Why we Need more Woman shouting Action!

Last week I wrote about how women are portrayed in front of camera but this week I want to talk about women behind the camera. The film industry needs more female directors, producers, writers and studio executives.

I heard a story of a bunch of studio executives who were talking about the script for Gladiator when they came up with the idea of killing Connie Nielson’s character off. Laurie MacDonald, a studio executive at DreamWorks, had momentarily stepped out of the room to go to the bathroom. When she returned to learn what the bunch of male executives had done, she sat down and stared at them: “Good job guys, you have managed to kill off the only woman.”

Laurie MacDonald is one of the few female executives in a mostly old boys club.

There is a 5:1 ratio of men to women working in film and only 16.9% of films are directed by women and 34.5% of documentaries. These stats far lag behind most other work place stats in other industries.

The first woman to win an Oscar for best director was Kathryn Bigelow who won for the Hurt Locker in 2009. The Hurt Locker, it must be said, wasn’t a feel-good, touchy-feely affair you might expect. In fact Bigelow is known for her action-packed thrillers and whether that is a product of her cinematic tastes or whether she just wants to become part of the boys club I’m not sure.

Why do we need women behind the camera? Storytelling in film has become very homogenized, more centralized and we need to hear from the other half of the population. Money has become tight at film studios and studios aren’t willing to put money behind new, untested directors or writers. Many of them happen to be women.

But women can bring fresh perspective to story-telling that the present industry lacks. For example, the 1979 version of Carrie, a coming-of-age story about a girl with special abilities who gets teased mercilessly and finally has enough of the school bullies, was based on a novel written by a male, adapted for the screen by a male and directed by a male. Now the writers and directors are undoubtedly very talented but none of them can possible understand the film at its deepest physiological level.

The 2013 remake was directed by Kimberly Pierce and she was able to give a female perspective on the classic horror story. Pierce was able to give the story a unique female perspective. She opened her film with the childbirth of Carrie with the De Palma version opened with a nearly nude girl. One isn’t better than the other, but it is interesting to note the differences.

One of the best foreign features recently was Wadjda which was written and directed by Haifaa al-Mansour who is credited as being the first female director to come from Saudi Arabia, a notably male dominated society where women aren’t even allowed to drive and must be covered up. The film is about a Saudi girl who signs up for her school’s Koran reciting competition as a way to raise money to buy a bicycle.

We need more films like Wadjda, not just because they are amazing films but they help us explore different cultures and different points of view. If we just have a bunch of white males telling stories we get the same story over and over again and art should be about something more than just the next Batman movie.

#womanshoutingaction