American Film Market Dailies

THE FUTURE IS FEMALE (5:00PM)

Jennifer Warren

Chairperson & Founder, Alliance of Women Directors

“This is the 20^th anniversary of the Alliance of Women Directors, and only in the last two years have we had a response. It is new, and a nice change. People are now listening to the fact that there is no parity in the workplace for women, which is principally what we are after here. Women directors hold only about six percent of positions as feature film directors. We feel it is important for women and girls growing up to have role models and to see things from a women’s point of view (different from a man’s!).”

Geena Davis

Academy Award-Winning Actor, Founder, Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media

“There are profoundly more male characters than female characters in the content we are showing our kids. Female characters don’t take up half the space, aren’t doing interesting things, are more hypersexualized…The worst  ratio of male to female characters is in what’s aimed at kids 11 years old and under. We are training kids from the beginning to have unconscious gender bias.”

“The ratio of male to female characters in film has been exactly the same since 1946.”

“Directing is a completely different problem that I don’t think is unconscious. People who are creating content that is gender biased are horrified to find out and immediately want to do better. The fact that there are no women directors is not a secret and hasn’t been for decades yet no one is making the change.”

“Films with a female star make more money at the box office.”

“You can’t overcome unconscious bias unless you make very proactive decisions.”

“We [Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media] have a brand-new tool that never existed before to do our research with – Google gave a grant to develop the software that uses face and voice recognition to tell us how many female and male characters are in film and television, but also how much screen time they have and how many lines they have, down to the millisecond. It is very revealing and horrifying; far fewer characters are female and the ones that are, are on-screen less and talk less.”

“In movies with female leads, the male supporting character is onscreen an equal amount, however if there is a male lead, the female counterpart is only on-screen 25 percent of the time.”

“When women are talking, they are onscreen less than when men are talking (the shot is cutting to something else), so now we need to talk to the editors! Unconscious bias is happening on every possible level.”

“We [Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media] did the first global gender in media study and looked at ten of the most popular markets around the world; It was very interesting. As 80 percent of content consumed globally is made in the US, we looked at content made around the world. China had a 50/50 ratio of male to female screen time, while South Korea had 40/50 female to male. Some territories were glaringly more sexist. The US was on the lower end out of the 10 countries and the UK was in the top 5. But as so much content is a combination of US/UK, when we combined them into their own category we dragged the UK down to the 11^th slot. With China doing so much better, if we did a combined China/US category we might drag them down to 12^th!”

Jen McGowan

Director

[About Wonder Woman residual] “A lot of the residual happens with willingness and intention; that’s all great but our business and what we do is to tell stories, that’s what we are experts in. So until we stop listening to the stories we tell and look at the actions we are doing, I’m not interested. Someone gets a women director into the room and everyone says ‘I made effort,’ ‘I tried,’ but if you didn’t hire her it doesn’t matter. People make an effort but don’t see the impact of that because the contract doesn’t get signed.”

“It’s hard for me to know because I just show up and do my job [about how your gender and race affect your work] but I can say I don’t want to hire all white straight male crew.”

“For 20 years I worked in commercials; I never worked with a female first AV, grip department, electrical, and only three female directors (and only one who worked regularly). Those are all union and really high paying jobs, jobs that filmmakers use to supplement creative careers, and those are completely shut off to women.”

“If men and women aren’t different, why does it matter who we hire? Our perspectives are different because of how we are treated in daily life; That’s what we bring to the table.”

“If Woody Allen gets to make a film every year, Ava DuVerney should get to make a film every year.”

“You have to find your people and experiences that excite you; be kind to yourself; put it out there and be open to learning constantly; can only be responsible for what is directly in front of you and do the best that you can.”

“Personal experience is very different than hard data, and the data is extremely important.”

Catherine Hand

Producer, A Wrinkle in Time

“We focus so much on how far we want to go, but I just want to throw in just how far we have come!”

“People have unconscious bias over everything, not just women. The whole idea of unconscious bias has to become part of the conversation about everything.”

[About if it was a conscious decision to hire Ava] “YES IT WAS”

“When I was a little girl I read A Wrinkle in Time and I thought it would make a great movie so I wrote a letter to Walt Disney to say he should make the film and that I wanted to play Meg. I never sent the letter and on December 15^th 1966 when he passed away I cried because I felt so guilty for not sending it, because no one else would make that movie. That day I promised myself I was going to grow up and find someone to make it. That was 50 years ago.”

“I think that the world is changing and we are in a really wonderful time; Women are in more powerful positions and have the pocketbook than ever before.”

“Middle aged women are a market; when they start to realize we matte, they start to make product for us.”

“Don’t give up.”

“In today’s world, you have so many opportunities to be heard.”

Jim Whitaker

Producer, A Wrinkle in Time

“For any great directors, which Ava is definitely in that category, their time is limited and it is hard to get them to focus on the material. Its very important that moment for someone to tell any director to please read this. She read it and loved it.”

“First female director I’ve had, and it’s been an incredible experience.” [working with Ava]

“Most of my other films, candidly, were male driven films; can’t say that was by design; it comes down to the stories, finding stories that have, for me, an emotionality and hopefulness; working on a story now that is all female and by design and an incredible true story; I would say influenced by the experience by Wrinkle, we made a contractual necessity that a female director made the film; its important for stories to be told from female perspective in general, not just for female driven stories.”

“The director has the unique position to determine every second of a film and in the filmmaking process what the perspective of the movie is; by necessity that dictates that the authorial experience is going to give a point of view that’s driven by that.”