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Friday, December 18, 2009

Women Filmmakers, Our Discussion

We're having a great discussion over at Women and Hollywood today. The blog I wrote about women needing to make more movies and network more got everyone talking. Check out the comments on my blog post and then see the cross posting of my blog entry and comments at Women and Hollywood. 

As you can tell, I'm a big proponent of not portraying women as victims of Hollywood. I don't think having women be portrayed as victims helps in any situation. We need to be thought of as equals. So instead I'd rather focus on how we can have a greater presence in Hollywood both as creators and as an audience. What can we do to effect change?

Bottomline, Hollywood is going to do what it wants, when it wants, how it wants. All Hollywood cares about is the bottomline. And they don't think women really help their bottomline. Any box office successes are considered anomalies. 

So we really need to put our energies toward figuring out how to get Hollywood to realize that the female audience is powerful and that female creatives can bring the box office just as their male counterparts do.

How do we do that? Work together on initiatives to help prove to Hollywood that we are a viable audience and creators. The key is being proactive and actually doing something about this issue and not just throw out a few blog comments here or there. 

It's going to take real action. Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood is absolutely taking action. She highlights the issues that women have in Hollywood every day. We need more Melissas and we need more organizations that really help female filmmakers. I'll be honest that I receive no help or support from any female film organization. I'm certain there are others out there like me in that regard. And that really needs to change. If I started a woman's organization for female filmmakers, would others join?

We also need to figure out how to reach the female audience through our work. How about a film series highlighting female directors? I'm sure there have been some. But let's do some more. 

Why don't we throw out ideas of what we think would help? And perhaps we can all come together and work on some of them?

1 comment:

Marian said...

I too think that what Melissa writes is wonderful. And I love the discussion that your post has generated on W&H and your active, positive, participation in it.

And yes, I would join an activist, globally oriented, women filmmakers group.

I've been a member of WIFT New Zealand for a while, & that's shown me what is useful for me and what isn't. I'm most interested in imaginative, concrete, problem-solving around projects intended for diverse audiences of women, who at the moment are not well served. The problems that most concern me are accessing finance, delivering the films globally beyond cinemas, and marketing to the target audiences.

Feel free to add me to your list, if any of this resonates with you--