Abby Disney is one of the those people who has been at the intersection of feminist work in New York for the last 25 years. She has been the board chair of the New York Women’s Foundation and pushed female philanthropists in a feminist direction, and for the last decade or so has focused on using film to help make social change. Her impact continues to impress.
Disney’s latest project is the second season of “Women, War & Peace,” which shines a long overdue spotlight on women who risked their lives for peace, changing history in the process. The series returns Monday, March 25 and Tuesday, March 26 at 9pm on PBS.
This interview has been condensed and edited. It was transcribed by Sophia Stewart.
W&H: Talk about how you curated the second season of “Women, War & Peace.” Is curate the right word?
AD: I’m not sure it is, actually, because the episodes were really all co-productions, and so we were involved in the making process. But at the beginning, in a couple of cases, we found people who were working on things; one of them we made, “The Trials of Spring,” and one of them is one that we kind of commissioned, “Wave Goodbye to Dinosaurs,” so it’s kind of a real blend of things.
We reached out to filmmakers who we knew and loved and trusted, and we helped get them some of the money they needed. But the difference between then and now is people are making these movies. Starting in 2008, we had to make those movies, and that was a daunting task because we whipped up four films in two-and-a-half years. This time, it was a question of just corralling a few filmmakers, and we had more than we could really use in terms of material. So that’s really encouraging.
We went looking for women who are subjects, not objects. We went looking for people who understood the nature of what we’re trying to accomplish, which is to understand that women aren’t the center of these stories, and if you do put them at the center of these stories, the stories are very different.
W&H: When you say “people are making these movies now,” do you feel that it’s a different kind of world now in terms of these kinds of movies?
AD: It is a different kind of world in terms of these movies, and Women and Hollywood certainly knows that as well as I do because of what you’re covering. There’s more stuff getting made, there’s more stuff getting funded, and there’s more stuff getting taken seriously. That’s encouraging.
We’re still nowhere near parity — not even close. It still takes twice as long and you get half as much money when you go to a foundation for something involving women, and it’s still an uphill climb.
When you talk about women, you’re still perceived to be talking about a minority, which is the craziest aspect of fighting for women. We’re not a minority, we’re the majority! So we’re not happy with our little 15 percent of the room full of people making decisions, and we won’t be until we’re represented.
W&H: It’s so fascinating to me that I feel the difference in the air and in these movies, and yet we’re only at 15 percent. Imagine what it will look like when we hit 30 and 40 percent. I think that we’ll have a more intense backlash once we hit 20 or 25 percent.
AD: Yes, I think you’re absolutely right about that. It depends on what sector you look in and so forth, but it was interesting — and I think the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media did some of these numbers — where they looked at all these different sectors, and around the mid-’90s, some got to around 15 percent women, and then it just stayed there, topping out in most places around 18 percent.
So 20 percent is a real threat. Twenty-five percent is getting really close to scary. And then, apparently according to science, the dynamics really shift when we get to 30 to 35 percent — somewhere around one in three. So yes, I think we’re going to be getting tons of backlash for a while until we get to that 33 percent mark.
W&H: How do you think people are prepared to handle the backlash? You’ve been doing this kind of work in different communities for a while. I just worry that we don’t have the tools.
AD: That’s a really good question. I haven’t been thinking proactively about it.
W&H: Me neither.
AD: As you asked me that question I thought, “Maybe I do need to really think about it.”
I’ve worried about backlash for a while in a lot of different ways — in the girls’ schooling world, and all of that. Women have mostly reacted, and the backlash has been as predictable as the coming of the next sunrise. So you’re right — we should be talking about that and I haven’t been.
W&H: You’re doing so many different things—you have Level Forward and Fork Films. Am I missing anything?
AD: I will tell you that I’m working on a book, and it’s about the NRA. So I also have that going.
W&H: Wow! And Level Forward and Fork Films — those are basically your two filmmaking operations. Where are we with Level Forward?
AD: Level Forward is leveling forward. I’m really pleased. CEO Adrienne Becker is just a partner from heaven; I love her like crazy. She has all the characteristics I don’t have, so we complement each other well.
We closed our first fund which is a really big deal because I’ve met a million women who have come to me and said, “I want to raise five million dollars,” and then they come back with their tails between their legs because they’ve never raised money for women before.
We have four projects in that portfolio. We call our portfolios BITs for “Believe In This,” and now we’re raising for our second BIT. We have the corporate structure now and the right people in the right positions. I’m really pleased with the work everybody’s doing.
We’re starting to bring along projects we’re developing, as well as getting projects that are in development. I think we have two Broadway pieces in the next BIT, as well as a feature film, more short material, and a couple of Internet initiatives. I’m very excited. It’s really, really crushing it.
W&H: And where are you now with the work you’re doing over at Fork Films?
AD: That’s always been sort of a hybrid company in the sense that much of what it did was, in grant-making terms, fund other filmmakers to make their stuff. We had three Fork-sponsored films at Sundance, and they all won awards, which was really good.
W&H: Do you want to share the names of them?
AD: “The Infiltrators,” “One Child Nation,” and “Midnight Traveler.” They’re all amazing films. We’ll always carry on that work because that’s really important work.
In terms of Fork Films itself, I’m embarking on a pretty ambitious project around peace and peace-building. I can’t really talk about it in detail quite yet because we’re still developing the idea, but hopefully over the next few months, I’ll be able to talk about what I’m doing.
“Women, War & Peace” was a crazy step forward. I made a film, then I made a series, then I directed a film and got an Emmy for that — it’s been a little crazy! I keep stepping into things that are really hard and feel impossible and then end up being able to do them, so I’ve decided to deliberately set an impossible task for myself and try to do it. That’s what the plan is with the peace project.
W&H: I have no doubts about that. Your stuff is really amazing. Level Forward invested in Jen McGowan’s site Glass Elevator. Talk a little bit about why you wanted to do that.
AD: You’ve been around long enough to remember the Women’s Media Center’s site SheSource. There was that period when all the Sunday morning shows were like, “Well, we would hire women but we can’t find any!” That was nonsense, so SheSource was created to take that excuse away from people.
Glass Elevator is essentially SheSource for behind the camera. We’ve got people in every discipline and every trade who are women, who are experienced, and who know their craft. If you go to Glass Elevator, you can now hire a best boy that’s a girl!
W&H: Imagine if it could just be called a “best person”! I watched the interview that you did on CNBC about income inequality, and that’s something that you’re really passionate about. How do you see that conversation going forward, and you being a leader on that?
AD: I’m consciously using my name because it surprises people. The reason it surprises people is because I’m arguing against my own self-interest. What astonishes me is that more people don’t do that. It tells you something about where the country is at the moment and the kind of leadership we’ve had.
I want the shock value of having someone like me say that the estate tax is a good thing, that people should not amass massive amounts of money, and that private planes are corroding our public life by allowing people to take themselves completely out of the public square.
I really believe that there’s a class of people that need to relearn what it is to be a human being and remember that nobody’s too good to scrub a toilet, nobody’s too good to ride the subway, nobody’s too good for anything. This whole [college admissions] cheating scandal is a great example of just how corroded our public morals are, and the people who are really the people to look at are not low income people — it’s people at the highest end of the income spectrum who are really forgetting who they are as people.
W&H: You mentioned that you’re writing a book on the NRA. I really want to talk to you about Lucy McBath because she is a Congresswoman now and was in your documentary “The Armor of Light.” Talk a little bit about your feelings about her success in the movement.
AD: She’s a star! It’s really incredible. When we started talking to Lucy for “The Armor of Light,” we were actually looking at her attorney, John Phillips, because we were looking for Republicans who were starting to question gun orthodoxy. I was working on the theory that there’s nothing conservative about the gun movement, and if you were really a conservative, you’d be wondering what you were doing.
We went looking for John, and of course John had worked with Lucy because her son Jordan had been killed less than a year before we met her. She was just such a charismatic person; she had such a good story to tell, and she told it so well. Just on a human level, she brought such a rawness to things that was missing from the mostly intellectual stuff that was going on — that is, stuff in your brain instead of your heart. We knew that the movie was missing that piece that you felt in your gut, so we just kept following her and seeing where she would take us.
Then we put her together with Reverend Rob Schenck because she spoke the same language Rob spoke, and I knew they would understand each other. Then, they took it from there. It just woke something up in Lucy; I could see her waking up. I could see her in front of groups and crowds articulating things and coming to sense that she could be a leader — that maybe that she was meant to make sense of Jordan’s death by being a leader. I’m so proud of her. She’s just a wonder.
W&H: What do you want people to take away from “Women, War & Peace”? What are your goals for the series?
AD: I would love people to take a moment and ask themselves what they understand about war. What do they believe happens in war, and what is war about to them? Then I want them to watch the films and ask themselves, “Did what I thought about war before hold up?” Because it won’t.
Almost everything people think they understand about war comes from Hollywood, and every account of war — every fable and story and legend and myth — is from a man’s perspective. I believe that women were made invisible for a reason. That is because all of the heroism and the beauty and the romanticization and the nobility of war melts away when you look at it from the woman’s angle. It just becomes a bunch of idiots killing each other. You really just can’t have that high-minded view of war anymore if you really look at it through a woman’s eyes.
So what I want people to do is to notice how the show upends their sensibilities and preconceptions.
