Finally some organizations have stepped up and stood up and committed resources to work towards improving the amount of female filmmakers working in the business. Women in Film and the Sundance Institute are going to track female filmmakers who show their films at Sundance to get a sense of the trajectory that these directors go on after they leave the festival.
We know that women directors do better at festivals. The key is to figure out what happens to them back in the real world. Why don’t they get the agents? Why don’t they get work for hire. How do we keep them on the track if and when they decide to have kids. I think the whole mommy track business is just an excuse. An excuse to keep women out of power positions.
Women in Film President Cathy Shulman said they took up this effort to “initiate a real hard look at why this constant lack of parity seems to exist in terms of the amount of women working in film and media and the amount of men.” She also said that they want to figure out: “What does it really mean and why is it happening, and instead of talking about it every year as a fact, start to see if we could be part of a solution.”
Fuck yeah. It’s about time.
I think that it would be smart to track the male class too. See what kinds of agents they get. See what kind of meetings they get. See what kind of deals they get. I also am interested in getting the real data on the types of films that get made. Are there more movies about men? Would it be better for women to pitch a movie about guys after making a debut at Sundance? Would that help get the movie be made? Also one thing that seems to plague women is the sophmore film problem. They can get the first film done and then it takes many years to get the second film done.
I’ll be watching this very carefully.
