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Women’s Film Institute Launches WFI Shorts Tour The Women’s Film Institute (WFI), based in San Francisco and organizer of the annual San Francisco International Women’s Film Festival (SFWFF), launched the WFI Shorts Tour this August in San Francisco. It will premiere in New York on September 17th, before traveling to venues across the country to showcase the best in women’s cinema.
The WFI Shorts Tour was created in the hopes of expanding the Women’s Film Institute’s goals of showcasing the best in women’s cinema and addressing the under representation of women in film and media. Executive Director Scarlett Shepard founded SFWFF in 2004 when, as a student in the San Francisco State University’s cinema program, she noticed the lack of credit given to women filmmakers such as Alice Guy-Blache, both the first woman film director and the first filmmaker to make a film with a plot, Dede Allen, the first editor to earn a solo credit for editing, Brianne Murphy, the first woman director of photography on a major studio picture and an Emmy Award nominee, Martha Coolidge, the first female president of the Directors Guild of America, Ida Lupino, Jodie Foster, Sophia Coppola, Julie Dash, Lizzie Borden, and many more.
According to Martha Lauzen’s 2009 Celluloid Ceiling Report, “women comprised 16% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films during 2008.” Furthermore, according to Celluloid Ceiling, though the percentage of women directors in 2008 represented a 3% increase from the percentage of women directors in 2007, they still account for only 9% of directors.
“In my opinion it seems as though we celebrate the male voices of cinema, and the contributions of women in cinema, especially film directors, are often unacknowledged or become a side note in the historical and educational context,” Shepard said.
“After consulting with the SFSU cinema department and administration, Shepard embarked on a journey to create a platform that showcased, awarded, and celebrated local, student and international women filmmakers,” according to the SFWFF website. “She teamed up with SFSU professors, the SFSU Women’s Center of Associated Students, local award-winning filmmakers and a host of local sponsors. San Francisco State University’s first Women’s Film Festival was born in April 2005. After the success of its first run, Shepard decided to expand the festival beyond the SFSU campus and rename the festival.”
After the first festival, Shepard moved the festival off the SFSU campus and renamed it the San Francisco International Women’s Film Festival. Then, in 2006, Shepard founded the Women’s Film Institute, an organization that furthers SFWFF’s mission by providing resources for women filmmakers such as in-kind scholarships for post-production services and filmmaking programs for young women.
“The idea behind the WFI is to move beyond exhibition and become a part of the solution by providing opportunities for women and girls to help women make media, Shepard said. “The idea is to move young women from consumers of media to the next generation of media makers.”
Now, Shepard hopes that the WFI Shorts Tour will help accomplish the same goal by expanding the reach of WFI to audiences beyond the Bay Area. In its inaugural year, the WFI Shorts Tour will showcase 11 films that represent a wide variety of perspectives and ideas. While some of the films deal with the process of self-discovery, the pain of love and loss, and the need for acceptance, others deal with such pressing social concerns as animal rights, global warming, and education for undocumented immigrants.
Though the Tour’s programming represents filmmakers from across the world—some of the filmmakers call Italy, France and China home—two of the films are the works of Bay Area filmmakers.
The first of these Bay Area films, Arresting Ana, written and directed by Lucie Schwartz, addresses the legislative struggle in France to ban pro-anorexia, or “pro-ana”, websites. The documentary follows both a young woman, Sarah, who documents her struggles with anorexia on her blog, as well as French legislator, Valerie Boyer, who has introduced a bill into French Parliament that aims to punish the incitement of anorexia through “pro-ana” blogs and websites with fines and prison sentences. Through interviews with both of these women, as well as psychologists, eating disorder specialists, and citizens Schwartz delves into the complexity of not only eating disorders, but also the attempts to pass legislation punishing those who “incite anorexia”.
“I found out about it [the legislation] in the newspaper,” Schwartz said. “I was drawn and sucked into this topic immediately. As a French-American, I found it particularly interesting that this legislation was being proposed in France, of all places. The French, although famous for their small waists in spite [of] their world-famous gastronomy, are dealing with an obesity crisis. The country has gone on a full-swing anti-obesity campaign: fat is bad, skinny is good. In some ways, one could argue that the rise of pro-Ana blogs in France goes hand in hand with the rise of obesity.”
Schwartz, who holds a Bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism from New York University and a Master’s degree in journalism and documentary film from the University of California at Berkeley, has succeeded in melding the worlds of film and journalism, though she is careful to point out the differences that remain between them.
“When I verbally pitched the film to my advisor…he asked…‘How are you going to make this cinematic?’ To me, his question sums up the difference between documentary film and broadcast journalism. Broadcast journalism, although often similar, tends to be very formulaic. As an independent documentary filmmaker, you are free to make your own creative and editorial decisions.”
Still, despite these differences, Schwartz acknowledges how the fields complement each other in their purpose: the discovery of truth.
“The license to enter people's lives at an important moment for them is part of what appealed to me about documentary film,” Schwartz said. “I also feel like becoming a journalist and filmmaker satisfied my desire to constantly keep learning…The devotion to truth and fact is what still inspires me every day.”
Bethynia Cárdenas, too, has created a film that brings attention to a current serious political and social concern: the murders of hundreds of women and girls in Juarez, Mexico since 1993. However, unlike Arresting Ana, Cárdenas’ film, Maria Desaparecida/Missing Maria, explores its topic not through documentary form, but through a narrative that focuses on one family’s grief when it loses a loved one.
“I wanted to try a different approach,” Cárdenas said. “It all has to do with the way this subject made me feel, the questions I asked myself when I first read about it, and how I related it to my life experience. That determined the way I wanted to share it with an audience. Also, there is a lot of purism regarding narrative when it comes to a delicate subject like this. Some people advised me not to fictionalize it. There is the perception, and it might be true, that when a case like Juarez is dramatized, it loses credibility, it becomes trivial and familiar. I think we need to break with that perception and explore new and honest ways to inspire each other.”
A story of about a woman who disappears in Juarez, and its effects on her daughter and mother, Maria Desaparecida/Missing Maria places a human face on the Juarez murders and reveals the grief and humanity behind this crisis that is ongoing and often overlooked.
“The murders keep going on,” Cárdenas said. “From 2008 to 2009 there have been over 20 new cases of young women who have disappeared. In April 2009 the Mexican government was taken to trial before the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, but there is a lot of skepticism as to what will come out of that. Furthermore, the imported "drug-war" in Mexico has overshadowed the issue.”
Cárdenas shares Schwartz’s dedication to creating awareness and revealing truth through film, a dedication that motivated her to create a film about the personal struggles behind the headlines of the Juarez murders.
“When you read more about this situation, you understand there is a lot more to it, it doesn't end there, there's the aftermath, the cover-up, and the lack of clarity,” Cárdenas said. “What these families have to go through to overcome the uncertainty, to find peace of mind, and closure, that really touched me.”
Both of these films, as well as the others that comprise to the WFI Shorts Tour 2009, further the WFI’s mission to promote women filmmakers—a population whose voice has contributed greatly to cinema, but has often been forgotten.
“As individuals, based on our life experiences, we bring a new perspective and different sensibilities into light,” Cárdenas said. “Women give voice to different themes and have different ways to tell stories in ways that are not being seen.”
Interestingly, though male filmmakers still dramatically outnumber their female filmmakers, Schwartz has worked with many women in her film career; seven of the ten students in her documentary film program were women and all three of her co-workers at the production company where she now works are women. However, she draws a distinction between the reality of women in film and the general perception of women in film.
“There's an automatic assumption from people who do not work in film that this is a man's job,” Schwartz said. “Like in many other fields, a woman's presence at the top of the ladder often comes as a surprise.”
Both Cárdenas and Schwartz agree with Shepard that the WFI is an important step towards more recognition of women filmmakers.
“The WFI and the tour are a big step towards a more significant presence of women in cinema,” Cárdenas said. “They are great ways for women to share their experiences and their view of the world, and I hope this inspires other women to make films, knowing that there is a space where their work can be showcased and supported. I think the WFI can, and will, grow into a defining force in the cinema landscape and will be a launching platform for new talents.”
As for the future, Shepard says that she wants to pass the torch to the community and invite people to become ambassadors of change and to become a part of the solution by bringing the WFI Shorts Tour to their communities.
“WFI is finalizing screening locations now,” Shepard said. “Add yours to the map! Bring these films to your community and bring a forum that will entertain, inspire and motivate audience-goers to take action.”
For more information about the WFI Shorts Tour, including information about hosting your own screening and purchasing tickets, please visit its WFI site. Nov 16, 2009 by Alice Highman