t any longer find the link I imagine it was like the one above): “ Should women really bother making films anymore? Unless of course they are testosterone soaked? #feminism #cannes”.
That was the year I first learned of Beyond Borders: Diversity in Cannes, seeking to strengthen the cross-cultural network of the various ethnic groups represented at Cannes.
2011
That year, there were four women directors in the competition. That was better. I wrote about it at the time and when I looked at that post and saw the ‘New Zealand’ part of it, I’m sad, because in the five years since there’s been no increase in the proportion of taxpayer investment in feature films directed by New Zealand women. It’s not only Cannes that needs to change.
2012
2011 was a one-off. There were no women-directed films in the main competition in 2012. Thierry Fremaux stated that ‘This is a problem for those in charge of world cinema to address — not for the Cannes Film Festival. [It] goes beyond cinema; it’s up to society to change its vision of women’.
But this year, the activists were onto it with verve. The French feminist group La Barbe produced a manifesto and Alix Beranger, a member of the group, told a reporter–
It’s not because the film industry is sexist that Fremaux is absolved of all responsibility. He has an obligation, as the head of an important international festival, to help things evolve. He could have at least made a statement saying it was unfortunate that no women were selected. He could have called for the industry to finance more women filmmakers. He has a role to play in all of this.
The same year, French filmmakers French filmmakers Virginie Despentes, Colline Serreau, and actress Fanny Cottencon wrote, in a letter to Le Monde–
The Cannes Film Festival will allow Wes, Jacques, Leos, David, Lee, Andrew, Matteo, Michael, John, Hong, Im, Abbas, Ken, Sergei, Cristian, Yousry, Jeff, Alain, Carlos, Walter, Ulrich and Thomas to show once more that men like depth in women — but only in their cleavage.
Women & Hollywood also petitioned, with support from around the world.
And that year Destri Martino of the brilliant The Director List site screened her much-loved animated film The Director at Cannes and wrote Unglam Cannes, a blog about her trip. I loved the blog (no longer online) *and* The Director.
I’d forgotten that I wrote at length about all this, and possible strategies for change; and interviewed New Zealander Zia Mandviwalla who had a short film, Night Shift, in competition, one of three women directors in a group of ten. At the time she had two features in development. What’s happened to them? Whatever, 2012 felt like a lively, hopeful, moment in women’s film activism.
2013
Jane Campion headed the Cinéfondation and Short Film Jury (the first woman to do so?) and met with some of the women from EWA.
But according to Women & Hollywood, ‘The festival set itself up for criticism again when they included only a single female directed film in the main competition’.
Was 2013 comparatively quiet on the activist front?
2014
Jane Campion was President of the main jury, which included four more women. And she was staunch enough for all activists when she said at the initial press conference, in response to a question about ‘inherent sexism’–
There is some inherent sexism in the industry. Thierry Frémaux told us that us only 7% out of the 1,800 films submitted to the Cannes Film Festival were directed by women. He was proud to say that we had 20% in all of the programs. Nevertheless, it feels very undemocratic, and women do notice. Time and time again we don’t get our share of representation. Excuse me gentlemen, but the guys seem to eat all the cake. It’s not that I resent the male filmmakers. I love all of them. But there is something that women are thinking of doing that we don’t get to know enough about. It’s always a surprise when a woman filmmaker does come about.
As President of the jury, she was interviewed many times, and it seemed that every time she spoke, she addressed the ‘woman question’. Staunchly. Even in her speech on opening night. I’ve been collecting links here. And she’s provided new information, a transparency that’s unique to date. For instance, we never before heard what proportion of films submitted to Cannes were directed by women.
In one interview, with Libération (a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968), Jane Campion revealed that she suggested that the jury be all women. I don’t know whether the interview was originally in French or whether Libération translated from English, and with a mate I put it back into English, it’s maybe a slightly different English. Whichever, I hope it’s accurate.
Have Gilles Jacob and Thierry Frémaux provided you with rules that govern your presidency?
Ah yes, there are, how to say it… (she stands up) a kind of little regulation (she goes to rummage in her handbag and fishes out a folded paper, brings it back to our table, consults it briefly and refolds it). All the rules are made to be broken, I presume, like the fact that we mustn’t award a second Palme d’Or to a director who’s already had one, even though there are examples of this having been done. Someone also explained to me that if it’s difficult to choose between two contenders, it’s better to choose the one whose work will reach the largest audience… It’s an interesting question… (The idea that this isn’t necessarily her view flies into the silence.)
Have you contributed to the jury selection?
I had a conversation about this with Thierry. I mostly left it up to him, with his address book which is far superior to mine, saying to him that he should do what he wished. He asked me “Have you got enemies?” I don’t think so. (laughter) At some point, I suggested that he select a jury entirely of women. He didn’t respond.
Great idea though!
Yes, firstly because it would have been easy to find nine distinguished women, respected by everyone in the world of cinema. And it would have been interesting to imagine the contestants for the award asking how their films would be received by a jury of women. That would have been a change, because as a woman you spend your life asking yourself what the men are going to think of you and your work. I mentioned my idea to a male friend and he immediately replied “Oh no, that would be understood as a gender campaign.” That was an interesting response, too. There are sixteen male directors this year; it would have been amusing.
It looked like Jane Campion’s sisterhood extended to the other women in the jury too (of course!). Here they are with Thierry Fremaux, on their way to view Alice Rohrwacher’s Le Meraviglie (The Wonders), one of the two films by women in competition. Neither won the Palme d’Or.
2015
Agnès Varda, aged 86, won an honorary Palme d’Or. her age is only important because she had to wait a long time and deserved this honour long ago. ‘A little less thanks and a little more money’, she said. ‘I’ve a bestiary of prizes — a Golden Lion from Venice film festival, a Bear from Berlin, dogs and so on — but never money.’ Around the world, many women directors cheered.
A film by a woman director opened the festival (Emmanuelle Bercot’s La tête haute), but there were only two films directed by women in the official competition (Maiwenn’s Mon Roi and Margueritte & Julien by Valerie Donzelli).
Most notably, the various activist individuals and groups began to work together. EWA ran a vibrant programme, involving many collaborations, including one with Women & Hollywood’s #SeeHerNow.
One well-attended panel of professional film organizers for women’s organizations, institutes, and festivals included, according to Moira Sullivan’s article for agnès films, Anna Serner, director of the Swedish Film Institute; Kate Kinninmont, director of Women in Film and Television (WIFT) in the UK; Cameron Bailey, artistic director of the Toronto International Film Festival; Melissa Silverstein, and Jasmila Žbanic, Bosnian director and producer.
Kering, as an official Cannes partner, launched its Women in Motion programme: ‘to support women involved in cinema, highlight their contribution and encourage greater awareness of the need for diversity in the film industry’. Their first award went to Jane Fonda and independent producer Megan Ellison.
2015 seemed to mark a turning point. Significant brand involvement. Europe plus the United States. No sign of French feminists from outside the film industry because they weren’t necessary any more.
In the year after there were huge changes. EWA partnered with Raising Films (Making Babies, Making Films, Making Change). It also released its pan-European research, Where are the Women Directors in European Film Indsutry (2006–2013)? Best practices and recommendations. DirectorsUK released its research, Cut Out of the Picture: A study of gender inequality among directors within the UK film industry. The Women and Contemporary Film Culture in the UK, 2000–2015 project, working in partnership with the BFI, Women in Film and Television UK, BECTU, Birds Eye View and Harbour Lights Cinema, released its first report. All three are summarised here on the F-Word. In conjunction with lots of research from elsewhere in the world, each report contributes to hard data that supports years of anecdotal evidence and supports the findings of other reports. And this data can no longer be ignored.
As well as the data, there are now many gender programmes of varying quality around the world, many making reference to Anna Serner’s successful framework at the Swedish Film Institute. My favorite is the one in Ireland, because Ireland has about the same population as New Zealand, resulted from a #wakingthefeminists campaign among other events and is unequivocal about allocating taxpayer funding on a 50:50 basis.
A better future beckoned. The big questions are, how much longer before women directors are better represented not just at Cannes but at all mixed-gender festivals? Will those women be diverse? Will women become better represented in other filmmaking roles? One thing’s for sure. This story has a few more scenes to go. With and without shoes.
(And, in case you missed it, here’s the definitive ‘best practice’ vid, from Anna Serner.)
