Reel Women Making Waves in the Film World

By Isla Poole

On a Saturday night at 10:05 PM, a girl opens up her computer in search of something to watch. As the titles scroll past, she glances over the listed directors and authors of well-known films. Names like Hitchcock, Nolan, Burton, and Speilberg roll across the screen, and a pattern emerges. The BBC reported what a lot of Hollywood already knew: most of the films recognized as being “the best” and most highly rated, were directed or written by a man. The effects of a patriarchal society are evident even from the comfort of her own room on movie night.

As said by the Guardian, the film industry is a place where more often than not, men are the ones getting higher recognition for their work while women’s films and their voices attached to them tend to get overlooked. To Shirley Zhou, films have the unique ability to transport people to an alternate reality for a brief period of time, which can help explore the perspectives and ideas from the feminine mind and can provide insight to their experiences.

“When you’re able to turn what’s going on in your mind into art, and then share that with people, it is a very nice way to let people see what’s going on in you in a way that’s easily communicated,” Zhou said. dressed this way and boys this way, and that was just the way that it was. I just wanted to explore the idea of how our ideas of gender are made up,” themselves to dream bigger by making success feel attainable no matter who they are.

“That always feels really good to just hear that I can make something that inspires people and also create a spark of interest in this craft and this animation because that’s how it

She believes that many girls experience a time in their lives when their characters are placed into a construct and are forced to conform to societal standards. Her film Girl Wrestler was a way for many women to see a strong role model like them that wasn’t affected by these pressures.

“I was always interested in that moment in a young woman’s life where you have all of this fire and personality and determination and it’s challenged in a certain way,” said Mason. “And I think that for a lot of girls and young women that happens in 8th, 9th, 10th grade,”

According to Mason, girls are taught to tell stories even at a young age, but they just need to be heard and put in the spotlight for others to see.

“Little girls are sort of natural storytellers because the way that the world socializes is to use little dolls and little figures in our dollhouse and make them talk to each other. Whether they’re little animals talking to each other or little Barbies or Pollie Pockets or whoever. That’s sort of culturally appropriate and a supported way for girls to play and that is storytelling. That is drama in its most basic form. It’s just two little characters talking to each other, and so I feel like that is really important. We need those characters talking to each other from a female perspective.” Mason said.

Films may be one of the first times young women are shown that they have the power to dictate who they want to be and how they want to live in a society in which they may have never seen their potential in such a light.

“The bigger picture here is women need to be telling stories, they need to be on these crews. They need to be behind the camera and we’ve gotta do things to make that happen,” Mason said.