The 2010 Birds Eye View (BEV) festival finished in style Friday night with an awards ceremony followed by a screening of one of the contenders for best feature, Drew Barrymore’s Whip It.
At a time when women’s participation in the film industry continues to shrink, BEV’s role in redressing the balance is vital. Although the festival’s initial remit was to raise public awareness about women filmmakers, it is now so much more than that. In addition to screening features, documentaries and shorts made by women, the festival this year ran a series of networking events and heavily-subsidized training workshops. At one of the workshops it was a huge pleasure to be entertained and educated by three women who clearly were masters of their field: Paula Le Dieu, Margaret Robertson and Alice Taylor.
BEV also managed to lure Susanne Bier to give an informative masterclass to support a retrospective of her work. Interviewed onstage by Briony Hansen of the Script Factory, Bier generously shared her insights on how her work centers on tiny incidents shattering lives, though she felt that at the end of her films there was usually a lot of hope for the characters.
Speaking on the eve of the closing gala, BEV marketing manager Juliana Zenker reflected that “filmmakers don’t want to be labeled females—that ghettoizes them and prevents them getting jobs.” She pointed to the fact that many men had attended the festival; probably around 15% of festival audiences have been male, which speaks against ghettoizing.
Juliana also emphasized the importance of venue; the festival has principally used the Institute of Contemporary Arts and the British Film Institute, both outstanding venues for film, separated by the Thames. The venues help to validate the importance of the festival and allow audience crossover.
The buzz of excitement as the crowd waited to be allowed into the largest NFT auditorium for the closing gala led judge Louise Jury, chief arts correspondent for the London Evening Standard, to hope that some of the attendees will want to make their own films with a female sensibility. She had judged the feature film section, praising the winner as “an astonishing bit of filmmaking.”
Festival founder Rachel Millward took the stage to introduce the awards ceremony before ceding the bulk of the presentation to new Managing Director Amy Mole, as Millward had been preoccupied with a production of her own: her first baby, born on International Women’s Day.
Amy announced three winners:
- Best feature: Lourdes, by Jessica Hausner
- Best documentary: Junior by Jenna Rosher
- Best short: awarded jointly to The Door, by Juanita Wilson, and Slaves, co-directed by Hanna Heilborn and David Aronowitsch.
Amy pointed out that Kathryn Bigelow’s historic win has “helped focus the international spotlight on the lack of women film-makers within the industry.” To help redress this imbalance, one of the most important ongoing functions of BEV is its First Weekenders Club. This encourages members to “vote with their feet”—attend opening weekend screenings of films made by women in order to ensure highest possible opening weekend figures, thus helping to widen the film’s distribution.
About the author: Hilary Hadley Wright writes screenplays and non-fiction, and teaches writing and presentation skills to business clients. She spent the last week cheering Kathryn Bigelow.
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