BRAND NEW DAY FOR WOMEN'S STORIES
Stories are changing, for the better, for women in film and social media. We look at two stories that have emerged at the Sundance Film Festival 2014:
1. Social media is helping to change our perceptions of beauty.
2. Women are approaching parity with men behind the camera.
Photo: Courtesy of Dove. Still from Selfies.
SELFIES
Selfies, directed by Cynthia Wade and produced by Sharon Liese, aims to empower women to redefine the traditional perception of beauty and influence the conversation around natural beauty.
Dove’s research revealed that 63% of women believe social media is influencing today’s definition of beauty more than print media, film and music.
Photo: Courtesy of Dove. Still from Selfies.
In a similar approach to Dove’s earlier Sketches initiative, which we covered in our Beautiful Self post, Selfies surprises these young women by revealing to them that others often perceive them to be more beautiful than they perceive themselves to be.
Video: Courtesy of Dove Self Esteem Program.
Over 8.5 million young women have participated in Dove’s Self Esteem Program since 2005. By 2015 they aim to have helped 15 million girls.
Photo: Courtesy of Guardian Media. Tammi Sulliman.
WOMEN IN FILM RISING
Women tell great stories at least as well as men do, and yet the film industry has long favored men behind the camera. There is good news, however. The ratio is changing -- particularly for the documentary storytelling genre. And particularly for films supported by the Sundance Institute.
In a study conducted by Professor Stacy Smith and her team at USC/Annenberg School, commissioned by Sundance Institute and Women In Film Los Angeles, it shows that the numbers don’t start off well. Of the 1,163 filmmakers working on 82 U.S. films at SFF in 2013, 28.9% were women and 71.1% were men. But when you break it down by genre, a more positive story emerges.
In fact, 2013 was an extraordinary year for women in documentary filmmaking at Sundance Film Festival. 42.2% of documentary directors and 49.2% of documentary producers were women at the 2013 Festival.
And, for the first time, gender parity was achieved in U.S. dramatic competition movies in 2013 with female filmmakers accounting for 50% of the total.
Sundance supported female narrative filmmakers outperformed those in the 100 top-grossing films of 2013, only 2 (1.9%) of the 108 helmers were female.
Of the 432 fellows participating at Sundance Institute Labs between 2002 and 2013, 42.6% were female. Over 70% of the Documentary Film projects were women.
Women support other women. The study found that when a female director helms a movie, there are more girls and women on screen, and less hypersexualization of females.
The challenges have mainly pointed to gendered financial barriers, male-dominated industry networks, and stereotyping on set.
Despite the gains made by female storytellers in 2013 and the importance of lab support, problems still exist in the film industry at large. There’s more to be done. And we can’t wait to watch the films that come out of these efforts.
Click here for the full report.
Click here for more information and additional research by Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the Media, Diversity, and Social Change Initiative and follow @MDSCInitiative.
Here is a sampling of films featured at Sundance Film Festival 2014 that have female directors.
Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival. Still from Viktoria.
About the Director:
Maya Vitkova is a Bulgarian writer, director, and producer born in Sofia in 1978. Until 2006, she worked in film as an assistant and casting director. In 2009, she executive-produced Kamen Kalev's feature Eastern Plays, which premiered in the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival and was Bulgaria’s candidate for best foreign language film at the Academy Awards in 2011. Beginning in 2009, Vitkova founded Viktoria Films, a company focused on producing independent films. Viktoria is her debut feature as director.
Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival. Still from Laggies.
About the Director:
Lynn Shelton is best known as the writer/director of the acclaimed comedy Your Sister's Sister, which screened at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Her 2009 hit, Humpday, won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards. Shelton’s first feature, We Go Way Back, won the Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance in 2006, and her second, My Effortless Brilliance, earned the Independent Spirit Someone to Watch Award in 2009. Her fifth feature, Touchy Feely, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013 and was released by Magnolia Pictures.
Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival. Still from Last Days in Vietnam.
About the Director:
Rory Kennedy is an Emmy Award–winning independent documentary filmmaker as well as cofounder and president of Moxie Firecracker Films. Her films cover an array of issues, ranging from poverty to politics to human rights. Her work has been televised on HBO, A&E, MTV, Lifetime, and PBS. Her most recent film, Ethel, premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for five Primetime Emmy Awards.
Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival. Still from To Be Takei
About the Director:
Jennifer M. Kroot directed the documentary feature It Came from Kuchar, about the legendary underground filmmaking twins George and Mike Kuchar, which screened at SXSW in 2009. Kroot also wrote, directed, and starred in the gender-bending, sci-fi, narrative feature Sirens of the 23rd Century in 2003. She studied film briefly at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she now teaches.
Bill Weber is a San Francisco–based documentary film editor. He directed and edited the documentary feature The Cockettes, which screened at the 2002 Sundance and Berlin film festivals, and codirected and edited the documentary feature We Were Here, which played at the Sundance and Berlin festivals in 2011. Weber also edited the Academy Award–nominated documentary short film, The Final Inch.
Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival. Still from The Foxy Merkins.
About the Director:
Madeleine Olnek is a writer/director who honed her skills in New York venues with more than 20 produced plays, all comedies. She is coauthor of A Practical Handbook for the Actor, which includes a foreword by David Mamet, and received the William Goldman Fellowship in Screenwriting and the Adrienne Shelley Award for best female director from Columbia University. Her Sundance Film Festival shorts Countertransference (2009) and Hold Up (2006), and her feature, Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same from the Festival in 2011, are viewable online.
Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival. Still from The World Made Itself.
THE WORLD MADE ITSELF; MYTH AND INFRASTRUCTURE; DREAMING OF LUCID LIVING
About the Director:
Miwa Matreyek is an animator, designer, and multimedia artist based in Los Angeles. With her background in experimental animation and integrated media (she received an MFA from CalArts in 2007), Matreyek creates animated short films as well as live performance works that integrate animation, performance, and video installation. Her work has been shown internationally at animation and film festivals, theater and performance festivals, art galleries and museums, science museums, tech conferences, and universities. She is also a founding member and cocollaborator of the performance group Cloud Eye Control.
Photo: Courtesy of Marcella Purnama.
Read more about Beautiful Stories, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact in our posts throughout this week, including 10 Beautiful Sundance Films, 10 Beautiful Nature Stories, 10 Beautiful Nature Stories, 10 Beautiful Food Stories, 10 Incredible Sundance Art Works.
Enter this week’s BN Competition. Our theme this week is Beautiful Stories. Send in your images and ideas. Deadline is 01.26.14.
