Being Femme in Film Feels Fatal
Words by Finn Bilsborough (she/her), Paige Gill (she/her), and Poppy Sam (she/her)
We’ve all heard the term “the future is female”, but when the fuck is the future coming?
In recent years, the film industry has witnessed a regression in the number of women filmmakers. Despite strides made in past decades, the participation of women in film is experiencing a backwards slide... and we see it even in our lectures here at Massey University.
If we asked you to name a female director, who would you say? Greta Gerwig, Sofia Coppola, Jane Campion? Can you name another? Barbie’s success last year was an incredible win for female representation in the film industry. But how many other recent critically acclaimed movies directed by women can you think of?
Historically, women have played a crucial role in the film industry. The first film directed by a woman, La Fée aux Choux directed by Alice Guy-Blaché, was considered to be the first narrative-led film ever and therefore changed the filmmaking industry forever. The rise of the feminist movement in the 1970s and 1980s brought renewed focus on women’s representation in media which led to an increase in women-driven stories and female filmmakers.
Despite the vital place of women in the history of film, recent studies reveal a persistent gender gap in key creative roles within the industry. According to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, women comprised only 18% of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the top 250 grossing films of 2022.
The issue itself is not a lack of female filmmakers, but a lack of women working in positions of power within the industry. We can make independent films as much as we want, but those films rarely get picked up by the tables of men who gatekeep film festival entries. They don’t get funded. They don’t get made. The stories many women are trying to tell are not films that male-run production companies tend to fund.
This shortfall of progress is even reflected in the Bachelor of Screen Arts lectures we sit through here at Massey University. Clip after clip, the films we are shown in lectures as examples of respectable filmmaking are created by men.
BSA programme lead professor Karen Loop agrees with us in some ways, “Understanding the whakapapa of the filmmakers who have influenced the field is important, and unfortunately women and non-binary people have been historically underrepresented.” Some of our lecturers acknowledge the class material is made by men, and encourage us to deconstruct the traditions of male domination in film. But actions that match their words would make a greater impact for the future filmmakers.
Loop says the lecturers are committed to “amplifying underrepresented voices to empower the next generation of filmmakers”. But it sometimes feels like we are overlooked, and that lecturers often aren’t engaging on a level of proactive action, to put in the effort to show a diverse range of material. It is exhausting and scary to constantly be reminded that this industry is not made for us. Loop says, “We aspire to a more diverse future and the gender diversity leading this year’s Major Projects and the success of our recent graduates show that we are making positive and meaningful steps in that direction.”
We want to see these ‘meaningful steps’. There are safe spaces for women in the film industry, but we need to find them ourselves – or make them. There are already organisations doing amazing things for women in film, such as WIFT (Women in Film and Television) which has 12,000 members across New Zealand. However, they have an entry fee which automatically makes them inaccessible to many, especially students who are the future of the industry itself.
We all should seek out and share women-made media, to oppose gender disparity within the film industry. There are so many female-focused stories that need telling, that people will relate to. Just look at the success of How to Have Sex, written and directed by Molly Manning Walker released this year. It was nominated and won a huge range of film festival awards, including the Cannes Film Festival and the Athens International Film Festival.
There are production companies who want to support underrepresented communities within the film industry, there are audiences who want to engage with untold stories, and there are so many women who want to tell those stories.
There is a space for us in the film industry, and we must grab it and hold on for dear life, so we do not continue going backwards.