“Thousands of talented young women have been excluded from careers as film and television directors every year simply because they are not men. I am one of a very small group of lucky ones.” Those are the words of veteran film and television director Susanna White at this week’s culmination of BAFTA Elevate, a year-long program to nurture and highlight the work of 15 British female directors, underrepresented across the industry.
White made the keynote speech about her career, which includes the films “Woman Walks Ahead,” “Our Kind of Traitor,” and “Bleak House,” as well as television series from “Jane Eyre” to “Generation Kill.” She began by showing video of the moon landing in 1969, which made her realize, as a child, the power of television. In the UK last year, 92 percent of television drama was directed by men, so White’s long struggle to reach the top was the exception rather than the rule.
Hence the British Academy of Film and Television Arts’ (BAFTA) new scheme to change the landscape for women directors, by connecting the women with each other and with industry professionals, and publishing a list for producers to consult when they complain there are no qualified female and diverse voices.
The 15 on the scheme include Sally El Hosaini, creator of the prizewinning “My Brother The Devil,” who is now making a film about the Jonestown “Kool Aid” massacre; Tina Gharavi, whose first film “I Am Nasrine” led the way to second unit directing on the TV series “The Tunnel”; and Kate Saxon, who has directed episodes of “Call the Midwife” and “Eastenders” for television.
The next BAFTA Elevate scheme will be for writers from underrepresented groups, held back by race, gender, disability, or socio-economic circumstances. Applications for the 2018 edition are now open via the BAFTA Elevate website. The deadline is May 25.
Excerpts from Susanna White’s personal and moving speech are below:
“It sometimes comes up as an argument that the shortage of female directors is down to the fact that women reject the unsocial hours associated with being a director in favor of staying home with their children. While the freelance industry is undoubtedly challenging for both men and women and some women may make that choice, I would argue that the proportion of women who actively elect not to direct drama is actually relatively small. Let’s go back to those numbers — 50 percent of women graduate film school wanting to direct and only three percent of big budget feature films are directed by women. In jobs in the industry which aren’t traditionally male preserves, such as hair and make-up and costume design, over 80 percent of heads of department are women. Those people often work much longer hours than the director — they are the first to arrive in the morning, often putting actors through complicated prosthetics and wigs, and the last to leave in the evening. The director can leave when wrap is called but hair and make-up and costume stay behind removing the make-up from all the actors for the day and preparing for the morning. If the issue were solely about an unwillingness to work long hours it is hard to explain this disproportion.”
“Surprisingly perhaps, I can truthfully say that I have never encountered any overt sexism in my career. When women get the opportunity to direct, crews are generally hugely supportive and comment surprisingly often for 2018 on how good it is to have a woman in charge. I don’t think anyone ever consciously denied me an opportunity to direct because I was a woman. The truth is much more subtle and for that reason much more insidious. In a freelance industry where everyone’s success depends on ratings for their last piece of work people tend not to take risks. They either, understandably, hire someone with a proven track record in that area or, if they are looking for the bright new face of directing, tend to hire someone who looks like people who have gone before and has done well. Whether executives or directors we are all as good as the last thing we did.”
“It was in 2007 after directing Generation Kill that personally I realised the full extent of the problem. Lots of people ask me how that job came about. What happened is that the scripts were sent to my agent, for another of her clients, Kevin McDonald. Kevin wasn’t available and Natasha thought an opportunity to work with David Simon — best known for ‘The Wire’ — might appeal to me. Again David is one of those truly remarkable people my career has been dependent on, who is blind to sex and race when it comes to hiring directors. David, having a long track record in hiring female directors, had no issue with hiring me. In fact, having once been compared to Dickens, he was delighted that a director of ‘Bleak House’ should direct his mini-series on the US invasion of Iraq. It was when other people started to comment that I realized the problem. How remarkable, producers and journalists said, that a woman had directed this material. How unremarkable, I realized were all those times that men had directed ‘Pride and Prejudice’ or ‘Sense and Sensibility ’ — no one chose to comment when 13 productions of ‘Jane Eyre’ were directed by men. None of the crew on ‘Generation Kill’ had any issue with the fact that I was a woman, nor did the ensemble cast of 35 men.”
“This argument isn’t just about men and women, it is about diversity as a whole — about creating a fairer and more healthy society where all different types of voices are heard. Monitoring the freelance culture is an essential step forward in an industry that isn’t governed by normal HR practices — that is why in 2018 opportunities are so far from equal in our industry. This goes beyond equity between men and women — it should take in diversity across the board.”
“In the last two years, we’ve seen some genuinely positive steps — the awards success of ‘Ladybird,’ the commercial success of ‘Wonder Woman,’ and Rachel Morrison, the first female cinematographer in the history of cinema nominated for an Oscar. I’m thrilled to see that a great supporter of this program, SJ Clarkson is going to direct the next ‘Star Trek,’ a prime example of what I’ve been talking about as one of our most outstanding television directors who took years to get a feature film. Female showrunners like Ava DuVernay are hiring female directors to helm their shows. I’ve just come from the Tribeca film festival where they made a decision to program 46 percent of the films by female directors. Initiatives by the broadcasters, the BFI’s 50 percent target, and BAFTA’s Elevate scheme are just what we need to be doing. But we absolutely must not be complacent. Elevate has done a fantastic job in promoting a remarkable group of women, but as their individual stories show, the odds have been thoroughly stacked against them until now. There are a lot of powerful decision makers in this room. What we need now is for you to support this incredible bunch of talented women and give them the chance to put their visions on screen. Please know just how real this struggle is and set about being agents of change. Only then will we be on the path to a fairer society where female voices are heard at the volume of male ones and where screens around the world project the sort of world we want to live in. Thank you.”
