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Ileana Stanculescu, Kim Longinotto and Chris Hegedus at the Female Gaze debate on Saturday photo: Bram Belloni
Shattering the glass ceiling The heated Female Gaze debate on Saturday investigated the under-representation of women in the documentary world. By Melanie Goodfellow “The essential question is whether women are under-represented. Does a glass ceiling exist in the documentary industry and how are women represented in documentaries,” said IDFA director Ally Derks in her opening remarks. The debate was part of a larger focus on women in documentary by IDFA this year, which also features a sidebar of 28 films by women, selected by 15 of the world’s top female documentarians, including Kim Longinotto, Barbara Kopple and Rakhshan Bani-Etamad, all of whom attended Saturday’s event. As part of the focus, IDFA also conducted its own study into how women fared at the festival, the results of which were unveiled at the debate. It revealed that while the festival does not do badly in comparison to festivals like Cannes, Sundance and Berlin, there was still considerable room for improvement. According to the statistics running from 2003 to 2013, a total of 40,581 directors submitted films to the festival in that period, 15,006, or 37.1%, of whom were women. In total 4,068 films were submitted for the period with 1,398, or 33.2%, by women. On the awards front, 33 female-directed films
had picked up top prizes at the festival over the past decade, against 76 awards for male directed pictures. Only one woman has ever won the top prize: Danish Pernille Rose Gronkjaer’s The Monastery – Mr Vig & the Nun. The stats showed that juries consisting predominantly of men – 35 out of the 53 juries over the last ten years – were less likely to award female directors. Possible solutions, suggested and thrashed out over the course of the two-hour debate, included quotas, equal gender juries and a new Bechdel-style test, suggested by Debra Zimmerman, executive director of Women Make Movies. “It could include criteria like 50% of subjects and 50% of experts being women,” she said.
Guests Meet Guests 24/11/2014, 18:00 hours De Jaren Café Hosted by ARTE 25/11/2014, 18:00 hours De Jaren Café Hosted by Cinemachile and Chiledoc
Going underground Fresh from prying on the furtive activities of Austrians in their cellars (the subject of his new doc Im Keller / In the Basement), Ulrich Seidl is turning his eyes toward Napoleonic times. By Geoffrey Macnab
Speaking during IDFA, Seidl revealed he is hatching a new feature, a historical drama set in the late 18th century in “the milieu of the poorest of the poor.” These are young people, returning from war and having to engage in criminal activities to survive. Its main character is Herr Grasl, a real-life Robin Hood-like figure who fought back against the authorities. Ask the director about his new cellar doc (screening in Framing Reality) and why he is so fascinated by Austrians’ basements and he replies: “long ago, I realised that the average Austrian likes to spend their leisure time in their cellar engaging in their passions, hobbies and obsessions.” Cellars, Seidl elaborates, aren’t just the places where Austrians relax. They are also “places of fear, darkness and criminality.” Yes, Seidl has a cellar in his own house but, no, he doesn’t use it for sado-masochistic activities or for drinking toasts to Adolf Hitler or for target practice. Instead, he keeps his wine down there. “I was first confronted with cellars as a child because my grandmother had one in which she stored food,” the Austrian reminisces. “In Vienna, there are these multi-family tenement blocks which have coal cellars below them. Where I live near Vienna, I have a large wine cellar in the rock.” Parts of Im Keller seem very comic. However, the director insists he did not set out to mock his subjects. Whether or not they have cellars, everyone – Seidl believes – has “two sides to them… they will see the film and perhaps think about that and find that part of themselves in it.” Seidl’s fictional films (for example, his recent
Paradise trilogy) have a documentary-like feel. Meanwhile, his docs seem as carefully constructed as fictional films. “In the Basement film, it was clear that it was going to be a documentary,” Seidl says. “In the case of a documentary, you have people who are playing themselves, who are authentic. They are not taking on a fictional role. It is their life and their convictions. Obviously, that is different in the context of a fiction film.”
“Fear, darkness and criminality” Seidl has a cordial relationship with the subjects of Im Keller. Many came to Venice for the film’s world premiere and enjoyed the doc. “They all approved of it because what was being shown was their lives and they stand by their lives.” The Nazi enthusiasts stayed away. Seidl couldn’t guarantee their safety. (“That would have been too dangerous, because you can’t know what people are going to do at a premiere. What would have happened if somebody in the audience had got up and decided they wanted to attack Herr Ochs, the owner of the cellar. I wouldn’t want to expose him to something like that.”) So is he a demonstrative director? “I am very quiet. Occasionally I do scream. But not as much as Haneke!” read more at www.idfa.nl/industry/daily.aspx