Athena Film Festival – Bitch Flicks

A Joyful ‘Mavis!’ Plus Q & A with Director Jessica Edwards

Director Jessica Edwards includes plenty of the Staples’ less familiar music (which still sounds fresh and striking: I predict most people who see this documentary will quickly add a Staples Singer channel to their Spotify and Pandora selections) as well as photos and TV clips from their appearances stretching back to the 1950s. Although Pops had a smooth, clear voice, Mavis usually had the lead vocal even at the beginning. Like Amy Winehouse her style and virtuosity were already an adult’s when she was still a young teen.

Written by Ren Jender.

At one point during Mavis!, the new documentary about legendary soul singer Mavis Staples that is airing on HBO this month, we see an old clip of Staples’ father, Roebuck “Pops” Staples who founded The Staples Singers, the family group that brought fame to all of them. A host of a TV music show asks the tired question: how does he feel about performing secular music after years of performing at churches as a gospel group? With no malice or a second’s hesitation Pops answers that he thinks of the “freedom songs” they sing as exactly the same as gospel: simply “the truth.”

Watching Mavis Staples in the film, still touring at 75, after more than 60 years on the road (she remarks about one of their early records that no one could believe a petite 13-year-old girl was the lead singer: they thought her strong, low voice was a man’s) we can’t help noticing she seems to have inherited both Pops’ good nature (though band members tell us she lets them know when she finds their performances lacking) and his certainty. Her band, now made up of white musicians decades younger than she is, her older sister, Yvonne, and a woman in her late thirties/early forties with a nose ring in a T-shirt that reads “Black Weirdo,” still performs an a cappella gospel song to warm up before going onstage.

Director Jessica Edwards includes plenty of the Staples’ less familiar music — which still sounds fresh and striking: I predict most people who see this documentary will quickly add the Staples Singers to their music selections — as well as photos and TV clips from their appearances stretching back to the 1950s. Pops had a smooth, clear voice, but Mavis usually had the lead vocal even at the beginning. Like Amy Winehouse, her style and virtuosity were already an adult’s when she was a young teen.

Although the Staples family was based in Chicago, Pops had been part of the Great Migration from the South. He grew up in the same part of Mississippi as some of the great blues legends who influenced his own style of guitar playing, making it distinct from other gospel musicians. In the 1950s and 1960s, rock and roll radio stations played gospel music after midnight, which Bob Dylan explains, is how he discovered the Staples Singers, as did other white musicians of the era. Some of the songs we hear with Pops on lead have more than a passing resemblance to more familiar radio hits from white rock and roll bands in the 1960s. Levon Helm, of The Band, tells us their own harmonies were directly influenced by The Staples Singers.

When the Staples and Dylan appeared on the same stages (including on an early TV musical omnibus) Mavis and Dylan had a puppy-love romance — and Pops expanded their repertoire. After first hearing “Blowin’ in the Wind” he told Mavis and the rest of the family, “We can sing that song.” He was particularly struck by the lyric, “How many roads must a man walk down/ Before you can call him a man?” When Pops, a man who had fled the Jim Crow South when Black men were still called “boy” sang those words, they were especially poignant.

Pops also attached the group early on with the Civil Rights Movement, becoming an acolyte of Martin Luther King in 1955, at a time when one of the white experts interviewed tells us, “Very few gospel singers took an interest in Civil Rights.” Pops began to write songs inspired by the movement including “Why Am I Treated So Bad?” one of Dr. King’s favorites.

Like a lot of other performers with a similar background, Mavis traded an audience that was once nearly entirely Black (as in a terrific clip we see of the Staples Singers live performance in Watts Stax, a filmed all-star concert and fundraiser for the pre-gentrified Oakland of the early 1970s) to one that is now, we see at appearances like the Newport Folk Festival, nearly entirely white. Mavis still mentions Dr. King to them and seems to see her continued performing as a way of elevating those who hear her music. She tells them and us, “I’ve weathered the storms. I’ve fallen down and I’ve gotten back up.”

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When Mavis! was shown as part of the Athena Film Festival, the director of the film, Jessica Edwards, fielded questions from the audience. The following is a transcript of that Q and A, edited for concision and clarity.

What was it about this story that made you want to make this film?

Jessica Edwards: It was really Mavis that made me want to see this movie and therefore make this movie. I had seen her perform in Brooklyn, in Prospect Park a couple of years ago and I had known a little about this soul-era Stax stuff, but I went to the show that night and I left feeling rejuvenated. When I went home to watch the documentary, so I could learn more about her, there wasn’t one.

Can you tell us more about what you learned about her as you were making the movie?

JE: The incredible thing that I found about her was that her and her family really touched on almost every genre in the history of American music: anything that influenced the way that music is made now. She influenced all these makers that then became paramount in terms of what American music became, like Bob Dylan. And Dylan himself has influenced so many people. You think about him listening to the family late at night and then what he became, the idea that she was so part of this fabric of music in this country.

One of the things that impressed me is that you portrayed her and her music and kind of the intersection of music, culture and politics. Was that a conscious decision on your part or was it just an outgrowth of who Mavis was?

JE: You know the Civil Rights Movement didn’t end for Mavis in 1968. For her, the Civil Rights Movement is now. For me music is culture. I’m not a very religious person, but music is a spiritual experience for me and always has been. The idea that music can facilitate change in a way that some other things can’t, that was really solidified for me. The message of Dr. King was not completely mainstream in the mid-fifties and Mavis and her family were instrumental in terms of this grass-roots movement of going from church to church to church in the South and bringing these messages of equality.

How much was Mavis involved the making of this film?

JE: Mavis didn’t see the film until it was finished. In fact, it took her a while to get on board. She was like, “I’ve been talking to the press forever. I don’t need to do this. Like, nobody wants to hear about me.” But when we started to talk to her about the kind of film we wanted to make and how it really was not only her legacy, but the legacy of her family and the legacy of their music, she came around. She trusted us. I offered to come to Chicago and screen it for her before it was screened publicly. And she said, “Nah, I’m gonna watch it with the people.” Then she sat in the theater with a thousand people and watched it for the first time. That was a little nerve-wracking for some of us. But she loved it. The first time she watched it, she doesn’t really remember what it was. All these memories just kept flooding back. I sat directly behind her, and the first time Bob Dylan comes on the screen and he says all these wonderful things about the family, she just started giggling like she was 15 years old. She watched it more recently. We screened it in Chicago a week or so ago and she came up to me after and she was like, “I finally saw the movie, this time. It was really good!”

I have a question about process from the inspiration to okay, now how do I get this to really happen?

JE: This movie took about two and a half years to make which in documentary-land is incredibly fast. It’s like a snap of the fingers. And basically, once she agreed I went and visited her and we would drop in on her on the road. We would film the show. We would spend some time backstage. And then we would go back to Chicago when she was home. The way I structured the shooting was, we did it for her 75th year. Otherwise I would still be shooting. The woman is touring all the time and I’d never end the movie. The movie is also self-financed. Luckily, we have HBO as a broadcast partner. They’re like a fairy godmother of documentary films.

I almost like cried at the moment where Mavis is listening to the song Pops played and she’s getting choked up. How are you able to get such intimate, candid moments without feeling like you’re getting in the way?

JE: I think people who’ve made a hundred films will have the same question. This is my first feature length film and I always feel nervous in those situations, but my DP, he was, like, ruthless, so, as nervous as I was, he’d be like, “Just keep filming.” I hired people who have done this way more than I have, so I could learn so much. So the next time I do this, I won’t ever cut either. Whether you’re filming something that’s too intimate or not, ultimately you can make the decision of whether you’re going to use it later. It’s much better to have it, because you don’t know whether you’re going to need it. In that particular scene, I was sitting underneath the soundboard. I wanted them to talk to each other, not talk to me. I knew that I’d have to ask them questions at the same time to get them talking. I was crying my eyes out, bawling under the sound board like a baby. And as soon as we got that scene, I knew that we had a movie.

I just wondered if you could speak to the finances of the movie, how did it work out for you? And what’s next for you?

JE: I have a production company and the executive producer of this film is my partner, like my baby-daddy partner. We work together on a lot of stuff, so he raised a lot of money through commercial work basically while I was shooting. So he would work on commercial jobs which would pay for this film. It opens the question of sustainability especially if you live someplace expensive like Brooklyn. But I knew, if we felt this passionate about Mavis and because she has so many fans, people would want to see the movie. We’ve had such a wonderful response. I feel like we made the right decision to be late on our rent a couple of months. Now I’m doing a lot of work with 360 Video. I really am enjoying the challenge of making something really short and non-linear. There are a couple of documentaries in the pipe, but for every one you make you have to pitch ten, so I think I’m, like, at six. It’ll hit any minute.

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published inThe Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

In ‘Difret,’ Executive Producer Angelina Jolie Puts Spotlight on Horrors of Child Marriages

Angelina Jolie executive produced ‘Difret,’ a drama based on the true story of a 14-year-old Ethiopian girl, Hirut, who is kidnapped in her rural village by a much older man and kept captive as his future bride. When Hirut, played beautifully by Tizita Hagere, fights back and accidentally kills her captor, she faces the death sentence, as dictated by tribal law.

Difret producer and director at the 2015 Athena Film Festival

This is a guest post by Paula Schwartz.

Angelina Jolie executive produced Difret, a drama based on the true story of a 14-year-old Ethiopian girl, Hirut, who is kidnapped in her rural village by a much older man and kept captive as his future bride. When Hirut, played beautifully by Tizita Hagere, fights back and accidentally kills her captor, she faces the death sentence, as dictated by tribal law.

The abduction of young girls by much older men who make them their wives is a cultural tradition in rural villages in this part of the world, as is the death penalty for Hirut’s so-called crime. But a tough, steely lawyer, Maeza (Meron Getnet), from the women’s legal aide practice takes on the case and fights for her client’s life. The movie also works well as a thriller and procedural courtroom drama with twists and heart-pounding reversals. That the story is based on a riveting true story gives the movie a timeliness and urgency that makes it understandable why Jolie, who directed In the Land of Blood and Honey, about the plight of women abused and raped during the Bosnian War, has attached her name and support to the film.

Difret is written and directed by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, who was born in Ethiopia, but raised in Virginia, and is produced by Mehret Mandefro. The two married while shooting the film in Ethiopia. Difret closed the Athena Film Festival in February, and the director and producer brought along their two-year-old son and seven-week baby to the screening and Q&A moderated by Athena Film Festival co-founder Melissa Silverstein.

Following are selected highlights from the Q&A.

How did you get the movie made?

Mehret Mandefro: I’ve been working on it for over five years. I joined this project in 2009 … I started this project in 2007 technically. Zeresenay is a classically trained filmmaker and went to film school. I’m actually very non-traditional in my background. I’m a physician by training … I came to film through the back door. And about five years ago, I was speaking at a health and human rights conference, and Zeresenay was pitching his script to some NGOs.

He had exhausted his possibilities in Hollywood. The script was actually incredibly strong, so people had offered to buy it in Hollywood, but they wanted it done in English. They also wanted Hollywood actors, and Zeresenay had a very specific vision of the film to do it in Addis Ababa, cast it locally, which meant it took longer. But thankfully, when he brought it to me, I read the script, and it was such a page turner, and I was already very interested working on kind of women’s issues that I was like, “Oh, I know how to raise money for this. We’re going to do it.” So I actually started. I was producing the film before I married him, before we had babies and all that, so we joke that we had twins actually … I was pregnant with Lucas when we went into production, and Mena came along this year.

Difret producer and director at the 2015 Athena Film Festival

What was the inspiration for this script?

Z: By chance really. I met Meaza Ashenafi by chance … In 2005, I was in Ethiopia working on a documentary, and I was at a friend’s house, and her brother said, “You should make a film about my sister.” Like yeah, sure, why not? I didn’t know who she was and didn’t know about that organization that she started. By the time I met her, she’d helped more than 30,000 people, women and children … She was a judge and left her seat because she thought that the country was ready to move forward in human rights, so she started working with the constitution commission … From a filmmaker’s standpoint, that is a very interesting character, and you can already imagine what kind of difficulties that she’s going to face, so I was already locked in on that and then started reading about the organization, and it was amazing, so I found this story, and I left home in May 1996 to go to school, and this particular case happened literally four or five months after I left.

And it was also the organization’s biggest case then or since, and it kind of put the organization on the map, but it also was the first time that the country as a whole had a conversation about tradition, and that was my entry point. Another very strong subject matter to tackle is this tradition. My true point is always the characters and the struggles that they face.

Shooting in Ethiopia must have been intense, especially since you shot in some of the rural villages. Describe shooting some of those scenes.

Z: When we were doing the abduction scene with the horses, we rented the horses from the village and we had particular riders because we wanted to do it in a certain way, and also, there were insurance issues, and we didn’t want to be liable, and then so they went, “You guys are doing it wrong.” So they literally wanted to get all the guys, the professional riders that we brought from the city to ride the horses, and they wanted to show us themselves how it’s done.

So they showed you how they abduct girls?

Z: Right. See you have to understand because in their context, in that traditional context, it’s not something that’s bad. It is part of life. It happens there, and so it’s part of who they are.

How did you find your female leads? The little girl never acted before, so how did you guide her through the most emotional scenes?

Z: The lawyer, played by Meron Getnet, is a classically trained actor and had been in 10 or 11 movies before we got her, and she had two or three television shows and was taking her masters in theater … With Tizita Hagere, we got lucky. Two weeks before we shot, we had almost given up, and we weren’t going to shoot at all if we didn’t have the right person to play her because she is the core of the film. She has the emotional trigger that goes on through the film, and so, it’s too much to ask for a young person to play that, right? So you kind of have to find that person already born with those elements. She was 13 when we cast her. And I knew that I didn’t want to overwhelm her, so I didn’t give her the script. So we started working on a daily basis. And I would tell her exactly what happened for that scene. And so I’d tell her what happened before it, and then what’s going to happen after. So we would have a conversation, not about her, but about the character, Hirut. That is a real person. So she kind of felt like she got to know her as a friend, so she always talked about the part as a third person, so it’s not about her. She’s actually emulating somebody else’s story, which helped us because you can see when you talk to her. Most of the takes were first or second takes.

How did Angelina Jolie happen to become an executive producer for the film?

M: After really working hard to try and raise the money, we actually had the finishing cut and it was a month before we were going to premiere it at Sundance. And you know we were sitting there, and there were all these amazing films that get made and don’t really get out there, and so we were talking with one of the executive producers, and said, “Wouldn’t it be great to try and, like, get somebody,” and actually our executive producer was like, “You know, I know someone who knows Angelina; this is so up her alley, let’s try it.” Me and Z were like, “Whatever.” We were so tired at that point.

We sent the cut of the film and literally didn’t think anything of it and literally like a week later, she called us. We were sitting on a porch, and she called Z and was like, “Hi, it’s Angie. I love your film.” You know? And she’s been amazing. Like kind of opening doors and making sure. You know, a foreign language film about Africa. I mean this is a very hard market in America to try and get this film seen, so having her name totally helped in terms of, like, helping profile and just getting it known. She’s actually been a wonderful ambassador. She took it with her to the Global Seminar on Sexual Violence last June in England and had a screening with dignitaries in the U.N. She’s on the cover of Ms. Magazine this month actually talking about our film and the campaign that we’re doing about child marriage, so she’s been a true angel and so supportive of the film. It’s been awesome.

Difret opened October 23 at Lincoln Plaza in Manhattan.

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Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from The Artist. Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.

Review and Q & A: ‘Out in the Night’ and the Myth of “Killer Lesbians”

At February’s Athena Film Festival I saw the documentary ‘Out in the Night’ (showing this Monday, June 22 on PBS’s POV) about a group of queer women who defend themselves against a man who harassed them in the street. The film shows newspaper clips referring to the seven women, friends from Newark out for a night in the West Village (historically the queer part of NYC) as a “lesbian wolfpack” and “killer lesbians”–as if groups of queer women habitually roam city streets and take revenge on men who give them shit. The group of us ‘Bitch Flicks’ writers sitting together at the screening said simply, “We wish.”

When Basic Instinct came out in the early ’90s I joined a group of queer women in protest. We handed out flyers and spoiled the movie by telling moviegoers in line, “Catherine did it!” One woman I knew dressed for the protest as the vampire lesbian, a staple in both good films (The Hunger) and bad ones (Dracula’s Daughter, Blood and Roses, Daughters of the Darkness–the list is endless). She later went on to direct the “making of” section of the DVD for Basic Instinct, detailing in it some of the ambiguity she felt, even at the time, because killer queer women, like the ones in Instinct, are both harmful (making us seem even more scary and “unnatural” to straight people) and kind of cool (women who kill are so outside the norm of what films allow women to do that we can’t help admiring them).

At February’s Athena Film Festival I saw the documentary Out in the Night (showing this Monday, June 22 on PBS’s POV) about a group of queer women who defend themselves against a man who harassed them in the street. The film shows newspaper clips referring to the seven women, friends from Newark out for a night in the West Village (historically the queer part of NYC) as a “lesbian wolfpack” and “killer lesbians”–as if groups of queer women habitually roam city streets and take revenge on men who give them shit. The group of us Bitch Flicks writers sitting together at the screening said simply, “We wish.”

But mythology, whether it comes from the tabloids or from movies is a powerful force. Though we see throughout the film, in incisive interviews with the women (one of whom says “If we had chose to call 911 instead of defending ourselves, one of us would be dead”) and blurry footage from a security camera (with helpful clarification from the filmmakers) the group were legitimately defending themselves (one woman lost a chunk of her hair, including some scalp to the man). But the combination of race (all the women are Black), sexuality, and gender identity (at least two of the group are gender-nonconforming) means that the seven were the ones arrested and charged with “gang assault” and even attempted murder.

What follows is the story after the tabloids have lost interest, but is as compelling as a tightly scripted thriller. A racist, homophobic and barely functioning justice system convicts those who plead “not guilty” (these four, the “NJ4” are the focus of the film) and we see them trying to hold it together in prison talking to their supportive families (one of the women, Renata, has a little boy who says, “Mommy, can you do me a favor? If someone tries to fight you, can you walk away from it now?”) and to queer, gender-nonconforming director Blair Dorosh-Walther. The film is beautifully shot by the director of photography Daniel Patterson; the sunshine in some of the outdoor interviews with members of the NJ4 offers a welcome respite from the enraging succession of events. And we do get to see each of the four eventually out of prison: three of them traveled with the film to discuss it after screenings.

RenataTerrainNight — Terrain and Renata after their release

The following is a transcription, edited for concision and clarity, from the audience Q and A with three of the NJ4 and director Blair Dorosh-Walther after the screening of Out in the Night at Athena.

I’m sure the discrimination that you all face and that anyone who has been to prison doesn’t end when you leave, so just let us know what it’s been like moving forward after prison.

Patreese Johnson:. Since I was the last one to go home it’s still fresh. I came home last August 2013. I’ve been home a year. I miss school. I finally got a job. It’s seasonal. I had to wait around for the season to come around to get a job. Since I got a felony it’s been really hard to find an occupation unless you know somebody who knows somebody. It’s hard to get assistance from the government.

Terrain Dandridge: I came home in ’08 so I’ve been home for quite some time now. When I first came home I went straight to California, San Francisco, with a support system out there did The Dyke March and saw Angela Davis.

Renata Hill: I came home in April of 2010 and I do have a felony on my record and it has been really hard. I mean I’ve had two jobs since I came home, but it was a struggle to get them as well as a struggle to keep them. I had to fight for custody of my son. We went through the shelter system because as Patreese mentioned it’s really hard to find housing with a felony especially once they see “gang assault”, they just automatically assume the worst. I moved into my own apartment the end of August, early September. And April is my last month on parole so I’ll no longer belong to the state of NY and I’m in school.

You all seem really comfortable in the film, being filmed and I’m wondering what the relationship building process was like between you and Blair.

Renata It wasn’t as easy as it may look. Blair was really gentle coming into the picture. Like she explained to us her feelings behind it, the media and how it made her feel. She did all the necessary things, like she got to know our family members. She wasn’t somebody who wanted to just come in and wanted to know the story. She was the outside person advocating for us the hardest. She became like a family member to us. And she also, throughout the process, when things got really difficult to talk about, she respected our privacy, She gave us our space. Now she can’t get rid of us.

Patreese: She was another support system the we can rely on, and she never let us down to this day. It was easy to always talk to Blair. It wasn’t all about just work and getting the story. And she got to know us first before she started doing any filming or really got any type of question in.

Blair Dorosh-Walther: I found out about the fight initially the day after it happened. The Post, The Daily News, The New York Times all had articles coming out the day after. There was a lot of discussion happening in the greater LGBT community, in the West Village, the article in the New York Times caused me to get invested in their case because it’s the Times, not a tabloid paper. So I got involved as an activist. There were a lot of community meetings in the West Village. At first we didn’t know what happened so the conversation was around the media attention and the police. My background’s in film, but I didn’t think a white director should tell this story. And so I didn’t and was an activist for the first two years. In 2008 when their appeals were approaching, that’s when I went to them, the family members and their attorneys to see if there was interest in doing a documentary film. So we did start this long, slow process of interviewing each other, getting to know each other. I wanted to make sure they felt comfortable with me and could ask me the same questions I was asking them, but could also feel comfortable answering truthfully. We’ve been working on the film together for close to seven years.

You said as a white person you didn’t feel comfortable telling this story, why is that? Also, what are the next steps? Is there a lawsuit, civil suit or does this just stop with the film?

Blair: It’s not that I didn’t feel comfortable, it’s that I didn’t feel a white director should do it. And I think that white directors have a long history of telling African American stories through a white perspective and it’s really problematic. So that’s something that, as a filmmaker, I kept questioning and kind of checking myself and also the rest of our crew, how my race impacts the power dynamics of our storytelling. About any potential legal recourse, there’s not really anything that can happen. Additionally the guy did sue each of them. I didn’t put it in the film: he sued and because of the way their appeals turned out Patreese and Renata did have to settle, so they do owe him money.

Patreese: Honestly, I didn’t see racism in our cases. A lot of supporters came to me and said, “You’re being discriminated against. I’m telling you this wouldn’t have happened to you if this was a straight, white woman.” I thought that type of racism or discrimination was dead, but obviously it’s not. If Blair did not come to us and ask us to tell our side of the story I wouldn’t be sitting here tonight.

Renata: I’m pretty sure she experienced the same thing that we experienced on a daily basis with being treated different because of her sexuality, so that alone puts her on the same page as us. Like Patreese said, had she not come to us, doing this documentary you guys wouldn’t be watching it, because nobody else came to us, Ebony magazine, Jet magazine. Nobody came to us to get our side of the story.

Patreese: Those magazines still haven’t come to us to get our side of the story so that says a whole lot too.

Obviously the content of the film was incredibly compelling as were the people and the story, but I was really struck by the look of it and I wondered if you could talk about how you came to it.

Blair: Daniel Patterson was the director of photography. He’s been working on the film since day three. We talked a long time about how we wanted the look of the film, particularly the interviews with the women how we wanted them to be more intimate because the media attention was so outrageous. We wanted to make sure their voices were as validated as possible. Daniel Patterson is also a protege of Bradford Young who just shot Selma and is revolutionizing the way Black people are shot in film, so a part of that came through.

One of the things I wanted to address was how beautifully and positively you all are taking the experience and how supportive your families were. Talk a little bit about your life and what is it about each of your personalities that takes this incredibly complicated experience and finds light and beauty.

Terrain: Well my mom was very supportive throughout the whole situation, for all seven and then when it happened for all four, she was there for all four.

Renata: The most support I had was through my Mom, at the beginning. And I lost her early on into it, so after that and during the entire time Mama Kimma (Terrain’s mother) was always there. That was the first call I made when I lost my Mom. She’s still there.

Patreese: How did I push through? My family. I suffered from depression a lot, so that was very hard. A lot of our supporters who wrote us got us through it. When they wrote and shared their stories, that definitely lifted my spirits. And I leaned on my religion and my friends. Renata helped me. Coming to these screenings and seeing everybody here definitely helps. Because everybody’s like, “Look, I just saw this film with you and it was amazing.” I’m not just existing anymore. I’m really living. We went (with the film) to the conference called “Creating Change.” It showed me that I’m here to start making changes so this doesn’t happen to anybody else. So many young people and old people who got life and are not coming home because of violence that was done to them and they were defending themselves and no one is hearing their stories.

What’s next for each of you?

Renata: Right now I’m in my second semester studying human services.

Terrain: I’ve been working since I came home, looking forward to going to school to be a respiratory specialist.

Patreese: I’m a straight-up advocate. Everybody is separating all these issues that we have “Black Lives Matter,” “Trans Lives Matter.” I’m tired of the separation. Right now that’s where my passion is at. I don’t know what I want to be. I do want to own my own business. I want to be a physical therapist. I know I can’t work in a hospital, because of the felony.

Blair: We are working on our outreach plan right now with organizations to use the film as a tool in their campaigns. We’re also partnered with the United Nations trying to decriminalize homosexuality worldwide. There are 77 sites around the world. I work with local organizations on the ground. These four need to be honored, both for defending themselves on the street and in the courtroom for pleading “not guilty,” because they were facing 25 years.

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

‘Dreamcatcher’: Bringing Kindness to the Conversation About Sex Work

Because Myers-Powell spent 25 years as a “prostitute” (she does not use the term “sex worker” or “sex work,” perhaps because the women we see don’t use these terms either) on the same streets where she now does outreach, she understands the complexity of these women’s lives. She tells one young woman (one of the few white women she encounters) on a deserted-looking stretch of road, “This is one of the most dangerous spots,” and that even though she liked to think of herself as tough back in the day she never would have been there at night.

Written by Ren Jender.

“I used to be right out here too,” says Brenda Myers-Powell, the focus of the new documentary, Dreamcatcher (directed by Kim Loginotto, who won an award at the most recent Sundance for the film) as she and her coworker wind their vehicle through parts of their native Chicago that no tourist guide includes.

Over 20 years ago I was doing similar work to Myers-Powell’s, distributing condoms and talking with sex workers who worked the streets in my city. The emphasis at that job was safer sex education and HIV testing, but sometimes our clients needed more. One woman asked for and received a ride to detox (though we found out she left the next morning) and after we handed a scared-looking, visibly pregnant woman our condoms and information the driver did a U-turn and put a card for a treatment center (where our outreach van had its office) into her hand. Months afterward we saw that she had become one of the clients there.

When I hear debates about sex work and human trafficking these days I think of that woman and realize neither side would have done her much good. Some “empowered” sex workers would have thought her exploitation and drug addiction–along with the homelessness and violence she might have faced after leaving sex work, weren’t any of their concern. And worldwide efforts to stop “human trafficking” often assume no woman would willingly choose to do sex work; though people have no trouble understanding the difference in other kinds of human trafficking–a woman who works for wages as a maid and is free to quit is different from a maid who never receives her pay and is beaten if she tries to leave. They also ignore the danger law enforcement poses to sex workers themselves. Raids and arrests are, unsurprisingly, not very effective forms of outreach.

“That’s why I hardly ever come out here,” says the young woman, not entirely convincingly.

Myers-Powell asks her to have coffee, and we see the two, throughout the film, develop a relationship. When I saw Dreamcatcher at the opening night of the recent Athena Film Festival, Myers-Powell told the audience after the screening, “The first time I ask them: what do they want? And probably nobody has ever asked them that before.”

We see the cycle of sexual exploitation of some of these women starts in childhood. In a school-based “at-risk” group of girls that Myers-Powell facilitates, every girl in the room includes rape at an early age, often by someone in her own household, as part of her history, just as Myers-Powell does. When we see her speaking to another group she says, “I’m here to tell each and every one of you today,” and here her face softens, “it is not your fault.”

Myers-Powell has also worked to clear her own criminal record, as well as that of other women, successfully arguing that trafficking shouldn’t result in its survivors being charged with breaking the law. When she announces to the group that she no longer has a record she does a little dance in celebration.

Dreamcatcher is the foundation Myers-Powell’s co-founded; she told the audience at Athena that she started it in 2000, with no money, doing the outreach with her friend in a Ford Focus. Myers-Powell is glamorous (at one point she shows off her impressive wig collection), perceptive, and witty (at Athena she mentioned being directed to “‘social services,’ who are never very social”), but most striking is her unfailing kindness to the women and girls she encounters in the film, including parents we in the audience might judge more harshly. Even when she finds out one girl is making the mistake she herself has made, becoming pregnant at a very young age, Myers-Powell, without a wig or makeup, talking on the phone from her bedroom, is more resigned and sad than angry, but still not defeated.

DreamcatcherMothers — Brenda and the biological mother of her young son

When I worked in human services, many of the people who worked alongside me were, after their own troubled histories, trying to “give back,” but most of them couldn’t hide their frustration and disappointment with clients, like a mother who is hardest on the child who reminds her of herself at that age. Myers-Powell seems to bring none of this baggage to her work . When she speaks to an obviously impaired in-law (whose young son she is raising) and tells her how much she enjoys talking together when the woman is not high, she doesn’t have any edge in her voice. She means it.

In her remarks after the film, Myers-Powell said that she uses her experience to help others by asking herself, “What would’ve saved me?” She credited the people who had been kind to her when she was hospitalized (after a john beat her up and dragged her body from a car, scraping the skin off her face): “A lady doctor…would kick it with me every day. She said, ‘You’re funny. You’re smart. You’re beautiful,’ And I knew I wasn’t beautiful.”

When she got out of the hospital she went to Genesis House, of which she said, “It was a home…And I hadn’t had a home in years…I spent two years there and when I left I was a diva. I was ready for the world.” Now she’s trying to give others the same chance.

In a lot of ways the women and girls Myers-Powell does outreach to are the ones we, as a culture, pay the least attention to: they’re poor, often victims of abuse and usually Black or Latina. I couldn’t help noticing at the fancy, opening-night screening how many people around me, mostly men, tried to distract themselves from the women and girls in the film, either by talking loudly or, in one extreme case, showing a video on his phone to his seatmates, even after I told him more than once, through gritted teeth, to stop doing so. Let’s hope this film encourages others to not just look the other way.

Dreamcatcher will be on Showtime next Friday, March 27, 9 p.m. ET/PT and will be On Demand March 28 – May 22

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMPXhevhw0U” iv_load_policy=”3″]

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

‘Below the Line’: Women Cinematographers’ Panel at Athena (Part 1)

Caryn James: There are some really appalling numbers about women cinematographers in the industry. In a study done last year by Celluloid Ceiling for the year 2013, of the 250 top-grossing films, only 3 percent had women cinematographers which was 1 percent more than the previous year and for some reason a decrease from 1998. And just to get a sense of the range here, 6 percent of those films were directed by women, 17 percent were edited by women, 25 percent had women producers. But only 3 percent of women cinematographers in that group. Why do you think that is? Are there historical reasons for that ? What is going on?

(L-R) Kirsten Johnson, Nadia Hallgren, Reed Morano

Written by Ren Jender.

The following is a transcription (edited for concision and clarity) of the first part of the panel “Below the Line” held Saturday, Feb. 7, 2015 at the Athena Film Festival. The panel featured women cinematographers Kirsten Johnson (Derrida, Pray The Devil Back To Hell, Citizenfour), Reed Morano (The Skeleton Twins, Frozen River) and Nadia Hallgren (Citizen Koch, Searching for Sugar Man) speaking with Indiewire critic Caryn James

Caryn James: There are some really appalling numbers about women cinematographers in the industry. In a study done last year by Celluloid Ceiling for the year 2013, of the 250 top-grossing films, only 3 percent had women cinematographers which was 1 percent more than the previous year and for some reason a decrease from 1998. And just to get a sense of the range here, 6 percent of those films were directed by women, 17 percent were edited by women, 25 percent had women producers. But only 3 percent of women cinematographers in that group. Why do you think that is? Are there historical reasons for that ? What is going on?

Kirsten Johnson: I was really excited to see that study. But I thought, “That doesn’t really apply to me.” Because the 250 top-grossing movies obviously we know what those movies are and there aren’t that many women. But I just came back from Sundance where I was on the US Documentary jury and you know, there are two women programmers at the Sundance Festival and I was on this wonderful jury. I did statistics on the US Documentary this year at Sundance and there were listed 19 cinematographers who were men, one cinematographer who was a woman. I went back through the numbers and out of 16 films several of them were codirected. So there were 15 men and there were eight women directors. In two of those cases the women did not list themselves as cinematographers even though they shot their own films: which is this interesting thing of a devaluation of the role and also an expectation of women in the documentary field: “I don’t have any money. I have to shoot this film myself. But I’m not really good at this. Sometime when I get some money I’ll hire someone else.” I think that’s often the case with women documentary directors who shoot their own work and certainly don’t consider it a profession.

'Pray The Devil Back To Hell' (Kirsten Johnson, cinematographer) — *Pray The Devil Back To Hell* (Kirsten Johnson, cinematographer)

The number that really made me sad was the subject matter of the films. So of the 16 films there were only three that had major women characters. One of those was the mother, Lucia McBath, of Jordan Davis who was shot, so she was one of an ensemble of people featured in the film. The other was How to Dance in Ohio, an ensemble piece about teenagers with autism. A couple of those teenagers were girls. And the third one was Hot Girls Wanted which was a study of amateur porn so the women who had the presence on the screen were 18-year-olds being exploited by the amateur porn industry. The rest of those 16 films, including the ones made by women, were all about men.

Caryn James; How do you account for that? Even at Sundance where you’d expect things to be more equitable. Are there historical reasons why it’s tougher for women to break into that area?

Reed Morano: I don’t know. I feel like expectations have been set up by the industry. Also it could be subconscious thinking. I mean just speaking from having made my own feature with a woman lead: it took a long time to get financing but even a longer time to get a male lead that would play second to her. I think maybe there’s a fear: you want to get the movie made, and it’s harder to get it made with a female central character.

Kirsten Johnson: I think we could break this down into several different categories. The world Reed is from is a primarily fictional world and Nadia and I are in documentary.

Caryn James: Well how did you all become cinematographers in the first place? Nadia, what was your impulse for becoming a cinematographer? Was it something you always wanted to do? Or just floundered into, the way most of us do in our careers?

Nadia Hallgren: Well I started out in still photography, black and white photography, as a kid. Someone gave me a video camera and then I started to make my own films. People seemed to respond to them. I ended up making a short film that screened at a local film festival in the Bronx, where I grew up, and I met Michael Moore’s longtime producing partner. And she liked my film. We talked and I told her I wanted to shoot films and she ended up hiring me and promised me if there was ever a chance to shoot on the film she would give it to me. And she did. That’s also how I met Kirsten who was one of DPs (director of photography) on Fahrenheit 9/11. Before we wrapped shooting I told her I wanted to be a cinematographer. I wanted her to teach me stuff and she did. It was through encounters with women that gave me an opportunity. You realize you are going to be part of this boys’ club. There were plenty of times when I was in vans with ten guys who were talking about football and I couldn’t really relate. Finding your way to other women who are supportive is key: other cinematographers, directors, producers willing to bring you in.

Oscar Winner 'Searching For Sugar Man' (cinematographer: Nadia Hallgren) — Oscar Winner *Searching For Sugar Man* (cinematographer: Nadia Hallgren)

Caryn James: So how does that work if there aren’t all that many women in the field? Who are the people who helped you along? Who are the cinematographers who mentored you?

Kirsten Johnson: I went to film school in France. I was encouraged to go into the camera department since there was no way they were going to let an American into the directing department. I discovered cinematography. I discovered I love the camera. I moved to New York and I didn’t know anybody. I was working for the Shoah foundation interviewing Holocaust survivors. Those were all male cinematographers. One of the things in this field is: you have to fun to be with because you’re going on long trips and going to be spending long hours with people. It’s like the most important part of the job. If people want to hang out with you, they’ll hire you. And one of the other things that I learned, maybe before becoming a cinematographer, when I made this choice after college to move to Senegal because I was interested in African cinema. And I didn’t know anything, but I wanted to do it so badly. I bluffed things. I have tried to mentor folks because there was nobody to mentor me except for women directors.

When I moved to New York, there were five women who were cinematographers, like I could name all of them. They were all busy working . None of them had time to talk to me. I met with women directors like Barbara Kopple, who wanted to work with women and wanted to work with me. But I didn’t yet have that much experience. Going to Senegal and not knowing anything taught me to try. You can’t study cinematography. You learn it by doing it. And for some reason many more young men are so cocky about this, like, “I can do this. I can hold this camera.” So I started saying that too. You just say “yes” and then you learn it on the job.

Caryn James: That really is the kind of thing that speaks to the kind of confidence women should have in general. Is there something specific about working with the camera? One of the things that might have been historically factored in here was the idea that these poor, little women can’t lug around big, heavy equipment, so they shouldn’t be doing this, which is not so much the case anymore. The other thing is a lot of it is technical. You need to know science and things like lenses: not the “girly” thing to do. Is that a factor in keeping women out of that area more than other areas?

Kirsten Johnson: Well also, when you’re on a feature film you have to run a crew and most of that crew are men. So you’re the boss of men. Whereas working in documentary you’re doing it all yourself. You have to have some kind of mastery over the actual camera. But you can sort of practice that and get that under your belt. But I think in the case of features…

'The Skeleton Twins' (cinematographer: Reed Morano, ASC) — *The Skeleton Twins* (cinematographer: Reed Morano, ASC)

Reed Morano: You run a crew of men and also they’ll find out really fast if you don’t know what you’re doing. The only way to run a crew successfully is if you have their respect and they have confidence in you and you know what you’re talking about. You don’t have to overprove yourself, but the things you ask for have to make sense. You’re not running people around in circles. You know what you want. You’re not waffling. You make immediate decisions. I’m about to do a show right now for HBO, a pilot, with my key grip and gaffer who are probably a good 20 to 30 years older than me and they’ve been in the union forever and probably were making movies long before I was. And they’re awesome. They totally respect me and are psyched to do it.

Caryn James: How did you get there?

Reed Morano: Well personally all the films I had to do before I got into the union were with friends and peers, male or female. And you learn how to work with guys. I came up as a key grip as well which is typically, that’s a very male-dominated job. Because it’s basically heavy lifting. I remember the first time I was gripping and I had to receive a 4 x 8 feet sheet of plywood from a guy on top of a truck. I was like, “I don’t really know if I can do this. Okay, I’m doing it. And I’m not wearing (work) gloves because I’m a girl.” It was like a learning curve. And like you were saying, people have to like you.

Caryn James: What has been the turning point in your career? Has there been a moment when you really got some help or made some breakthrough that made you think “I can do this”?

Nadia Hallgren: I think the moment comes and comes. I think it’s an ongoing evolution. Being a cinematographer, every new experience kind of does that for me. I’m always surprised at what I learn and that that teaches me something about myself.

Caryn James: Did you go to film school?

Nadia Hallgren: No

Caryn James: So how did you know what to do?

Nadia Hallgren: I would stare at magazines. And I loved composition. I didn’t know why or what I was doing. It was just very attractive to me. Then I got into a photography program, a community program in the Bronx. I still didn’t understand what I was doing, but a lot of it was just watching movies, talking to people about movies, trying to understand what was happening in front of me and just doing.

Caryn James: Reed, did you go to film school?

Reed Morano: Yeah, I went to NYU and I went with the intention of writing and directing. And then when I got there, just from the very first shoot as a PA (production assistant) I just couldn’t stop watching what the DP was doing. I was like, “That must be the most amazing job,” because you make everyone see what you see. You control that. I asked everyone: to become a DP what do I have to do? And the only advice was: take every technical class. Everyone at NYU wants to be a director, so no one wants to take technical classes. Then I would tell everyone, “I want to shoot your movie.” They all didn’t care because they just wanted to be directing. So I shot a few. At the time I was in film school everything was pretty much shot on 16 mm or 35. It was a big, scary, cool moment, but everyone was in it together which was helpful and you came out of it with sort of a reel but not really. You get to make your mistakes with other students. The “doing” part of it for me was the most important part. I don’t think I really learned how to light until a few years after film school.

Athena Film Festival Review: ‘Althea’

You don’t have to be any kind of sports watcher to be compelled and moved by Althea’s story. It is not (though Althea herself might have wished it to be so) merely a story of athletic excellence, but a tale of race, class, and gender, of how these factors are inextricable in the United States: a story of intersectionality.

Written by Max Thornton.

“I never knew.” In a voice soft with wonder and respect, director Rex Miller expresses the sentiment with which he hopes audiences will respond to his biopic about Althea Gibson. “I never knew.”

Miller is likely to get his wish. Unless you’re a tennis buff, or (like me) you live around the corner from a statue of Althea, you may not ever have heard of her. The erroneous factoid still circulates that Arthur Ashe was the first African American to win a Grand Slam, erasing Althea’s legacy.

Statue of Althea Gibson in Branch Brook Park, Newark, NJ. Image via Wikipedia. — Statue of Althea Gibson in Branch Brook Park, Newark, NJ. Image via *Wikipedia*.

Tennis remains nearly the only sport I have voluntarily watched, but you don’t have to be any kind of sports watcher to be compelled and moved by Althea’s story. It is not (though Althea herself might have wished it to be so) merely a story of athletic excellence, but a tale of race, class, and gender, of how these factors are inextricable in the United States: a story of intersectionality.

The details of Gibson’s career – winning the French Open in 1956, with ten more Grand Slam titles to follow in the next two years – are only a Wikipedia search away. It’s both Althea’s complexities as a person and the broader social context of her life that the film portrays with grace and nuance.

As an African American woman, born in South Carolina in the 1920s, raised in Harlem, Althea might not have been expected to play tennis, of all sports. Then as now, tennis was the sport of the genteel, and it seems to have been very much the hobby of the aspirational classes. Althea began playing paddle tennis as part of the Police Athletic League, and was mentored by Black doctors who were also tennis enthusiasts.

At the time, the structures of the sport tended to exclude those who lacked an independent income, so Althea’s success was as much a matter of transcending economic and class barriers as race barriers (not, of course, that these have ever been fully separable in United States history). And yet, despite being hailed as the Jackie Robinson of tennis, she was extremely reluctant to be a civil rights figure. Althea Gibson was not particularly interested in politics; she was interested in playing excellent tennis.

Winning the hell out of Wimbledon, like a boss.

As a Black woman, of course, her life was inherently, unavoidably political. The Athena Film Festival screening of the film featured a discussion with the director, and the politics of Black womanhood were an integral part of this discussion. For much of the film, interviewees describe Althea’s toughness, her steely determination and hard edges born of a childhood playing hooky in the streets of Harlem; yet in all of the footage of Althea herself, she appears very poised, dignified, and ladylike. Black women in America are subject to stereotyping and exclusion from all sides, and have used their double and triple consciousness to make enormously important contributions to the pursuit of justice. Even a Black woman like Althea, who rejects the burden of explicitly fighting for racial and gender justice, carries within her the multiple consciousness necessary to survive in America.

A second aspect of discussion was the film’s silence regarding rumors around Althea’s sexuality. Miller explained that he consciously chose to exclude all mention of the rumors, because with so little information available (Gibson leaves, it seems, no relatives who might have been able to confirm or deny), he felt he would have been able to do little more than pander to sensationalism. Whether this was the appropriate decision or not is an open question. It is certain that Althea was married to a husband with whom she seems to have been very much in love, but it is not hard to read subtext into her close friendship with British tennis star Angela Buxton. Given that rumors did exist in Althea’s lifetime, their omission does leave a lacuna; and yet, given the meticulousness of the rest of the film and the dearth of certainty regarding Gibson’s sexuality, it is hard to fault Miller for shying away from such speculative territory.

Impoverished and forgotten, Althea Gibson planned to take her own life in the early 1990s. Her friend and tennis partner Angela Buxton galvanized the tennis world to provide financial support, and Althea lived another decade. Hopefully, this fine film will help to ensure that her legacy survives long into the future.

__________________________________________

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and tweets at @RainicornMax.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

Athena Film Festival: Jodie Foster Reflects on Need for Female Directors by Hilary Lewis at The Hollywood Reporter

Festival Encourages Women in Film to ‘Wear the Pants’ by Stuart Miller at The Wall Street Journal

Interview: ‘Girlhood’ Director Celine Sciamma on Race, Gender & the Universality of the Story by Zeba Blay at Shadow and Act

5 Fabulous Feminist Films from Sundance by Natalie Wilson at Ms. blog

“Fresh Off the Boat,” Margaret Cho & the Asian American TV Family by Amy Lam at Bitch Media

HBO Gives Greenlight to Issa Rae Comedy ‘Insecure’ by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

Film Independent Directors Close-Ups: Ava DuVernay by Jana Monji at RogerEbert.com

The Psychology of Inspirational Women: The Walking Dead’s Michonne And Carol by Dr. Janina Scarlet at The Mary Sue

That Time Sleater-Kinney Hung Out With “Broad City.” by Sarah Mirk at Bitch Media

100 Years Later, What’s The Legacy Of ‘Birth Of A Nation’? at NPR

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

The Athena Film Festival: Pushing the Conversation Forward

“We’ve been very lucky,” Silverstein says. “People have given their time to come in and share and teach, because we want to inspire people. The goal, really, is to just allow girls to dream and to believe that they could be directors and producers and writers, and for boys to see women can do this, too.” Silverstein hopes the message they take away is, “Everybody can be successful. It’s about talent. It shouldn’t be about your gender.”

This is a guest post by Josh Ralske.

The Athena Film Festival has grown more ambitious with each passing year, and this year, its fifth, is no different. The festival’s co-founders, Kathryn Kolbert of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard College, and Artistic Director Melissa Silverstein of Indiewire‘s Women and Hollywood, spoke with us about this year’s festival and the scant progress women filmmakers have made in Hollywood in recent years.

This year’s festival has gotten unprecedented media attention for its premiere of Dan Chaykin’s Rosie O’Donnell: A Heartfelt Stand Up and for Lifetime Achievement honoree Jodie Foster. The opening night film, Kim Longinotto’s Dreamcatcher, is a documentary about Brenda Myers-Powell, a former prostitute from Chicago who has turned her life around and devoted herself to helping other women and girls break free of the cycle of abuse and exploitation.

“Once I saw Dreamcatcher and I saw this amazing woman, Brenda, I just knew that it was our movie,” Silverstein tells me. “It’s just one of these stories of people that are doing amazing work in their communities that you would never see. We’re thrilled to be able to share the story at its New York premiere.”

“We’re looking for films that are inspiring and that can demonstrate positive social change in ways that demonstrate women’s agency, their ability to make a difference,” Kolbert explains, “and I think Dreamcatcher really fulfills all of those goals. It’s a particularly inspiring film, and one in which individual women have worked together to make a difference in the lives of women who have lived as prostitutes and wanted to come out of that world.”

Still from Dreamcatcher — Still from *Dreamcatcher*

Dreamcatcher‘s themes fit perfectly with the festival’s unique goals and mission. “We’re a unique festival in that we tell the stories of women in leadership roles,” Kolbert says. “We show films that are made by both men and women, as long as women are the protagonists of the story.”

As the festival’s main programmer, Silverstein works at finding a balance between “movies that have been overlooked,” and “great stuff that might have been playing at their multiplex that they missed.”

Co-Founders of the Athena Film Festival, Kathryn Kolbert and Melissa Silverstein

“What I try to do is curate a conversation,” she explains. “So I want to be able to have foreign movies, movies about women leaders in all different areas: in music, in science, in sports. It just shows the breadth and the depth of what women’s experiences are, and that’s what I try to do.”

While Silverstein is often frustrated by what studios will send to the small but steadily growing festival, sometimes she sees a film that she knows immediately they need to show. That was the case at the Berlinale last year, where she saw Athena’s Closing Night film, Difret, Ethiopian-born filmmaker Zeresenay Berhane Mehari’s drama of a teenage girl who responds violently when she’s abducted into marriage, and the bold young lawyer who takes her case. “The second I saw that movie, I knew that it had to play Athena,” Silverstein states, “and I have been like a rabid dog trying to get that movie.”

This year’s festival also includes some higher profile films, including the Centerpiece, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s underseen backstage drama, Beyond the Lights, featuring Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Minnie Driver, screening Saturday with the filmmaker, who’s receiving an award from the festival, in attendance. Filmmaker Gillian Robespierre will also be on hand for Satuday’s screening of her bluntly funny Obvious Child. The racially charged indie comedy Dear White People and Lukas Moodysson’s buoyant punk rock coming-of-age film We Are the Best! will also screen this weekend.

Then there’s actor-director-producer Foster’s well-deserved honor, the Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award. “Foster has been a quiet leader,” Silverstein says. “She’s been pushing the boundaries. She started to direct, as an actress before other actresses did that.” As an actor, Foster’s career highlights expanded Hollywood’s vision of the type of roles women could play. “The roles that she won the Academy Award for … The Accused was about gang rape, and that was in the late ’80s. That wasn’t a subject matter that was discussed at that time, and she really took that on,” Silverstein points out, “and then with Silence of the Lambs, she was really ahead of the curve. I think that’s what the Athena Film Festival wants to be, and Jodie embodies that.”

As a director, Foster hasn’t made a feature since 2011’s The Beaver, starring her embattled friend Mel Gibson. Like many talented women directors, she’s turned to the small screen, directing episodes of Netflix’s House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. She has a new feature in pre-production, Money Monster, starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts.

I asked both Kolbert and Silverstein if 2015’s successful films directed by women, including Obvious Child, Ava DuVernay’s Selma, Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, and Amma Asante’s Belle, which opened the festival last year, offer cause for optimism. I pointed out that Michelle MacLaren had been hired to direct the upcoming DC Comics adaptation of Wonder Woman for Warner Bros., based on the strength of her television work, including several outstanding episodes of Breaking Bad. Neither was particularly sanguine about what these milestones mean for women in Hollywood as a whole.

“In the film industry, I don’t see a lot of progress,” Kolbert states, “except for the fact that now the paucity of women in film has become an issue that’s discussed.”

“The numbers have been really static for the last decade,” Silverstein points out. “We did a survey at Women and Hollywood from 2009 to 2013, and 5 percent of all the studio films were directed by women and only 10 percent of the indie films were directed by women.” She doesn’t mince words about the backward attitude those numbers reflect. “That’s just abysmal. We’re half the world. And we don’t get the opportunities. It’s not a lack of talent; it’s a lack of opportunities.”

Silverstein agrees with Kolbert that at least people are talking about the issues involved, as in the Academy’s recent snub of DuVernay, which Kolbert bluntly calls “a travesty.” As Silverstein sees it, “The progress has been in this robust, wonderful, inquisitive, and actually angry conversation about the lack of opportunities for women. I will be very happy when the numbers move to where the conversation is.”

The Athena Film Festival is playing a part in moving things along. That’s why it also includes a practical element, with Seed & Spark’s Emily Best giving a workshop on crowdfunding, and industry leaders Prince-Bythewood, Cathy Schulman, and Stephanie Laing providing Master Classes in their respective fields. “We’ve been very lucky,” Silverstein says. “People have given their time to come in and share and teach, because we want to inspire people. The goal, really, is to just allow girls to dream and to believe that they could be directors and producers and writers, and for boys to see women can do this, too.” Silverstein hopes the message they take away is, “Everybody can be successful. It’s about talent. It shouldn’t be about your gender.”

Kolbert makes a similar point. “My goal for the festival is that over the long term, when you think of leadership, you’re going to picture women,” she says, rejecting the traditional image of “a white guy with a little gray hair at his temples.” She sums up the Athena Film Festival’s mission nicely, quoting Marian Wright Edelman: “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

Josh Ralske is a freelance film writer based in New York. He has written for MovieMaker Magazine and All Movie Guide.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

The Many Truths of “Selma” by Zillah Eisenstein at Ms. blog

The Melissa Harris-Perry Syllabus 1.11.15 at msnbc

The ‘Selma’ “Controversy” Isn’t About History; It’s About Oscars by Jason Bailey at Flavorwire

The real American Sniper was a hate-filled killer. Why are simplistic patriots treating him as a hero? by Lindy West at The Guardian

Scarlett Johansson is the Wrong Choice for “Ghost in the Shell” by Bayan Atari at Bitch Media

What the Success of ‘Empire’ Says About Representations of Black Women on TV Today by Zeba Blay at Shadow and Act

Geena Davis Is Launching A Film Festival That Celebrates Women And Diversity by Ada Guzman at BUST

To get nominated for an Oscar, it’s still best to be a mediocre movie about a white guy by Todd VanDerWerff at Vox

Of Femmes, Films and Fatales by Regan Reid at Paste Magazine

Let 2015 Be the Year the Female Fuckup Goes Mainstream by Sarah Seltzer at Flavorwire

Rose McGowan Champions the Need for More Female Voices at NYFCC Gala by Nigel M Smith at IndieWire

Being a “Difficult” Woman on TV and the Refreshing Brilliance of ‘The Comeback’ by Harry Waksberg at Splitsider

Allison Williams Says Tracy Flick Was the Inspiration for Marnie on Girls by Nate Jones at Vulture

Gender in Comedy by Boring Old Raphael on Tumblr

The 2015 Athena Film Festival Trailer Is Here! by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

20 Facts Everyone Should Know About Gender Bias in Movies

To discuss their findings, the Institute hosted its second annual Global Symposium on Gender in Media, which I attended. The primary response I had was, how is it possible that people, especially people in this industry, remain unaware of these facts and what they mean? My second was, how do we get this information to audiences who live with the effects of this bias, but are demonstrably unaware?

This guest post by Soraya Chemaly previously appeared at Th e H uffington Post and is cross-posted with permission.

A new study, Gender Bias Without Borders, was released by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media this recently. Conducted by Dr. Stacy Smith and a team at USC’s Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism, it looks at 120 films in the 10 most profitable film markets, globally. These films, rated G, PG, or PG-13.5 or their equivalents, were compared to similar films in the U.S. A category for U.S./UK collaboration was created since it was so common. The U.S. ranks consistently low in almost every metric.

Studies, other studies, show that everyday sexism is invisible to most people. One form that sexism takes, including vis-a-vis media, is that people overestimate the presence of women and their speech. It happens everywhere. It’s not that we think women are necessarily apparent or speaking as much as men, but that we expect them to be, relatively speaking, invisible and not speaking, so, by comparison, any appearance and speech is “too much.” This says a lot about status and mainstream cultural assumptions about social roles and of power.

Despite decades of research, it is apparent that we are, as a culture, so used to women being marginal that we don’t even notice. Women, as Davis points out, are only 17 percent of the people in movie crowd scenes, and yet viewers assume they are almost equally represented. That 17 percent number is super interesting, since it is also roughly the percentage of women found in leadership positions in government and business.

With very small changes, the ratio of men to women in film has remained fundamentally unchanged since 1946. As Davis put it, at this rate, “It will be 700 years before we reach parity” in U.S. media. And that parity is crucially important, not the least of which is because, as she explained, “Eighty percent of media we consume is made in the United States. We are responsible for exporting these images of girls and women to the world.” It is not a pretty picture.

20 Facts About Gender and Film in 2014

Read them and weep.

And then share widely.

Globally, there are 2.24 male characters for every 1 female character.

Out of a total of 5,799 speaking or named characters 30.9 percent were female, 69.1 percent male.

Films for children had similar ratios, with only 29.2 percent having female protagonists.

Less than a quarter of films surveyed (23.3 percent) had a female lead or co-lead.

The U.S./UK hybrids and Indian films were in the bottom third for gender-balance, with less than a quarter of speaking roles going to female characters. In the U.S./U.K. hybrids, 23.6 percent and in Indian films, 24.9 percent.

These on-screen ratios mirror behind the camera realities. Out of 1,452 filmmakers whose gender was identifiable, 20.5 percent were female compared to 79.5 percent who are male.

Females are 7 percent of directors, 19.7 percent of writers, and 22.7 percent of producers.

France has the worse gender ratio, 9.1 men to 1 woman.

Brazil has the best, 1.7 men to 1 woman. The U.S.? 3.4 men to 1 woman.

When women direct films there are 6.8 percent more women in them. When women are screen writers, there are 7.5 percent more women. As the report points out, however, this may not be a good thing. “This explanation reflects the old age, “write what you know.” On the other hand, women maybe given these projects to write and direct that include more female characters. This second and latter explanation is more problematic, as it restricts the range of open directing and writing opportunities given to women.”

How gender is represented is also consistently problematic, particularly when you consider the influence media has on children’s imagination and self-conception. Female characters are more than twice as likely to be wearing sexy and sexualizing clothes (24.8 percent vs. 9.4 percent).

Female characters are more than twice as likely to be skinny (38.5 percent vs. 15.7 percent).

Female characters are more than twice as likely to be either partially or fully naked (24.2 percent vs. 11.5 percent).

In films, comments made by characters that refer to appearance are directed at women at a rate of FIVE times that of comments directed at men.

For films with fictional characters for younger children, in which the characters were aged 13-39, females are equally disproportionately sexualized. Even worse, however, is that in kids films, female characters are even more likely than in adult films to be thin.

In the U.S., for example, although women make up 46.3 percent of the workforce, they are only 23.2 percent of characters who work on film. This is one of the largest representational differences among all the countries measured. Needless to say, nowhere were women overrepresented as working for pay.

India had the smallest discrepancy in depictions of work: women make up 25.3 percent of the off screen workforce and 15.6 percent on the onscreen one.

When researchers looked at characters who were executives, as a marker of leadership representation, women made up 13.9 percent. There were not enough of them to have country breakdowns. While the study notes that “Across the global sample, occupational power is at odds with female participation,” that number, 13.9 percent is actually not too far off the mark. In the U.S. 17 percent of executives in the Top 100 companies are women, internationally that number is 24 percent. Women make up only 3 percent of CEOs globally.

Men are much more likely to be seen as attorneys and judges (13 to 1), academics (16 to 1), doctors and medical practitioners (5 to 1). Just three female characters were represented as political leaders with power. One didn’t speak. One was an elephant. The last was Margaret Thatcher.

Men were represented in STEM jobs area at a ratio of 7 to one. In the U.S., where women make up 24 percent of the STEM workforce, men made up 87.5 percent of STEM job workers.

I am grateful for organizations like the ones that came together (the UNWomen and the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored this work) to do this study, but I am tired of reading statistics like this.

Executives at the meeting I attended, women, expressed being “startled” by the data and I had to ask, “How is that possible in 2014?” Men have disproportionate industry potential to be change agents. Where are they? The room I sat in was 90 percent women. Media and entertainment management, like most other industries’, is lacking in diversity. Men with influence and the ability to raise these questions and do something about them probably strive, as individuals, to be good parents to their kids and make sure their daughters are healthy, happy, educated and ambitious. Not doing anything about this problem, from an institutional perspective, undoes all of that effort. The argument that there is some kind of benign “neutral” position is misguided. Same goes for parents.

Boys and men are done a massive disservice from these media portrayals as well. The flip side of these biased portrays contribute to inhumane, unrealistic stereotypes about masculinity based on control, violence, dominance and the active erasure of empathy as an acceptable emotion. A narrow, frequently violent, power-over-others male heroism comes at a very high price for everyone. As filmmaker Abigail Disney, a panelist, asked, along with women, there is another notable absence, “Where are the men who solve problems by thinking?”

Doing nothing perpetuates a discriminatory and harmful status quo. When progressive movie stars, the most prominent and well-paid being men, sit at a table, when liberal-minded executives review scripts, when open-minded producers are hiring — why is this not front and center? Davis recommends two very simple steps when scripts are being reviewed: change “he” to “she” for characters and make sure crowd scenes are gender balanced.

“Film executives were raised on this media, too. Just as women are underrepresented on screen they are missing in the real world,” explains Davis. These are not unrelated realities.

You may at this point be saying, “It’s all about the money.” Except, it’s not. Films featuring women in meaningful roles make more money. What does that leave us with? Consumer education. When will we draw a line? It’s not just about withholding money, but actively supporting women filmmakers and movies that feature diversity, fully dimensional female characters such as those featured in the annual Athena Film Festival.

Many made the point that, for the most part, moviegoers are unaware of the biases. Consumers are not going to theaters thinking about gender or how its representation impacts their and their children’s lives, boys and girls both. Media is how we train girls and women to have low expectations and train boys to have high ones. Girls to exhibit submissiveness and self-objectification, boys to express dominance and control. This isn’t a passive process.

“Filmmakers make more than just movies,” explains Smith. “They make choices. The choice could be for gender equality.” There is no excuse for not having this information and using it.

Researchers took pains to explain the limitations of their study and make good recommendations for improvement, further courses of inquiry and necessary steps that can be taken to address what is clearly a significant problem in our story-telling, especially for children.

What can you do? Share these facts, talk about them with educators, coaches, family, friends. Family friendly films are among the biggest problems. Talk to your kids. Don’t let this everyday sexism go unremarked upon. Vote with your wallet. Tell your local theatre to improve their programming.

The representation of gender in these films shapes imaginations and identity, aspirations and ambition. These depictions teach girls and boys about how culture sees them: their worth, their relative value, the roles they “should” play. Girls and women, infinitely diverse in their interests, appearance, ambition, ability, aspirations, make up more than 50 percent of the human population, but you would never know any of this watching our top grossing films. Really, how can we continue telling these fundamentally destructive stories to children?

Soraya L. Chemaly writes about feminism, gender and culture. Her work appears in The Huffington Post, The Feminist Wire, BitchFlicks, Fem2.0, Alternet and Feministe among other media. She considers it a major accomplishment that the people in her house dance with abandon. Follow on Tumblr, Facebook, Feminism’s Fantastic, Twitter @schemaly

‘Short Term 12,’ ‘In A World,’ and Athena

Local film festivals have proliferated in recent years–every city and town seems to want its own Sundance and my city is no exception: every spring it has a well-respected, week-long independent film festival with celebrity appearances and panels. But well-publicized festivals focusing on women don’t seem to be part of this trend. In the 90s women in the arts, not just film, seemed to finally be given a chance to do their own work and tell their own stories. In the era of ‘Thelma and Louise,’ women taking up a more equitable piece of the pie in filmmaking (as well as in writing books and in the visual arts) seemed inevitable. In the 21st century we seem to be going backward: the percentage of women making films has dropped since 2012 so we’re overdue for a festival like Athena: “a celebration of women and leadership.”

In the 90s and early 00s women’s film festivals were more common than they are now: my local independent art house had one that lasted a week every year, complete with celebrity appearances and panels. Of course, some of the films were crap (or just not my taste) and I remember one panel in which successful women directors made the puzzling argument that so few women were allowed to direct films because movies were “a business.” I’m sure law firms, banks, publishers, and uh, businesses would be glad to know that all they had to do was declare, “Hey, we’re a business” and they magically wouldn’t have to put any more women in leadership positions either.

Local film festivals have proliferated in recent years–every city and town seems to want its own Sundance and my city is no exception: every spring it has a well-respected, week-long independent film festival with celebrity appearances and panels. But well-publicized festivals focusing on women don’t seem to be part of this trend. In the 90s women in the arts, not just film, seemed to finally be given a chance to do their own work and tell their own stories. In the era of Thelma and Louise women taking up a more equitable piece of the pie in filmmaking (as well as in writing books and in the visual arts) seemed inevitable. In the 21st century we seem to be going backward: the percentage of women making films has dropped since 2012 so we’re overdue for a festival like Athena: “a celebration of women and leadership.”

Athena afforded me the chance to see, among other films, two features I had missed when they had regular runs in theaters: Short Term 12 (written and directed by Destin Cretton, nominated for several Independent Spirit Awards and included on several best of 2013 lists) and In A World, written and directed by as well as starring Lake Bell.

Short_Term_12_GraceJayden — Grace and Jayden

Short Term 12 received excellent reviews when it opened this past fall, as it did during its premiere during last year’s SXSW, but suffered from a lackluster performance at the box office, perhaps in part because of the trailer, which makes the film seem like another rebel-goes-against-the system movie, an oversimplification of the many currents running through the film.

Grace (Brie Larson), the main character, works at a group home for kids who seem to range from middle-school-age to 18. Cretton himself worked at a similar facility and more than one scene has the counselors: Grace, Grace’s live-in boyfriend Mason (John Gallagher Jr.), newcomer Nate (Rami Malek) and Jessica ( Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Stephanie Beatriz who gets hardly any lines) first shooting the shit and joking with each other as coworkers in an office might and then having to leap into action in the face of a crisis: a sudden shift familiar to anyone who has worked in direct care.

Short Term 12 gets right for much of the film, what so many other films about human services get wrong. Larson’s Grace seems to be wearing hardly any, if any, makeup and what she wears to work consists of high top sneakers, skinny jeans and a loose shirt–clothes that can be thrown away if they get ripped or stained. When we see her dressed up later in the film, she doesn’t suddenly seem to have acquired a stylist (the one other “ordinary” women characters in mainstream movies have): she wears ankle boots that don’t really match her not-very-flattering dress and still eschews makeup. She rides a bike to the facility: most of these “counseling” jobs pay very little, so the character couldn’t afford the new car a more mainstream film would give her. She’s also the boss on the floor, the manager, and she’s not portrayed as manipulative or mean, as so many other women bosses are in films, just alternately (and appropriately) authoritative, playful and tender with the kids.

short-term-12GraceMason — Grace and Mason

Short Term 12 is based on a short film of the same name made by the writer-director in 2008, in which the protagonist was a man. Some aspects of the gender change go smoothly. We find out Grace has a history of her own much like the troubled kids she looks after, and the film contains the first instance I’ve seen where a woman commits (mild) self-injury in response to some very stressful news but avoids treating her like a headcase. Saintly Mason (impossibly patient and understanding with Grace; he even does all the cooking) also comes from an unstable background (though eventually he landed with a large, very close, Latino-headed, multiracial foster family). The film starts to strain credulity here: although some people working in human services are trying to give back to a system that helped them, those people are often not the most effective at their jobs (or if they are, stay for a limited time and then go on to other careers). Many of the people who end up doing the best work for the longest time in direct care are, like Nate, from relatively stable backgrounds that enable them to deal with the stress of the job without reliving their own trauma (they are also able to occasionally rely on their middle-class or wealthy families for rental deposits on apartments or used cars to make up for their very low salaries). In real life, the “Graces” of the world, no matter how kindly, or what inside knowledge they would bring to a care facility, would get a job in an office, retail, a restaurant, anywhere that wouldn’t dredge up the ghosts of the past (which Grace has avoided talking to even Mason about).

Grace also has an unplanned pregnancy and here the film really veers off into Fantasyland. What Cretton never seems to consider is: the job we’ve seen that Grace loves and is so good at is one she could never keep if she has the baby. The work is physically rough (adolescents kick at and strike out at counselors, certainly not ideal for a woman in the latter stages of pregnancy) and human services direct care jobs don’t typically offer paid maternity leave or childcare. Even if she were able to return to the care facility, her salary is probably barely enough to support one person, let alone two: Mason’s wages kicked in would barely make a difference.

Troubling too is the latter part of the film when Grace identifies deeply with Jayden, (Kaitlyn Dever) a sharply dressed, artistic, new girl in the facility who, we find out, shares not only Grace’s flair for pencil sketching, but also seems to give signs that she has been abused. Grace’s ensuing actions made me think Cretton has seen too many Bruce Willis and Jack Nicholson films. Her overinvolvement in Jayden’s home life includes breaking and entering and vandalism–and nearly involves assault and battery with a deadly weapon. All the while, Cretton seems not to realize that Grace’s behavior is endangering Jayden more than anyone else.

Of course it all works out in the end. Jayden tells authorities about her father’s abuse; Grace decides to go through with the pregnancy; even the kid turning 18 and aging out of the facility, the one who attempted suicide, gets a foxy, new girlfriend and a job afterward. Hollywood endings can’t help polluting even “realistic” independent films.

In a World is a much lighter film than Short Term 12 and a lot sloppier: many of the contrivances seem like placeholders in the script, meant to be replaced with better-thought out action later on, but the movie still contains some truths that don’t make their way into films directed and written by men. Bell plays Carol who is struggling to make a living as a vocal coach and a voice over artist. We see her midway in the film in a circumstance that male directors and writers rarely present, where a man who we’ve seen is somewhat repellent and seems to be feeding her a line to have sex with her succeeds, not because the Carol doesn’t realize he’s feeding her a line (and is perhaps not who he seems) but because he’s reasonably attractive and it’s only for one night. Bell presents the Irish guy (Jason O’Mara) who tempts Carol’s sister (Michaela Watkins) into cheating on her good-guy husband (Rob Corddry) as genuinely handsome and charming: too many straight male directors seem to not notice that the men who get all the ladies in their films would leave most women cold.

Bell isn’t above using men’s bodies as a kind of punch line either, the way women’s bodies (especially old or fat ones) are used in other films. When Carol’s Dad (Fred Melamed) is shirtless, as he is for more than one scene, we see him in all his hairy-backed, saggy-pecced glory.

When Carol and her real love interest (Demetri Martin) in the film first kiss, she’s the one who makes the first move. When they kiss a second time she first feeds him a line of her own (though unlike that of her one-night stand her line isn’t insincere). All these moments might seem like tiny victories in a film, but other women seem to want to support Bell’s vision: cameos in the film include Eva Longoria (trying to approximate cockney vowels with a cork in her mouth), Cameron Diaz and Geena Davis. Maybe they noticed, as many of the rest of us have, that the trajectory from performer to director that seems so easy and natural for men (both Jon Hamm and John Slattery from Mad Men have also directed more than one episode of the series) is not one that women can readily follow (neither Christina Hendricks nor Elisabeth Moss, nor any other actress on the series has directed a single episode of Mad Men–yet).

That reason is the crux at my argument that as good a film as Short Term 12 is (and as “strong” as its female protagonist may be) because it’s directed by a man, it doesn’t belong in Athena or any other women’s film festival. The producer of 12 told the audience in the Q & A after the film that the writer-director, as a result of this modestly budgeted, not very financially successful film (which won some minor awards) was now writing something for Jennifer Lawrence. In an earlier “master class” (really a Q & A) with Callie Khouri, the writer of the big-budget, huge hit Thelma and Louise (for which she won an Academy Award) informed us that she didn’t get to direct a feature film for ten years after Thelma came out–and hasn’t gotten to direct one since. Khouri isn’t the only one who is facing resistance: it’s a story other women who have made well-reviewed, theater-released films are still telling today–and won’t stop telling until they get the showcases they deserve.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuxApRnekWc”]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

“I’ll Have the Car Drive Faster Over the Cliff” and Other Lessons from the 2014 Athena Film Festival

This is a guest post by Emily U. Hashimoto.

To reveal how films are created is to lose faith in a medium many of us love so much; perhaps like laws and sausage, it’s best not to see how it’s made. Yet for those of us interested in being a part of that process, the fascination lingers, and to this end I made my way to the Athena Film Festival last weekend, a three day celebration of women and leadership. The three day event featured films – including Frozen, Farah Goes Bang, In A World, and Maidentrip – as well as panels and workshops with seasoned professionals that are creating and helping to create strong portrayals of women.

My entry point to this area is my interest in creating media that highlights women of color, queer people, its intersection, and other types of characters not often seen on screen. People who aren’t lawyers or in advertising. People who wear the same sweater more than once. People who don’t fit into prefab boxes. My conviction about the need for more diverse content won’t ever falter, but hearing truths from women working in the field is, unfortunately, a downer. While representation of women remains a glaring issue, it’s in the creation of stories and characters where we continue to see problems. For example, during a panel with producers, an entertainment lawyer, and others, one woman who works in production said that when a film is in its initial stages and agents have the opportunity to suggest writers and directors, they won’t mention any women because they know the studio won’t go for it. When studio executives get asked why women’s names aren’t put forward, they say that agents won’t support those choices. What we have here is a classic catch-22 clusterfuck that’s hard to escape, without a suitable conclusion that puts more women to work.

This inclusion issue exists at all levels. Executives that are women or people of color aren’t willing to step forward to support a script about women or people of color, lest they be seen as ‘pushing an agenda.’ So even when there is more representation of studio executives, a balm you’d think is a panacea, the willingness to stick to the predetermined rules is more of a draw for the people who select this kind of work.

It kind of continues to be bad news.

The statistics don’t support a woman’s endeavor into film. San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film’s research tells us that in 2013, only 16% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors involved in top grossing films were women. In television and independent film, women are better represented, with these figures being closer to 30%, but we’re still a long way from parity.

If one does make it through to the exclusive group of filmmakers, it doesn’t guarantee work. Nina Shaw, a leading entertainment lawyer, said during the panel that when studios are working on a project, they’ll have “The List” of possible directors and writers, a list that is often devoid of even one woman’s name. When she brings up women creators, the response is often, “Well, we talked about her…” She said, “it’s almost always a guy talking to a guy,” though as mentioned above, even having more women executives isn’t a boon to more women creators. The problem is bankability; women are not seen as people who can make a large-scale film because of the way we are perceived – never mind the fact that films with a woman lead are less expensive to make and end up making more money.

But the perception persists that women are not leaders enough to take the helm of a huge project. Directors (read: men) are supposed to be powerful, tough, and wise, and the way women are perceived clashes with that. When a woman director does sneak in the door and she displays the traits that a director should, there can be a terrible clash. Shaw described an anonymous situation of a woman director who had an adversarial relationship with her male producer on a film. She behaved as any director would, but that behavior made the producer bad mouth her all over town. She didn’t work steadily for years until she fell in with a successful female TV creator and showrunner.

Whether you work within the lines or not, as a woman creator you must be overwhelmingly prepared and talented. Lena Waithe, a queer woman of color that writes and produces, says that for women of color especially, there’s no room for mediocrity because you’re already seen as a risky entity. You have to work the hardest you’ve ever worked, while a male peer can, as Shaw described, get into a fight and be put in jail the night before a film starts shooting, halting production until he’s bailed out – and not get fired. If a female director pulled a stunt like that, she’d end up in “director jail,” a term for not being able to get work that Shaw said was very real.

Perception of women feeds into the writing process, too. Callie Khouri, writer of Thelma and Louise and creator of Nashville, said during her master class that before Thelma and Louise was made, the first question she’d get in a meeting was: “How are you going to change the ending?” Not “are you?” but “how?” – because what kind of movie ends with the female leads doing something as traditionally masculine as thinking the only way out is down? Khouri’s answer in these meetings was, “I’ll have the car drive faster over the cliff,” and her non-compromise formed what’s become a deeply iconic symbol of female friendship and rebellion. But it doesn’t change the fact that she was asked to make changes, a change that’s hard to envision someone asking of a male writer.

So. You’ve made your film, and Roger Ebert hates it and writes a really sexist review, which is the place Khouri found herself in after co-writing and directing The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Reviews from Ebert and others tanked the film at the box office, which wasn’t so surprising to Khouri because “women’s films are denigrated” by critics, many of whom are men. Khouri went further, insinuating that the criticism came from a less than objective place, because the film “wasn’t made for him.” This kind of frustration seems to be part and parcel of the job, but after years in Hollywood, Khouri is able to distinguish who does what. It’s someone’s job to be critical. “Our part of the gig,” she said, “is to say, well, fuck you. It got made.”

It certainly got made. Which feels like the perfect time to segue over to good advice and bright spots that came from panels and workshops at the festival:

Khouri said try – to write, to direct – then finish. It’s simple advice, but many people are nervous to try their hand at something they’ve never done. Waithe attested to this, too: she offered to produce a friend’s film without even knowing what a producer does. This kind of go-with-it attitude sparks against the more gender-enforced norm of wanting to master something before starting up, as founder of Jezebel.com Anna Holmes said is a trait she can’t easily discard. Even more specific than try and finish, Waithe said start with a question that your viewers will engage with; it’ll make your work much more interactive and innovative.

Where you’re working and who you know are integral to making moves in film. Khouri said you have to go to the ballpark to play ball, whether it’s Los Angeles or New York or wherever your particular form of creativity is taking place. Once there, spend time with people who know more than you. Learn from the wisdom that others can offer, and then be willing to play that role once you’ve been around the block. Once you’re in the space, you may have to start as an assistant, then work your way up; that seems to be the route for most of the women who spoke during the festival. There’s something refreshing about such meritocracy, even as it feels like a challenging path with no guarantee.

Having said that, you can always buck the system entirely. During the panel with women experts, there was a lot of discussion about Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and how independent filmmaking are the way to truly run the show. Putting your work and intentions out into the world ahead of an actual film being produced can be a great way to find your audience, involving them ahead of time, but it needs to be done well to stand out. Working with a producer who can help with marketing was one suggestion on how to make this work.

Once your content is in motion, deciding how it’s presented is another important step. The panel discussed Orange is the New Black and how Jenji Kohan created the show with its white female lead as the “trojan horse” to hook mass audiences, then tell stories of a diversity of women characters – older women, queer women, women who are well off, women living on the streets, trans women. Likewise, Shonda Rhimes created Grey’s Anatomy and Meredith Grey with a similar set up, both shows displaying the success in employing these kinds of tactics. This method clearly works, but Waithe said that she prefers to be more straightforward – that her characters are people of color, that they’re queer, and there’s nothing to hide. Creators need to make these decisions, to decide how they want to represent their work.

So much of the representation of women in film feels inorganic to our lived experiences. Waithe attributed that to the phenomenon of men writing female characters, which leads to men “telling stories that are foreign to them.” Indeed, it’s undeniable that a woman directed and/or written film can often be truer than, for example, the way Woody Allen writes women, but more than anything, the statistics tell us that we simply need more women writing and directing more stories. As Holmes put it, it’s “important to mainstream women’s voices,” which will serve the women pushing to get their work produced and seen, and the audiences of women and men who will benefit from more inclusion, onscreen and off.

For more on the Athena Film Festival, read this terrific interview with co-founders Kathryn Kolbert and Melissa Silverstein.

Emily U. Hashimoto is a writer interested in pop culture, feminism, sexuality, and its intersections. She’s currently working on a memoir about her women’s studies study abroad trip and a screenplay that she hopes will cement her as the queer Nora Ephron. You can find her at books-feminism-everythingelse or @emilyhash.