Closing European cinema’s gender gap

News

At film festivals and awards ceremonies, the gender gap has stirred controversy time and again – then died down until the next occasion. But campaigners say it’s different this year: the battle to give women more than a beachhead in filmmaking is making real headway.

With a slew of new reports and commitments, film organisations and NGOs are pressuring the industry to boost the role of women, though quotas remain controversial. The wider aim: to change the way the public sees the role of women in society.

‘’There’s been a massive impact. It’s been a snowball effect,’’ Francine Raveney, spokeswoman for the Strasbourg-based European Women’s Audiovisual Network (EWA), tells Equal Times. ‘’Cannes was a really good experience. There’s been a real awareness-raising.’’

Discussed at events during the Cannes Film Festival, EWA’s 2016 study titled "Where are the Women Directors?" found that between 2006 and 2013 only one-in-five European films were made by women and even less than 15 per cent of funding went to them.

‘’The struggle for funding is identified as women’s most significant challenge,’’ the two-year study says, noting there is ‘’risk aversion on the part of investors.’’

The EWA recommends a 15-point plan that calls on the European Union to “urgently address equality agendas in the audiovisual industry.” It set five-year targets for all funding schemes “to achieve an equal share of funding for women directors”. Amongst other measures, EWA is calling for “increased support for publicity, advertising and distribution strategies for female-directed films” and “adding childcare as a line in production budgets.”

In the UK, the situation is even worse: a recent study by Directors UK, titled "Cut Out of the Picture", found that only one-in-six films are directed by women.

‘’Only large-scale industry-wide intervention will tackle the extreme gender inequality in the UK film industry,’’ says the study, which surveyed nearly 2,600 films between 2005 and 2014.

That’s why Directors UK made the commitment at Cannes for ‘’50 per cent of films backed by UK-based public funding bodies to be directed by women by 2020,’’ and that the UK Film Tax Relief should ‘’require all UK films to take account of diversity.’’

 
Commitment and paradox

Since Cannes, Directors UK campaign director Ali Bailey says her organisation’s effort has focused on “going out to speak with the public funders, and to celebrate good practice”.

The non-profit group Creative England, for example, has commissioned women to direct 43 per cent of its films. In Wales, Ffilm Cymru has also expanded its share of women directors.

But Bailey says finding solutions means taking a good look “at the realities”. She tells Equal Times: “It’s an industry where there’s huge pressure in budget and time. We need to find ways that allow people to widen their talent search that still leads to great films, to give a chance to not the usual names. We want to be pragmatic about it.”

Bailey notes a “slight paradox”. With more talk of gender equality in film, “people feel that with the conversation going on, they equate it being tackled, dealt with. It’s the same with race and disability as well”.

But talk isn’t the same as action. To take the next step, Bailey says, “we have to capture that energy and put it in practical measures. Enough with the numbers.”

Take Cannes as a case in point. French director Houda Benyamina won the Camera d’Or competition for her film "Divines", although the main prize – the Palme d’Or – went to British director Ken Loach for "I, Daniel Blake". Jane Campion is the only woman to ever win the Palme d’Or, for "The Piano", in 1993.

Also at Cannes, audiences were treated to "Thelma and Louise" all over again. Only this time, the film’s stars, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, were attempting to drive the male-dominated movie business over a cliff to attack the gender gap.

“It was a buddy film where we had power,” Sarandon said of the Oscar-winning 1991 film, by male director Ridley Scott. “We didn’t anticipate that we backed into that white male sexual landscape.”

But in spite of all the initial excitement that "Thelma and Louise" – which had box office takings of nearly three times what it cost to make – would start a new genre of strong woman leads, things didn’t quite pan out.

Today, “movies are becoming more corporate,” said Sarandon, “It’s not as easy for these guys to see a woman in a leading role.

“What slows it down is a lack of imagination - sorry - of men,” she said, grinning to the audience at one of a series of sessions organised by Women in Motion, a movement seeking to address the lack of women in cinema.

The longstanding complaint – along with a lack of ethnic diversity – has sparked action on several fronts. In the US, the American Civil Liberties Union is credited for getting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to look into discrimination against women directors, who made only 9 per cent of the top Hollywood films last year.

EWA’s Raveney says more conferences on women in film are planned in the coming months, in places like Croatia, France and Sweden. One in Dortmund, Germany, in August will focus on female composers for films. ‘’It’s catastrophic, far worse than directors,’’ says Raveney. ‘’In Sweden, only 3.6 per cent [of female composers] are women.’’

At Cannes, the Swedish Film Institute noted progress regarding directors. It said its program, launched in 2012, to fund male and female filmmakers equally by 2020 has already hit its target.

‘’National film funds are important – that’s taxpayers’ money and they can make a difference,’’ Raveney says. In Spain, there is a points system favouring film projects depending on the number of female roles.

Spanish director Isabel Coixet, current head of the EWA, told Harper’s Bazaar: ‘’I don’t want to hear one more word about female directors. I want action. I want female directors to take over the world.’’

 
Quotas debate

Quotas remain controversial, however. Directors UK remains opposed. “There’s a lot of semantics around it. Targets are something to be mindful of,” says Bailey. “Sweden discussed it, but they never applied a quota. We’ve focused minds and moved behaviour, without tying them up.”

At Cannes this year, there was backing for quotas from German director Maren Ade, whose "Toni Erdmann" was among only three female-directed films out of 21 in the festival’s official competition.

“There are not enough women directing films,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “In Germany, we have this discussion now about a quota system as well, and I think we should try it, because concerning the public money, it should be equal.”

Geena Davis, who played the US president in the TV series "Commander-in-Chief", argues that it’s not only a question of fairness; it’s also about role models. “After watching the show, 50 per cent of people thought they could have a female president. Seeing women doing something makes it familiar, makes what women want to aspire to and men accept more,” Davis said at Cannes.

“That’s why we got Trump,” Sarandon added, referring to the US Republican presidential candidate. “The reality show he did, that’s what legitimised him. That’s why every movie, every show, is very important to think of what you’re putting out there.”

“Before you cast it, change a bunch of names to female, write that the crowd is half female,” Davis added. “People just don’t think of it when not enough women are writing. The easiest thing to do is say ‘Hey, why can’t that character be female?’”