Co.Create | creativity + culture + commerce: The first thing that Mynette Louie wants to make clear is that this is a for-profit enterprise. She's talking about her new company, Gamechanger Films, which attracted attention last month when it announced that it would exclusively finance narrative features directed by women.
5 comments:
I love everything about this organization- I'm particularly impressed with the fact that it's for-profit. I think nonprofit organizations, while incredibly useful, give the impression that women directors are literally charity cases- that just because they are women they need help. It's terrible, but the entertainment industry is not about fairness or equality or helping people achieve their dreams of being a director- its about who makes the most money. If this organization can prove that women can make just as much money as men, it will go a long way to breaking down the barriers women face. It can't just be about helping women because of social justice, or because they can bring better female characters to the screen- as nice as that sounds, it's not going to bring in box office tickets, and that's all funders really care about. If a woman can make a high-earning movie, she'll get opportunities to make more movies- she just needs that initial boost up to get her over the challenge of even getting a chance in Hollywood as a female.
Such an inspiring article and like Sarah I am proud of the organisation's goals and aims. This is an amazing avenue for female directors, because now they have an organisation to turn to, instead of continuously knocking at doors that won't ever open. Also, the decision to be a for profit organization always sets certain standards of how you will be viewed amongst your competitors and peers. My biggest concern here however is, what happens if the films that Gamechanger eventually produce fail to provide substantial financial gains. Will they firstly produce more commercial, potentially viable films which have less chance at failing at the box office, than impactful or more independent type films? I think that a good first step would be for them to study the market and invest in a film that would be loved by the masses (commercial film) as their first produced work and set the standard very high.
This organization is a really awesome idea. Sometimes I think we're under the impression that because of where we have advanced we think that things will just balance out on their own in the work place but that is clearly not the case. Women are so dramatically underrepresented in directing and it is for no reason except that this is the way things have always been and the people in charge of financing films are men . One of the things that shocked me the most was the fact that you have to reach #208 on the list of highest grossing films before you can find a female director. This production company's misson is excellent, and I think the way that they have structured it is going to make them successful. Its not a non-profit, because this is not some kind of charity. And they aren't trying to adress every inequality that exists for women in the film industry. They're just created a group to get women better representation as directors.
It is incredibly perplexing to me that this is even an issue. On the whole, the arts are is one of the most progressive disciplines as it comes to social politics. Yet both within theatre and film, upper levels of producing and directing have remained an “old boys” game. As such, the industry has been subsequently skewed by this fact. This article briefly mentions the dimensionality of female characters. I would go even on step further, and challenge someone to name a play that portrays one A leading woman and two Said woman as strong and resilient and three said woman without any sort of mental instability or man supporting role. As this continues to be such an issue, I tremendously applaud Gamechanger, and wish them the best with their mission.
It seems to me that the real problem that we see in the film industry isn't that their aren't enough female directors. That's just a symptom of the root problem that there aren't any females funding films. This group may say that they are aiming to sole the director problem but they are doing it be solving the funding problem. This seems very smart to me. I think that this is a really important problem and although these people seems to think that they can take on the problem I think that they are going to need some help. Funding more female directors is definitely a good start, but changing the way we think about directors is also key to solving this problem. In ever film and interview and documentary and icon I have ever seen of a director he was male. We've been taught from a very young age that directors are men. When I see a film I don't always know the gender of the director. For all I know most of my favorite films could have been directed my females. But that's not going to change my idea about what a director is. Someone needs to change the way we as a culture thinks about directors. I don't think that's a problem that can be solved just with money.
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