Rome Film Festival has followed in the footsteps of fests such as Cannes, Venice, and TIFF by signing a gender parity pledge.
Introduced at Cannes earlier this year, the Pledge is a way to hold fests accountable as they work towards full gender parity. By signing the document, festival signatories promise to gather stats according to the filmmakers’ gender, identify the fest members who select films to screen, and develop a schedule to achieve equality on the festival board. The Pledge was created by 5050×2020, an offshoot of Le Deuxième Regard, and seeks to improve representation and transparency by 2020.
The signing of the pledge involved some welcome fanfare. “Organizers and supporters of the pledge celebrated with a cocktail hour before the premiere of Desiree Akhavan’s ‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post,’ with director and ReFrame ambassador Paul Feig and Kirsten Schaffer, executive director of Women in Film, Los Angeles, in attendance,” The Hollywood Reporter writes.
Directed and co-written by Akhavan, “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” stars Chloë Grace Moretz as a teen who is sent to gay conversion camp after being discovered in the backseat of a car with a girl on prom night.
According to the source, “more than 100 men and women in the industry then took to the red carpet to pose with an enlarged copy of the pledge.” It was Women in Film, TV and Media Italia and activist group Dissenso Comune that initially “approached Fondazione Cinema per Roma vp Laura Delli Colli with the pledge, who was immediately receptive to signing.”
“In the spirit of a proper attention to gender equality and in the belief that quality does not have labels or quotas, but that it is necessary to offer equal opportunities and impulse to women’s creativity in every field of cultural enterprise, we confirm our commitments within the limits of our mandate,” read the pledge.
Feig and Schaffer are participating in Rome’s MIA Market to explore how ReFrame — which focuses on concrete steps for achieving gender parity in the industry — can be applied in Italy.
