Yes, champions can come from anywhere. And New Zealander Niki Caro's a champ, director of McFarland USA. But she's the only woman director on the Disney list for 2015, which includes Pixar films. Furthermore, there's only one film on the list with a female protagonist, Pixar's Inside Out, an animation 'told from the perspective of the emotions inside the mind of a girl' and written and directed by men.

This is no good for those of us who enjoy films by and about women and girls. But on this first day of 2015 – happy new year to all! – I'm delighted to celebrate a new film by Niki Caro, her first since A Heavenly Vintage (2009).

McFarland USA is based on a true story about Jim White, a teacher (played by Kevin Costner) who noticed that young Latino farm workers ran great distances each day just to get from their exhausting jobs to school and back home. He creates a cross-country team and transforms the team into a state championship powerhouse.

In a USA Today article Niki Caro says that the story focuses on White's perseverance to create the team and his unconventional runners' inner strength, which was forged through hardship.

Niki Caro was inspired by the runners' physical, mental and spiritual endurance and immersed herself in the lifestyle. "My mandate is to be culturally specific and authentic. And I backed that vision all the way," she says, in the USA Today story. "I hope this story breaks new ground in the types of stories Disney tells." She took up long-distance running herself and insisted on shooting part of the production in McFarland, despite the cost. The cast, a mix of actors and McFarland runners, lived together and trained extensively to truly inhabit the team-running lifestyle.

"It's very cinematic. To see them running in the fields with the dust kicking off their feet with the sun going down. I had a very strong feeling for what the story was and how I could put it on the screen," says Caro. "I knew I could make it beautiful but keep it absolutely real."

McFarland USA on Facebook

Introducing The Complex Female Protagonist Roars

This year, I got a stall at the local queer fair Out in The Park, to sell my neonics-free bee-loved flowering plants, another artist's beautiful work and this cap, which I had made in New Zealand from a design by the Bluestocking Film Series, thanks to its director, Kate Kaminski. The fair was postponed – Wellington wind – so I distributed some caps to family and Facebook friends. I’m delighted that the new owners tell me stories about when they choose to wear the caps, how they feel wearing them, the responses of those they meet when wearing them. Wearing a cap with the Complex Female Protagonist slogan has many effects. I love it.

Last year, when I wrote Get Your Hopes Up, near International Women’s Day, I recalled what David Mamet wrote, about drama being about the creation and deferment of hope. This year, because of those caps and the stories their owners tell me, my mind and heart are on the Complex Female Protagonist. So I’m writing three posts. This first post moves on from hope, to explore some characteristics of the the delightful collective Complex Female Protagonist-working-for-change-in-long-form-screen-storytelling (henceforth 'the Activist CFP'), from as much of the globe as I can access. Who is she, right now – the informal and ever-changing collective of activists who work to increase the volume, diversity and quality of screen storytelling by women writers and directors, often focusing on women and girls?

And why does this Activist CFP ‘roar’? I’m thinking back years, to the first time I found CampbellX’s BlackmanVision website and its header ‘When the Lioness Can Tell Her Story, The Hunter No Longer Controls The Tale’. Today the lioness roars without cease, thanks to the Activist CFP.

In the second post, I’ll write about equity and public funding for screen storytelling, with reference to the research I’ve done on women’s film funds and women’s studios. That’s because I’m in New Zealand, where, thanks to Jane Campion’s commitment as a member of the national Screen Advisory Board, the New Zealand Film Commission will today announce its very first gender policy. Yes, we’ll roar anyway. But we’re entitled to an equal share of taxpayer funding to do that.

The third post considers what might happen if we have equal numbers of screen stories by women and men. In New Zealand, (white) women poets now publish as many books of poetry as men do. How did this happen? What effects does it have?

The collective Complex Female Protagonist who works-for-change-in-long-form-screen-storytelling (the Activist CFP)

If I think very very hard I can just remember the women’s film activism of a decade ago, when I started to work on my New Zealand-based PhD that became the Development Project. There wasn’t much of it. For instance, Melissa Silverstein hadn’t started Women & Hollywood, that steady beat of information and inspiration since 2007. There were lots of women’s film festivals. But their (our) online presence was quiet. The academic work around women and film was remarkable for its lack of hard information and its disjunct between theory and practice.

A view of the Activist CFP roaring: Kate Prior (writer/producer) and Abigail Greenwood ‘share’ their Best (New Zealand) Short Film award

In New Zealand, women were reluctant to speak out about sexism in the screen industries because they (accurately) feared that to do so would compromise their opportunities. Women writers and directors didn't want to speak publicly about how difficult it was bring their own stories to screens, for the same reason.  But gradually all that's become easier and few weeks ago, women and a man participated in an forthright discussion about women’s participation in filmmaking, on the Women Filmmakers of New Zealand Facebook page. And then this announcement and launch, which I already mentioned.


And the next generation just gets on with it, like the Candle Wasters – Sally Bollinger and Elsie Bollinger, Minnie Grace and Claris Jacobs (aged 17-21) who have produced an astonishing 76 episodes of Nothing Much To Do, a YouTube webseries inspired by Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, and have a new series coming, Lovely Little Losers, inspired by Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Last year, when I got my hopes up for lasting change, I was uncertain that it would happen or how iot would happen. But this year the Activist CFP has blossomed, in a chaotic context that embraces Hollywood, quasi-Hollywood and the rest-of-the-world– both independent and state-funded, where there are some interesting overlaps for everyone involved in film-making (for instance, many of the same nominees featured in the Independent Spirit Awards and in the Oscars). Furthermore, partly because we have so many personal devices for viewing, ‘the feature film’ for theatrical release is much less dominant than it was, in the mash up of long-form screen storytelling across feature films, telemovies and episodic work that includes webseries, multi-director tv series and single director tv series.  Only the over-40 audience for theatrical viewing of American films grew in 2014, according to the MPAA, and the audience under that age shrank. At the same time, ‘the women’s’ audience and other so-called minority audiences continue to grow in strength, as Brook Barnes explains–

At a time when so many movies turn themselves inside out trying to attract everyone (a plan that could be summed up as 'wide and shallow' in industry parlance), it is clearly possible to fill a big tent by picking a couple of demographics, in particular underserved ones, and superserving them ('narrow and deep').

In this context, as Ava DuVernay, writer and director of Selma, arguably a superserving feature, but one that attracted a 'wide', multi-demographic audience inside and outside the United States, has said–

The gatekeepers’ gates are rusting. There are new ways to do things, new ways to shoot. New ways to monetize, new ways to distribute, new audiences to find, new ways to communicate with them. These new ways don't require some old man telling you, you can do it. Now that that's the case and we know it's the case, we need to begin.

So, in a southern summer and now early autumn of listening to, watching, reading and thinking about the Activist CFP, what’s struck me most about her present characteristics and her response to all this? I love her because she's diverse: she flows across across geographical, cultural and professional boundaries (and the rest!) and generates many remarkable Alliances. Above All, she's Active, as befits a Protagonist. All Over The Place. Just look at that group of women adding women filmmakers to wikipedia!

Generous women adding women filmmakers to Wikipedia–@IAmJenMcG@deconstructjg@BiatchPack Tx @emilybest! #womeninfilmpic.twitter.com/nAiu3L7ksr
— Marian Evans (@devt) January 11, 2015

The Activist CFP's dialogue is characterised by vitality, informed by statistical data. She has Hollywood-oriented strategies. She has independent filmmaker strategies. She's doing interesting things in television, with not a lot of visible crossover with film activists. And she includes actors. Last year I celebrated actors who direct and this year I've noticed that more actors are becoming producers and I want to celebrate that and inquire about its effects. The Activist CFP includes women cinematographers, whose eyes frame women especially well. From the breadth and depth of this global consciousness-raising I'm now much more certain that change will come. And the Activist CFP's greatest strength, I suggest, comes from women filmmakers of colour. In particular, watching and listening from a distance and with limited sources of information, it seems to me that African-American women are getting their stories onto screens by working with imagination, tenacity and integrity and best practices that the rest of us can learn from.

The alliances cross national borders and the borders between Hollywood and indies, between practitioners, activists and academics and can be long-term, like those among women’s film festivals. They may be with men, as within collectives like Adelaide’s Closer Productions, where Sophie Hyde directed 52 Tuesdays, which won major awards at Sundance and Berlin last year. Or with someone like David Oyelewo, who worked so hard to get Selma made and who consistently speaks out in support of women directors. Some alliances involve filmmakers’ support of other women filmmakers, like New York’s Film Fatales and its branches in other cities, collectives 'of female filmmakers who have directed at least one feature narrative or documentary film and meet regularly to support each other, collaborate on projects and discuss topics in film’.

Film Fatales at Sundance photo: Destri Martino

Alliances may be as small as sharing information — a post on Facebook or a retweet. And they may be brief, as evidenced for example in the signatories to Sophie Mayer and Ania Ostrowska’s 'An Invitation is Not Enough' letter in response to Sight & Sound’s “‘modest invitation’ to female critics” to contribute to its pages. The letter’s key message was–

An invitation is not enough: powerful organisations where there is systemic inequality have the responsibility to research and reach out, and to create change within the structure so that it is welcoming to diverse participants.

This principle is fundamental to making change for women and for the diverse groups we’re part of and that systemic inequality profoundly affects. So, not surprisingly, among the 70 signatories to the letter are women who may disagree with one another about why women write and direct too few films and why too few films adequately represented women and girls among their characters.

But they (we) came together as signatories because they (we) knew that making this kind of public statement is an essential strategy for change. On the list are writers and academics, film festival directors and programmers and some courageous filmmakers (I understand that a number of directors declined to participate). Signatories include grandes dames Laura Mulvey, whose celebrated Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, back in 1975, called for a new feminist avant-garde filmmaking that would rupture the narrative pleasure of classical Hollywood filmmaking; and Debra Zimmerman, since 1983 executive director of Women Make Movies, founded in 1969. There’s Thuc Nguyen of The Bitch Pack and The Bitch List; Ellen Tejle of the Swedish A-Markt/A-Rating for films that pass the Bechdel Test (now joined by the Bath Film Festival's F-Rating, which extends the test from what happens onscreen to those who have made it happen); Melissa Silverstein; Beti Ellerson of the Center for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema; and Bérénice Vincent and Delphyne Besse of France’s Le Deuxième Regard. And many more. A beautiful mix, to be celebrated.

Then, earlier this year, Marya E Gates announced her A Year With Women–

In 2015, every movie I watch (at home or in theaters) will either be written by, directed by, co-written by or co-directed by women.

This set off a flurry of world-wide enthusiasm and idea-sharing in the activist twittosphere. This led to Maria Judice’s Rewrite Hollywood, which links to a woman-written script each week and to further synergies with projects like The Bitch List, The Director List (with Destri’s beautiful new site coming soon and her new Instagram) and #DirectedByWomen, a global celebration happening later this year. And when the second Rewrite Hollywood script went up, Of Love & Basketball, its writer and and director Gina Prince-Bythewood tweeted–

LOVE & BASKETBALL script via REWRITE HOLLYWOOD & @oldfilmsflickerhttp://t.co/QQxFESnsoc (loved visual of opening in script but not in film)
— Gina PrinceBythewood (@GPBmadeit) January 23, 2015

What a fabulous, sisterly, response to have as part of the conversation! Then there’s Shaula Evans’ site. ‘Inspiration and support for writers’ is her modest introduction. She’s super-skilled with scripts and at creating a diverse community, generous, sharp and funny and I’ve treasured her contributions to this blog, in the Real Talk About Implicit Bias tab. Women are an important part of her community and her latest alliance, with Lexi Alexander, Miriam Bale and Cat Cooper , created the #FilmHerStory hashtag, and inspired responses from all over.

Need story ideas? We have 300+ on our #FilmHerStory@Pinterest for women who deserve biopics! http://t.co/LSLBMfET79pic.twitter.com/1Tloj9gcVi
— Shaula Evans (@ShaulaEvans) March 8, 2015

In another example, at a regional level, in Canada the St John’s Women in Media Summit’s powerful Communique, developed by Women In View, came from strong organisational alliances among its signatories. Notable on the list are Canadian Women in Film & Television (WIFT) chapters.This signals another hopeful sign of sisterhood — and some brotherhood — across organisations that in the past didn't collaborate. And the communique’s recommendations provide a kind of manifesto for diverse women in film, in all countries where the state funds film.

And at this year's Berlinale, the organisation Pro Quote Regie staged a stunning intervention, supported by an exciting website, seeking gender equity in funding. Even Margarethe von Trotta participated!



Belinde Ruth Stieve wrote about the group in English, here.

And in a totally personal pleasure, I just had an email from the Seoul International Women's Film Festival. This year, they have a programme that focuses on recent Swedish women's cinema and they'd like to reproduce my interview with Ellen Tejle about the A-Rating. Lovely to feel a Korean-Swedish-New Zealand Activist CFP connection.

All these alliances – and many more – contribute to Activist CFP vitality that's informed by multiple sources of hard data, by carefully considered strategies for making change in Hollywood, by independent filmmaker strategies, often fuelled by crowd-funding, by change and solid achievement within television and change within a range of organisations. It's a delight to be a tiny participant in this continuous brainstorm and hard work, an intellectual and emotional climate change. I treasure the action and the drama it generates.

The vitality of the Activist CFP's debates, especially about films by and about women, is informed by quantitative gender data that continues to roll in. Some of the data, for example from this Martha Lauzen infographic, shows the general picture in those crucial-to-many United States Top-Grossing 250 features, which colonise those of us who live outside the States – in 2014 72c/ $1 that the best-earning films earned came from outside the United States and Canada, up from 70c.

Martha Lauzen infographic

I'm thrilled that at last there is lots of data. I’m longing to know more about Asian, South American and African countries but for now in Europe, for the first time, we  have the comprehensive European Audiovisual Observatory research. In New Zealand for the first time we have official gender data, published by the New Zealand Film Commission, the state funder here. Until there's reliable in-depth data from everywhere, blogs like Beti Ellerson’s African Women in Cinema are handy. In just one example, Beti recently interviewed academic Zélie Asava – who has also worked as an actor, journalist, in politics and as an equal opportunities consultant – on her research into mixed-race identities and representation in Irish, United States and French cinemas.

And because there’s now so much data and that so consistently show that it's problematic for women who write and direct and for those of us who want stories about women and girls, the debates seem to have shifted a little, to focus more on problem-solving, strategies for change and how to implement them. Because of this, it’s become essential to distinguish between entrenched ‘Hollywood’ practices and the strategies and practices of the independent rest-of-the-world, whose films probably don’t have big marketing budgets and don’t often appear in that United States 250 Top-Grossing Film list. When they do, it seems to me, it is usually because they’re on that fluid boundary between Hollywood and the-rest, because of a project-specific connection, through some kind of co-production investment or because a major distributor has taken a punt.

Hollywood-Oriented Strategies

‘Hollywood’-oriented strategy, often generated through debate about those Top 100 or 250 US features, is diverse. And needs to be, if change is going to happen. Behaviours and strategies explored – and NOT explored in Manohla Dargis’ conversations with Amy Pascal, formerly head of Sony and Hannah Minghella who is also at Sony, have different emphases than those expressed by theory-oriented and number-crunching activist academics like those in Stacy Smith’s team at Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative at USC Annenberg,  who often research for the Geena Davis Institute. After Manohla Dargis received reassurances from Amy Pascal and Hannah Minghella that they wanted to hire women directors, she records that  ‘[Ms. Minghella] and Ms. Pascal were sincere, but good intentions don’t mean much when the six major studios consistently do not hire women even for smaller movies’ – the discussion did not include description and analysis of the studio strategies for increasing the numbers of women directors they hire. And the research team’s suggested strategies may reflect Geena Davis’ ideas, like this one, aimed at all those who write, and is part of cherishing the presence of women and girls in the world–

Step 1: Go through the projects you’re already working on and change a bunch of the characters’ first names to women’s names. With one stroke you’ve created some colorful unstereotypical female characters that might turn out to be even more interesting now that they’ve had a gender switch. What if the plumber or pilot or construction foreman is a woman? What if the taxi driver or the scheming politician is a woman? What if both police officers that arrive on the scene are women — and it’s not a big deal? 

Step 2: When describing a crowd scene, write in the script, “A crowd gathers, which is half female.” That may seem weird, but I promise you, somehow or other on the set that day the crowd will turn out to be 17 percent female otherwise. Maybe first ADs think women don’t gather, I don’t know.

Other strategies appear in the context of legal issues at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Tell Us Your Story project, as it collects their discrimination stories from women directors, in the work of courageous analysts and directors like Lexi Alexander and Maria Giese and from contributors to blogs like Bitch Flicks and Women & Hollywood, whose founder Melissa Silverstein also founded the Athena Film Festival as a strategy for change.

Independent Filmmaker Strategies

Ideas and strategies developed by independent filmmakers sometimes intersect with the ‘Hollywood’-oriented strategies, but are generated by individual filmmakers’ overarching desire to tell their own stories. For a long time now, independent filmmakers have refused to wait for ‘Hollywood’ to change. But I think their work is infused with new energy. Partly because we now have crowdfunding, a simple, effective strategy we can all embrace.

Crowdfunding's helped many women’s films that have done well in the States over the last year (just wish more reached New Zealand), like Jennifer Kent’s Babadook, Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Afia Nathaniel’s Dukhtar. This is how actor/ director/ editor Josephine Decker explains the value of crowdfunding and why it’s a significant element it getting women’s stories to the screen–

I make these movies for low budgets because I’m just terrified of big ones and all the sucking up and accommodating that those enforce, but crowdfunding helped me realize that you can fundraise from people who believe in you, and want you to realize exactly the thing you want to make.

I hope that 2015 will be the year that more people support more crowdfunding projects, because films like those I’ve mentioned show how worthwhile it is to invest the price of a ticket in diverse women’s work. It doesn’t just help them do the work they want to. It also helps them build their audiences, essential given most women’s lack of access to funds for marketing. For those of us without time to research current crowdfunding campaigns, indefatigable filmmaker and activist Destri Martino curates a list of current projects on her Twitter account each week.

Josephine Decker is typical, I think, of independent women filmmakers. She released two features in the last year, Thou Wast Mild and Lovely and Butter on the Latch and is about to crowd fund for another project. In a story by Paula Bernstein (like Manohla Dargis a consistent source of excellent writing about women filmmakers) Josephine articulated her philosophy–

Being an independent filmmaker was never a great way to make a living, and that hasn’t changed, but the skills that you gain from pursuing your own vision can lead to a lot of opportunities. Because of my two features, which may or may not make me money, I learned in a profound way how to see a story through from beginning to end, how to tell a gripping story, how to edit, how to oversee a crew, how to work with actors and how to spread the word about a project. Currently, I am prepping a big media campaign with a national non-profit, am pitching a web series, just got a Kickstarter funded to make a dream film and am pursuing my next feature with a lot more ammunition in my giant balloon playpen. So — I would say: Do I have a lot of money right now? No. But — if it’s possible to balance your own projects with some paid work (and technical skills of filmmaking are something people will pay for), then making your own features is a great way to invest in a future in which you DO get paid to do cool shit.

And also, honestly, I love making films for no money. We live in a culture of film as a business. I don’t know if transcendent artists generally emerge from a commercial model. To be a great artist, you have to be willing to take risks and to do things that no one would ever pay you for — at first. I am happy to be living a spiritually rich life in which filmmaking is a gigantic pleasure. And of course, this pleasure would be more pleasurable and less stressful with money at the table, but maybe writing all this is making me realize I am a little bit terrified of having actual money invested in my projects because I worry it will distort my vision and the very deep thing I am aiming for when I get actors in a room and start improvising.

Television

DGA TV DIRECTING AWARDS: in the top two categories, comedy and drama, women (who direct only 14% of TV shows) made up 50% of the nominees!
— Maria Giese (@MariaGiese) January 24, 2015

Lily Loofborouw’s recent article, TV’s New Girls’ Club also celebrates this television achievement She writes about shows that are ‘for the most part created by women and center on female characters’ and suggests that these shows defy ‘what has come to seem like a glib bleakness in highbrow programming’–

If The Sopranos started the age of the antiheroes, these shows mark the dawn of promiscuous protagonism: a style of television that, rather than relying on the perspective of one (usually twisted) character, adopts a wild, roving narrative sympathy…and treat gender as a curiosity rather than a constraint.

I recognise and love ‘promiscuous protagonism’ because in the past I've tended to write multiple protagonist screenplays and learned from other women writers that they too are more likely to do this than the men writers we know. And where better for promiscuous protagonism than on television?

Meanwhile, change is in the air in some organisations where women and men have become activists for change onscreen.

Organisational Change

With some exceptions (in Sweden, for instance), until recently, many chapters of Women in Film & Television International appeared to focus primarily on their remits to ‘stimulate professional development and global networking opportunities for women’ and to ‘celebrate the achievements of women in all areas of the industry’. The organisation’s more radical aims are internationally focused, like the one to ‘develop bold international projects and initiatives’. But more and more, WIFT chapters ally with other local organisations to work for change. WIFTUK, for instance ‘collaborate[s] with industry bodies on research projects and lobb[ies] for women’s interests’. Women in Film in Los Angeles collaborates with Sundance Institute on its Women’s Initiative. In New Zealand, WIFT – I understand – worked on the gender equity policy at the New Zealand Film Commission, the state funder. That’s all awesome.

In Britain last year, the British Film Institute (BFI) established its ‘three ticks’ diversity policy, ‘designed to address diversity in relation to ethnicity, disability, gender, sexual orientation and socio-economic status’. Producers who apply to the BFI for funding must producers who apply must demonstrate their commitment to encouraging diverse representation, across their workforces and in the portrayal of under-represented stories and groups on screen. And Britain’s Channel 4 reaffirmed its historical commitment to diversity.

Late in 2014, the World Conference of Screenwriters international guilds and screenwriting organisations, including the very powerful Writers Guild of America West, passed the ‘Women’s Resolution’–

Statistics from writers’ organizations around the world show clearly that women writers are under employed. We write fewer scripts, receive fewer commissions, have shorter careers and earn less than our male colleagues. Women have the talent, experience and ambition to participate as equals in every aspect of the industry. What stands in our way is institutional gender bias. We the 30 guilds and writers organizations present at the Warsaw Conference of Screenwriters 2014 representing 56000 male and female screenwriters, call upon our commissioners, funders, studios, networks and broadcasters to set the goal of having 50% of scripts across genres and at every budget level to be written by women. (my emphasis)

At the same time, the Swedish Film Institute continues to set the standard for other state funders and the European Women’s Audiovisual Network goes from strength to strength, with close connections to Eurimages, the pan-European funder as well as to the wonderful cohort of Spanish women directors whose drive ensured that EWA was established. I'll write more fully about state funding in the next part of this series

I bet there’s lots I’ve missed. Awareness has grown, commitments are being made and action is being taken. Yes! And some of all that’s happening among actors too.

Actors




Late in 2014, the LA Times brought together an 'Oscars Round Table' group of actors – Jennifer Aniston, Emily Blunt, Jessica Chastain, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Shailene Woodley. I love these round tables and the way the videos and the partial transcripts are edited – bits that I find interesting are often dropped from one or the other and I tracked to and fro with this one to learn the most I could about (these) actors as an element of the Activist CFP. In a couple of places I've cobbled together quotes from the incomplete video and the incomplete text.

I'm always excited when actors write and direct. There are lots and lots who do this and in general they do it so well. This year, I've noticed them as producers: two of the actors in this group, Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Aniston, as well as Reese Witherspoon, Oprah Winfrey (a unique example!), Lupita N'yongo, Angelina Jolie, Jodie Foster. Some of these women have been producers for years, but I wonder if the numbers and volume of actor-producer films have increased because of the 'new ways to do things' or because it's become easier for women who act to raise money for projects that they appear in, either as protagonists or in smaller parts. In response to a question about successful films with women as lead characters, Jessica Chastain (who played the central character in Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty) says–

To me it's not a surprise any more. it's a fact. Women perform great at the box office. Audiences want to see lead female characters.

And then, in response to another question about what it would take to change the gender proportion of speaking roles (currently 2/3 men) she said–

Women writers. If you look at the studies, female writers and directors are non-existent. The percentages are really small. I think we just need to encourage girls in high school and middle school that they can be anything they want to be and if they want to be a film director they can do that, if they want to be a writer they can do that. We need more points of view... Also we need more support for women directors and writers in the industry.

Jennifer Aniston's response placed responsibility more squarely on 'the industry' rather than the education system and individuals–

You hit the wall right at the top. If there's a female writer being suggested to do a rewrite on a script, it's always the big boys going 'Let's go with the [man]'.

Men wrote and directed projects that Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Aniston produced, with the exception of the Jennifer Aniston-produced TV movies Five and Call Me Crazy, exploring the impact of breast cancer where women storytellers predominate although some men were also involved in writing and directing. It's impossible to tell from the round table why male writers and directors were otherwise the default choice. All the projects Jessica Chastain has produced have one writer/director, Ned Benson, for whom she produced a short film before The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby trilogy. She read the Eleanor Rigby script early on and says–

It's a lot more work [producing] but the good thing is you get to surround yourself with people you believe in. I made Eleanor Rigby with all of my friends, a first-time writer/director. So it was a really really beautiful experience to see my friends go through that journey and have that success and I learned so much doing it.

Jessica Chastain's producer story reminds me of what happens in New Zealand's 48 Hours competition, where friends work together and very few women direct. When a mixed gender group of friends work together on low-budget projects does a male writer/director tend to be the default choice? Have no women approached Jessica Chastain to produce their projects and is this why she thinks there are so few, although it's so well documented that there are many? And has Jennifer Aniston chosen men except on the breast cancer projects because she needed them to attract investors?

Emily Blunt, Jennifer Aniston, Gugu Mbathe-Raw, Shailene Woodley

Gugu Mbathe-Raw has worked with three women writer/directors, on Amma Asante's Belle, Gina Prince-Bythewood's Beyond the Lights and Courtney Hunt's The Whole Truth – as an average over the last couple of years hers probably challenges Meryl Streep's position as the actor who works most often with women writer/directors. And this is what Gugu Mbathe-Raw says–

I myself have been really fortunate in the last year or two to work with three female writer/directors. They provided me with my first big roles on screen, so in terms of point of view and three-dimensional complex characters, I have women to thank for that and the layers and the nuances they bring to the writing and to be driving the story and not just an adornment.

The interviewer asks her if she can tell the difference if a woman writes and directs and she affirms that she can, in her 'limited experience' and then after Jennifer Aniston interjects 'You're spoiled' and everyone laughs, Gugu Mbathe-Raw acknowledges 'Yes, I guess I am spoiled, especially as I say with Belle and Beyond the Lights and written by women too, it's just that the focus is that much more three-dimensional on the woman's role'.

Yay, I went to myself, as I listened and watched. And it got even better. For the first time I can recall that women actors discuss women cinematographers in this kind of public and group context. The interviewer asked Jennifer Aniston, whose Cake had a woman cinematographer, Rachel Morrison, 'Do you think it makes a difference when there are more women on the production team?'

Rachel Morrison, DP for Cake

And in New Zealand, writer/directors Jemaine Clement and Jonathan King and actor Ben Fransham tweeted in support of gender equity in allocation of the New Zealand Film Commission's funding (scroll down here for more details, I was very excited).


And another great week this week. Warmed by all this extra support and info, we can contribute to the #FavWomanFilmmaker campaign,  from Agnès Films, a United States-based collective that supports women filmmakers, in all roles.

The #FavWomanFilmmaker hashtag will be on Twitter for four days (Monday November 9 – Thursday November 12), for us to tweet our favorite woman filmmakers and the reasons why we love them.

Agnès Films, named in honor of Agnès Varda, the French filmmaker who has been making women-centered fiction films and documentaries for over 50 years, hopes 'to bring awareness of the transcendent work being done by women behind the camera and to invite people to check it out and share it with others' and will be twinterviewing many people with intimate knowledge of the issues, like Women & Hollywood's Melissa Silverstein,  writer/director Hope Dickson Leach who's just finished shooting her first feature, The Levelling, and is part of Raising Films ('making babies, making films, making change') and Sophie Mayer (also part of Raising Films) whose Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema has just been published.



Calendar All times are EST. For some of us in other timezones, we may need to keep checking a converter.

Not sure about your faves? Looking for more?

Check out these Women Filmmaker Lists created for people who work 'in the industry'– 

The Director List's thoughtfully curated database. 

Ms in the Biz's #HireAMs database– from Acting Coach (on set) and Art Directors to Production Managers to Writers/Script Doctors.

And then there are those fabulous individuals who commit to reading and watching women's work for an extended period and share that commitment with us–

Maria Judice's ReWrite Hollywood tumblr where she posts a feature script written by a woman each week. Am soooo grateful to her. 

Beti Ellerson provides comprehensive resources through her French/English African Women in Cinema blog. 

Cinema Fanatic's compelling A Year With Women, where every movie she watches in 2015 (at home or in theaters) is written by, directed by, co-written by or co-directed by women. Her idea's been picked up by–  

Women in Film Los Angeles, where we can pledge to watch 52 films by women over a year. 

 Check out the #DirectedByWomen's thorough lists, too.

& let me know if you have an additional list, from anywhere in the world?