Moviescope 33

movieScope 33

Movies From An Insider’s Point Of View

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March/April 2013

Mentoring Working together for a successful industry Digital Initiatives Embracing new creative technologies Middle East The female filmmakers revolutionising a region

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Women in Film

WOMEN IN FILM Celebrating the achievements of women throughout the industry

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Issue 33 March/April 2013

Contents

Amanda Nevill, CEO, British Film Institute When I heard movieScope was dedicating a whole issue to women, I was excited by this fantastic opportunity to champion the many prodigiously talented females working across every area of our industry. But I also paused and lamented that we are still in a world where we have to separate the genders in this way.

Surely by now we should be treated as equals on every level? Sadly, however, the reality is there is still inequality. Only 18 per cent of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working in 2012 were women. This disparity is puzzling when we have such brilliant women succeeding both creatively and commercially, many of whom can be seen featured across these pages.

I do believe, however, that this is changing for the better, albeit at a maddeningly slow pace, and I’m certain that education will be key to positive changes in the future.

That’s why the BFI’s number one priority is ensuring that young people, regardless of their gender, background or where they live in the UK, have access to film education. Only by sowing these seeds can we ensure the next generation of Barbara Broccolis, Clio Barnards, Lynne Ramsays, Andrea Arnolds and Katherine Bigelows can flourish. So, congratulations to movieScope for being bold enough to put women on top!

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© Ian Gavan/Getty Images for BFI

Foreword

34 OLIVIA COLMAN

"Every year, there are women emerging who are very funny, so I don't know why some idiots still maintain that we can't be."

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Contents Issue 33 March/April 2013

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Features

Insider's P.O.V

06 Location Focus

18 Women in Film

16 Alice Lowe

Katherine Oliver, Commissioner of New York City Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, gives her insider's guide to shooting in the city that never sleeps.

08 Industry Insider

Briony Hanson, Director of Film at the British Council, explains why the industry must work to redress the gender imbalance.

10 Skillset Trainee Diary

Costume and wardrobe trainee Yanika Waters reveals how the Skillset Film Trainee Placement Scheme has given her invaluable experience in the industry she loves.

12 Script Talk

Script consultant and author Helen Jacey explains the mistakes screenwriters make when creating female characters, and how they should be addressed.

14 Finance and Funding Judith Chan, Director in the Media Banking Office at Coutts, discusses why supporting producers is the key to structuring successful film and television transactions.

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How the depiction of women on screen results in a lack of women in the industry.

26 The Middle East

Profiling the female filmmakers who are bringing change to their region.

32 Indian Cinema

Indian cinema expert Ashanti OMkar tracks the role of women in the Indian industry.

38 Mentoring

Why the right collaboration is the key to a successful-and happy-career.

46 BFI Film Fund

How supporting filmmakers at every stage of production results in a healthy industry.

50 Transmedia

Tribeca Film Institute's Ingrid Kopp and Film4.0's Anna Higgs discuss the next generation of filmmaking.

54 Female Critics

Female critics discuss their experiences in an increasingly crowded sector.

The star and co-writer of Sightseers explains why she wants to revolutionise female characters on screen.

22 Gale Anne Hurd

The legendary Hollywood producer takes us behind the scenes of her amazing career.

30 Cate Shortland

The director of Somersault and Lore on why she's so proud to be part of the Australian film industry.

34 Olivia Colman

The star of TV and film chats about her diverse career, and why she loves performing in both comedy and drama.

44 Kate Reid

The cinematographer meets with fellow DoP Eve Hazelton to discuss their experiences working behind the camera.

48 Emily Greenwood

The digital online editor tells us why her day job helps so much when it comes to planning and making her own films.

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Editorial Issue 33 March/April 2013

Contributors

As I write this, in the wake of the Academy Awards, host Seth MacFarlane stands accused of bringing a touch of old-fashioned misogyny to the ceremony. I would argue, however, that women being mostly absent in all categories yet again is far more damaging than a couple of misguided jokes. Of course, accusing the Oscars of sexism is—just like accusing Cannes—to entirely miss the point; that women are categorically underrepresented across all sectors of the industry.

This isn’t just the lament of disgruntled feminists; it’s a cold, hard fact. As Amanda pointed out in her foreword, the most recent Celluloid Ceiling Report, published in January, showed that women comprised just 18 per cent of all directors, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors working on the USA’s 250 highest grossing films in 2012. Also published in January was Sundance and Women in Film's study into Gender Disparity in the Film Industry, revealing that, while things may be slightly better in independent film, under 30 per cent of filmmakers selected for Sundance from 2002 to 2012 were women. There’s simply no arguing with figures like that, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that a lack of diversity of any kind—be it gender, race, class, regional or any minority—robs the industry of the essential talent and storytelling variety that’s crucial to its continuing health and vitality.

Obviously, being a woman, this is a subject close to my heart; that I’m frequently mistaken for movieScope's secretary is the thin end of the wedge of my experience with gender prejudice. But this is not why we have put together this special issue devoted entirely to women in film and TV; rather, in the face of those miserable statistics and outdated opinions, we want to highlight and celebrate the achievements of women across all sectors and regions. We spoke to myriad women; not a single one was prepared to simply bemoan their lot, and all were passionate and inspirational advocates for an industry they love. I can’t thank them—along with Birds Eye View, Women in Film and TV and the BFI—enough for their contributions and support.

Of course, there’s only so much we can do in 64 pages, but I hope this issue goes some way to proving that while women may currently be a minority in the industry, they all deserve to be supported, respected and celebrated; not because they are women but because—like their male colleagues—they are damn good at their jobs. It’s because of them that the industry simply must confront this issue head on and work to change it, rather than simply complain when festivals and awards hold a mirror up to this woeful disparity. Male or female, filmmaker or viewer, we all stand to benefit.

Nikki Baughan, Editor

movieScope magazine Ltd Bridge House 105 3 Mills Studios Three Mill Lane London, E3 3DU United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) 845 094 6263 Twitter: @movieScopemag www.movieScopemag.com Publisher & Editor-In-Chief Rinaldo Quacquarini Editor Nikki Baughan Sub Editor Naila Scargill Art Director Simon Edwards Cover Photograph For a full list of our cover stars and image credits, visit www.moviescopemag.com

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Creative Consultant Jaime Biazotti Litho Pensord Press www.pensord.co.uk Subscriptions +44 (0) 845 094 6263 or visit www.movieScopemag.com Advertising Media Pack available online at: www.movieScopemag.com or by calling +44 (0) 845 094 6263 movieScope is published bimonthly in January, March, May, July, September and November by movieScope Magazine Ltd. Subscription: 6 issues for £20.79/$37/€30 plus shipping. movieScope is available from all good newsagents across the UK, Europe and USA. Visit movieScopemag.com for an interactive map to locate an outlet closest to you. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system without the express written permission of the publisher.

The opinions expressed in movieScope Magazine articles and advertisements are those of the individual authors and advertisers respectively and should not be considered in any manner as expressions of the management or official policies of movieScope Magazine Ltd. For information on reprints and syndication, please contact Editor-In-Chief@movieScopeMag.com The title “movieScope” and logotype are registered trademarks and service marks of movieScope Magazine Ltd. Copyright 2013. All Rights Reserved.

Hanan Abdalla is the director of documentary In the Shadow of a Man. Haifaa Al-Mansour is the writer/director of Wadjda.

Nikki Baughan is movieScope's editor.

Catherine Bray is editor of www. film4.com Judith Chan is a Director in the Media Banking Office at Coutts.

Helen Cox is editor of New Empress www.newempressmagazine.com Jane Crowther is editor of Total Film www.totalfilm.com Madeline Di Nonno is the Director of The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.

Afarin Eghbal is a mentee on the 2013 Guiding Lights scheme. www.afarin.co.uk Emily Greenwood is a digital online editor and filmmaker www.emilygreenwood.co.uk Eve Hazelton is DoP at Realm Pictures www.realm-pictures.com Briony Hanson is Director of Film at the British Council www.film.britishcouncil.org Anna Higgs is Head of Film4’s Film4.0 Wendy Ide is a film critic for The Times www.thetimes.co.uk Larushka Ivan-Zadeh is Film Editor of Metro www.metro.co.uk Helen Jacey is a screenwriter and author of The Woman in the Story.

Annmarie Jacir is the writer/director of When I Saw You. MaryAnn Johanson is a film critic and creator/editor of www.flickfilosopher.com Karen Krizanovich is a freelance film critic and journalist www.krizanovich.com Nicola Lees is a mentoring scheme producer and founder of www.tvmole.com Katherine McLaughlin is a freelance critic.

Jennifer Merin is founder of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists www.awfj.org Amanda Nevill is CEO of the BFI www.bfi.org Katherine Oliver is the Commissioner of the New York City Mayors Office of Media and Entertainment www.nyc.gov/film Ashanti OMkar is a journalist and expert on Indian cinema www.omkari.wordpress.com Kate Reid is a DoP www.katereidfilms.co.uk Limara Salt is a freelance film journalist.

Naila Scargill is movieScope’s sub-editor, and editor of www.exquisiteterror.com Alison Small is CEO of The Production Guild www.productionguild.com Anna Smith is a freelance film critic Francine Stock is the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The Film Programme.

Yanika Waters is a trainee on Skillet's Film Trainee Placement Scheme.

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24 Fps Location Focus

The City That Never Sleeps

Katherine Oliver, Commissioner of New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, offers an insider’s guide to production in the iconic city.

Are you a native New Yorker?

Yes, I’m originally from Brooklyn. I went to New York University then worked for Mike Bloomberg, at first at his radio station and then launching Bloomberg Television. I moved to London in 1996 to launch the international radio and television operations, and when Mike became mayor in 2002 I moved back to New York, and was appointed as commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting.

What were your first priorities when you took over the office?

We had some challenges post 9-11.

Mayor Bloomberg made it very clear that he wanted to diversify the city’s economy and not be completely reliant on Wall Street. The first priority was to make New York City safe, but also to make it an attractive place for tourists to come visit and for businesses to thrive.

Mayor Bloomberg has always been a supporter of the arts, culture and entertainment and he gave me a lot of support to develop the Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting; not only did this agency have the potential to employ a lot of New Yorkers, but it was also an important way of marketing the city globally. People around the world want to experience the New York that they have seen on screen, so it really is in our best interests to work very closely with production, and to allow them to have access to our city and some of the iconic locations. It’s advertising that we can’t buy. So that’s the course that we set out on; really understanding how we could build the business and how we could provide the customer service required to see this sector grow.

You’ve designed the office to be a one-stop shop for productions; what does that mean in real terms?

If you want to shoot a movie, commercial, television series or music video anywhere in the city of New York, you

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Below: Shooting on the busy streets of New York takes logistical expertise (© New York City

Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment) Overleaf: Commissioner Katherine Oliver takes an extremely proactive role in the local entertainment industry (© New York

City Mayor's Office)

need a permit. We issue those permits, and facilitate all aspects of production.

The production will come directly to our agency and outline exactly what they want to do, and we will advise them and clear the way for their shoot to be as seamless as possible. If you want to shoot on 53rd Street and Broadway, for example, we will make sure that the Department of Transportation is not milling and paving that street, or there’s not a street fair going on.

We also have a dedicated NYPD movie TV unit; when we give the production a permit to shoot in the city, we also have police officers work with that production for free. And that helps them to oversee and ensure pedestrian and vehicular safety during the extent of the production.

We also provide an array of other incentives that make it easier to shoot in New York by either lessening the cost or making it more appealing. We’ve created a very competitive marketing credit, for example; we are the only city on the planet that offers free outdoor media,

such as bus shelters, phone kiosks and billboards, to qualifying film and television shows who shoot [at least 75 per cent of the overall production] in New York and bear the 'Made in New York' logo.

What are some of the benefits to shooting in NYC, aside from its iconic locations?

New York State offers a very competitive 30 per cent tax credit and that has made us very competitive. We’ve also got the best crews: the New York crews are known for being very street-smart, very savvy in terms of getting around to multiple locations in one day. And we have incredible facilities; our sound stages are state-of-the-art, and our agency provides script-to-screen services, mostly for free. We have minimal charges for permit applications, but a lot of our services—helping with location assistance and the marketing credit, for example—really are of great value to a production.

We also offer a vendor discount card programme; we’ve identified ancillary businesses in the city that the film industry would use, like florists and dry cleaners, and we asked those businesses to offer discounts specifically to the film and television industry. So when the film comes to town and they get permits from us, they are also eligible for discounts on the services that they would use during the duration of their production.

Your office puts a lot of effort into attracting a huge number of productions to New York. How important is the entertainment industry to the city?

Boston Consulting Group did a study last year looking at the economic impact of this industry, and found that it contributes approximately $7bn a year to the local economy and employs over 130,000 New Yorkers. And there

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One To Watch Eva Weber Documentary Filmmaker After receiving a Creative Skillset bursary in 2006, documentary maker Eva has been a participant on the Guiding Lights mentoring programme and the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Her documentary City of Cranes won international awards and her latest, Black Out, follows young students in the poorest regions of Guinea.

are about 4,000 ancillary businesses that also benefit. We’ve created over 30,000 new jobs since the beginning of the Bloomberg administration because of our efforts.

When we started in 2002, the agency was working on electric typewriters and processing permits by hand. We had not even a handful of television productions here, and everyone was faking New York in other parts of the world. Now we have record production, we’ve created thousands of jobs and people are now faking other cities in New York. We couldn’t be happier that we’ve been able to help the sector grow and flourish.

As well as being a growth sector, film production is changing rapidly thanks to digital technology. How do you ensure that your office keeps up?

We recognise that the digital and the tech explosion is happening, and that the industry is changing rapidly. We actually created a new department, NYC Digital, to address that. Out of that we have developed the Made in New York Digital Media Centre which will open in Brooklyn this summer; the idea

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is to help traditional media adapt to the new media age, and to provide a physical space where we can incubate new talent [and offer] educational programmes. Traditional media companies can go and recruit new talent for this ever-changing industry.

We’ve also created a lot of workforce training programmes that are teaching people about things like postproduction skills and digital imaging because we see that as the future and we want to prepare the next generation of media and entertainment entrepreneurs to be successful in our city. We want them to stay and work here, so the industry will continue to thrive.

Useful Links

New York City Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting www.nyc.gov/html/film/html/index/index.shtml New York State Tax Credit / Post-Production Tax Credit www.nylovesfilm.com/tax Boston Consulting Group Study www.nyc.gov/html/film/downloads/pdf/ Media_in_NYC_2012.pdf ●

What training have you received?

I studied Media & Communications followed by a Master in TV Drama at Goldsmiths’. I then worked in the industry, first as an assistant editor and then as a promotions director at the BBC, before returning to study at the NFTS. After five years working for the BBC and commercial clients, I loved having the opportunity and the freedom to explore my own ideas.

What kind of projects attract you?

It can be a really small thing—one image, a couple of lines in a newspaper, or one scene in a script—that inspires me to make a film about something. I am particularly interested in exploring the conflict between intimacy and distance, of being removed but close, and how we are shaped by the environments we live in.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a documentary maker?

James Marsh, my mentor through Guiding Lights, told me to always look for story because if you have a strong story you can be more experimental in your filmmaking; the story will lead you through. I had probably been told this many times before, but for some reason when James said it this finally sunk in. Most of my films before were quite fragmented, non-story and non-character driven, so this definitely changed my approach.

Tell us the most significant moment in your career so far.

Attending the Sundance Screenwriters’ Lab and getting their Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award unquestionably have been highlights so far. Otherwise, my documentary The Solitary Life of Cranes launched me in a way that I never anticipated, a lot more people were aware of my work after this.

You’ll die happy when…

I finally have a dog, though I would probably prefer to live a bit longer then so I can spend time with it.

Supported by the Skillset Film Skills Fund, as part of A Bigger Future 2 (www.abiggerfuture2.co.uk)

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24 Fps Industry Insider

Smashing the Mirror

Briony Hanson, Director of Film at the British Council, explains why the Oscars hold a mirror up to gender inequality in the industry.

Writing this in the early morning immediately after a long drawn-out Oscar night—complete with predictably plentiful tears, effusive thanks and not nearly enough near-the-knuckle gags from an over-cautious host—there’s really no sense of surprise in the outcome. No, not just over the shoo-in winners from Daniel Day-Lewis to Argo, but that all-too familiar sense of disappointment at the lack of women in contention for the major creative prizes.

Yes, again…

For an organisation that took 81 years to etch a woman’s name on the Best Director statuette it’s not exactly a turn-up for the books, although to single out Oscar for criticism is probably hitting the wrong target. After all, the Academy voters are just holding up a mirror to the industry at large. It seems as if there’s been a groundswell of anger brewing this year that’s invariably been misdirected; as it’s not solely the fault of Oscar, it similarly wasn’t the fault of Cannes that not one of 2012’s 22 Palme d’Or nominated films was directed by a woman, leading to a red carpet intervention by ‘bearded’ feminists. Much as I’m a fan of the abseiling lesbian response to injustice, as I know from my day job at the British Council—part of which involves arranging selector screenings of new UK features for consideration by the teams from Cannes and other premier film festivals—the problem is less about festival selection or who gets awards, and more about what’s actually getting made in the first place, and by whom.

Either way, what is a surprise is how this year, more than any other, the reaction across the board to Oscar’s testosterone-heavy shortlist has been less passive acceptance and considerably more call to action. Even I, as a lapsed feminist, suddenly feel

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While Jennifer Lawrence and Anne Hathaway (above,

with fellow Oscar winners Daniel DayLewis and Christoph Waltz) may have been successful at the 2013 Academy Awards, women were underrepresented in all categories; reflective of the industry at large

energised and angry again. How is this still happening? Why? And what the hell are we all going to do about it?

There are a couple of very basic questions here, starting at the very beginning: why, for example, are film schools chock-full of female talent in the lead creative fields? Across both UK and US film schools the number of female production, direction and screenwriting students is almost level—if not slightly edging above—the number of male counterparts. Yet the minute school’s out the stats drop off dramatically, and the number of women translating that experience into feature films barely even registers.

Even more bemusing than the fact that gender equality at film school apparently counts for nothing in the real world is the way that short filmmakers—the emerging talent of the future—also balance nicely along gender lines as their careers begin.

I see this with my own eyes: British Council, in collaboration with BFI, offers the Shorts Support Scheme,

helping to take the most talented UK short filmmakers to present their work at major festivals. The numbers here again are just above even at this stage, with fractionally more women than men on the scheme, attracting attention and selection from international festivals. Then suddenly, for no clear reason, it all goes—and forgive the expression but it seems somehow apt— tits up, as the women filmmakers’ careers seem to atrophy while those male student-turnedshort-filmmakers get the break, make the first features and become the next generation weaving their way through the crowds towards the Oscar podium.

Apparently, we have no idea why this happens. The reason most often trotted out is the one given by marketeers and audience analysts: that women filmmakers tend towards character and emotion (drama) where audiences respond better to plot and action (genre)—i.e., that the types of stories that women filmmakers typically pursue are not perceived as commercially viable. So is the female voice itself the problem?

And if it is, what then?

Of course this makes no sense; audiences are half women. What, then, are they responding to, and why? Rather than blindly accept such analysis we need our funders and policy makers to start delving beneath the surface. This means commissioning real grown-up research (which is, incredibly, still in short supply despite the best efforts of excellent campaigning organisations like WFTV) and taking an active stance in exploring ways to force change. There are many references to new talent development peppered throughout every recent policy document, from the DCMS policy review through to the BFI’s own Film Forever plan, and some welcome and detailed plans for

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One To Watch Jessica Levick Producer

increasing diversity along ethnic lines particularly. But the time has come for a similarly clear and well-reasoned policy line that specifically acknowledges the lack of women in film and, more significantly, puts a plan in place to right the balance.

The Scandinavian film industry has tackled this head-on; public film funding is now doled out exactly evenly between male/female filmmakers. Those of us of a certain generation may balk at such positive discrimination, but perhaps we shouldn’t. What else but a dramatic about-face is going to have any chance of making any difference here when pussyfooting around the issue just isn’t having any effect?

There have been some good UK industry experiments over the years led by UK Film Council, Creative Skillset and others. I’m personally less convinced by those genrebased ‘women can write horror’ type interventions we’ve seen over the years; although definitely worth trying, they have probably proved little more than the fact that not everyone can be Katherine Bigelow. Other labs, like the BEV and Script Factory She Writes programme supporting eight emerging screenwriters which I was proud to be involved with, can pay dividends, and resulted in an alumni including multiaward-winning Sally El Hosaini (My Brother the Devil) and up-and-coming Rachel Tunnard.

The key thing here is that it’s by no means all negative. The Oscars and Cannes may have been a wasteland for women this year, but 50 per cent of the films in the US dramatic section of Sundance were directed by women and, for a second year running, a woman has carried home the main prize. Perhaps the indie world is getting its act together even if the studio mainstream is not; a telling post-

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Sundance New York Times headline summed it up perfectly: 'Female Directors Gain Ground, Slowly'.

It’s also worth looking further afield for inspiration. In a surprising development, we might look for some lessons from the creative work emerging from the Arab Spring—that is from societies wildly behind the curve in terms of political or societal gender equality but suddenly, inexplicably, making leaps and bounds in terms of visible and prolific women filmmakers.

As Birds Eye View champions Arab women filmmakers in a significant focus at the BFI this April, the British Council will bring a delegation of 28 Arab women filmmakers and film professionals into London. We look forward to UK audiences and film communities responding to their work and ideas and potentially taking some direction from this unlikely source.

Meanwhile the UK itself is slowly proving to be a hotbed of female directing talent with a roll call led by Arnold, Barnard, Gharavi, El Hosaini, Hogg, Morris, Morley and Ramsay.

Wildly impressive, this lot are often asked to defend themselves as women directors (the great Jane Campion famously responds to the ‘what’s it like to be a women filmmaker’ question with a short, sharp, ‘I don’t know—I‘ve never been a male filmmaker’) and most of these great UK names have echoed her sentiment at some point in interviews over the last few years.

It’s a bit like every other ‘minority’, from gay to black filmmakers: ‘I’m just a filmmaker so lose the adjective as it’s somehow demeaning.’ Maybe it’s time to go back one step and accept the compliment; after all it’s a bloody incredible against-the-odds achievement to be a female director, and perhaps we should own it. film.britishcouncil.org ●

Jessica Levick graduated from the National Film & TV School with a Producing MA in 2008 and has since worked in international sales at Film4. Her documentary Personal Best was released theatrically in 2012. Jessica has worked as Associate Producer on the BIFA—nominated feature film Legacy and as Line Producer on the Warp/Film4 short Dr Easy. She has also produced a number of music videos and shorts, and has twice reached the final round of Film London’s Microwave scheme.

What training or mentoring have you received?

I’ve just got back from the Rotterdam Lab, and I’ve been selected for this year’s Guiding Lights scheme, both funded

by Creative Skillset. I’m very excited about Guiding Lights and working with a mentor as, after producing my first feature last year, I’m looking to grow my company and raise the finance to make the next one! The mentoring process is great for producers, as it means you aren’t doing it completely on your own for once. I’ve also been through Film London’s Microschool twice, and I did the MA in Producing at the NFTS. What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a film producer?

Don’t remortgage your house for a film! I’ve probably done everything else you’re not supposed to do as a producer to get your film made, but I’ve avoided this one so far.

What kind of projects attract you?

I’m attracted to stories about people trying. Whether the obstacles they face are from inside themselves or external, the emotion to be found in people’s efforts to overcome those really appeals to me. I don’t consider there to be much difference between fiction or documentary films— I just want to see strong stories, told well.

Tell us the most significant moment in your career so far.

Every time there has been a phone call where someone has said yes has been earth shatteringly important in some way. And seeing the words Personal Best written above the Curzon Soho cinema was pretty special.

You’ll die happy when…

I’ve produced a body of work that has been enjoyed, discussed and remembered. I’d love to make at least one film in my life that becomes a classic.

Supported by the Skillset Film Skills Fund, as part of A Bigger Future 2 (www.abiggerfuture2.co.uk)

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Promotional Feature Creative Skillset

Trainee Diary: Costume & Wardrobe Trainee Yanika Waters takes us behind the scenes of the Skillset Craft and Technical Skills Academy’s Trainee Placement Scheme.

The film trainee placement scheme, managed by the Skillset Craft and Technical Skills Academy, provides young filmmakers with paid work experience on a current film that has contributed to the Skills Investment Fund.

Here, costume and wardrobe trainee Yanika Waters explains how working on Pascal Chaumeil’s adaptation of Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down has given her a real step up in the industry she loves.

How did you get involved with the Skillset trainee placement scheme?

A few months after finishing my degree in summer 2011, I managed to get some work experience on a BBC television drama [Dancing on the Edge]. I got along really well with the team and they took me on as their trainee. On completion, I was immediately keen to gain more experience as a trainee, particularly in the film industry. The supervisor I had worked with forwarded me an email about the Skillset trainee scheme and from there I sent in my application, got an interview and was then lucky enough to be offered a place on the scheme.

What department are you working in?

I am working in the costume and wardrobe department.

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Trainee Yanika Waters (above) has found her on-set training (below) an invaluable experience for growing her career

Who do you work most closely with, and what have they taught you?

As a trainee in the costume department you work extremely closely with the rest of the costume team, in particular the costume supervisor. It is usually the supervisor, and sometimes the designer, who will tell you your tasks for the day.

Working with designers has taught me a lot about character, and how their choice in clothing directly impacts how the viewer sees that character; the decisions of colour, texture, style and silhouette are all factors that have to be considered. The supervisor has taught me about budget handling and the general management of the department.

And the standbys have taught me about continuity, dealing with actors and general on-set etiquette.

What are your main responsibilities?

As a trainee you don’t have one particular responsibility; in fact, you generally do a bit of everything! Your duties vary from day to day depending on the schedule: truck duties; usually involve laundry or ironing; prepping the line-up of costumes for the next day; and doing any sewing repairs or alterations. If it is a large-crowd day then you are required to help get the supporting artists into costume, look after them on set and carry out any continuity.

If the principal standbys are especially

busy, you assist them. Often as a trainee you are also sent out to do costume returns, buying and sourcing and visiting costume hire houses to lend a hand with fittings and pulling costumes.

How would you say your skills have developed during this placement?

Although I have a degree in costume from the Arts University in Bournemouth, it wasn’t until I started working as a trainee that I truly understood what working in costume entailed. Throughout my placement I felt I was constantly learning and developing my skills.

In particular, I improved my problemsolving skills on set, where thinking on your feet is vital. I also have a better understanding of other departments, and how we work together with them.

Is the placement scheme what you expected it to be?

I think the placement scheme is a good platform for young professionals looking to break into the industry. As expected, it has allowed me to make great contacts and work on a high-profile production.

What has been the most exciting, inspiring or positive moment during the placement?

During my placement [on A Long Way Down] one of the principal costume standbys had to leave the job due to personal reasons and so I was asked to step up and assume her position.

Although nerve-wracking, I was excited to take on the challenge, especially as it involved filming abroad in sunny Mallorca!

What are your career plans now that you have this experience?

I still have one more placement to undertake whilst on the Skillset trainee scheme, and I am also looking for work as a costume trainee separate from the scheme. I hope to use the contacts I have made and to continue working in costume.

Find out more about the Skillset Craft and Technical Skills Academy at www.craftandtech.org ●

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27/02/2013 20:18:46

24 Fps Script Talk

What Do Women Want?

Screenwriter, script consultant and author Helen Jacey presents her guide to creating successful, well-rounded female protagonists.

You’ve jumped off the cliff into dilemma-infested waters; you’ve braved choosing a female protagonist. Now come the questions. What do women want? Maybe, when thinking about her goal and inner needs, you find yourself asking, what do women want to be? Or more to the point, what would women as my audience want her to be?

You could keep things simple and go down the gender neutral route in characterising her. You could make her as non-conventionally feminine as The Killing’s Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl) and her hairy jumper. Or you make her a diva, workaholic, shopaholic, mother, Madonna, whore… the baggage-laden labels come thick and fast. And if she’s any of these things or none of them, the looming matter of the audience is never far away. How will your female protagonist please them? How can you make sure she doesn’t alienate them?

How can she be fresh and original?

You might end up scratching your head, thinking, do I really need a woman protagonist? Maybe to be or not to be (a woman)? is really the crux of the matter.

The problems facing the female character have been around for as long as vamps, vixens and spunky gals have strutted their stuff in front of the earliest rolling spools. ‘Some things your heroine can and cannot do’, wrote Elinor Glyn in 1922’s The Elinor Glyn System of Writing, one of the first ever how-tos for wouldbe screenwriters. Ms. Glyn, a successful British novelist turned Hollywood ‘photoplay’ writer, listed a whole load of moral and behavioural dos and don’ts for your heroine. These included the fraught issues of backless dresses, face powder and dancing. Unpredictably, male heroes, according to Ms. Glyn, could have a few faults and harmless vices so they weren’t ‘too angelic, too perfect, too unreal’.

Almost a century later, and-despite the vote, various waves of feminism,

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Script consultant Helen Jacey (above) believes screenwriters must embrace strong female characters, like those seen in HBO's Girls (top)

post-feminism and having-it-all debates—don’t we still agonise over our female characters while letting our heroes off lightly? Watching Saga Noren (Sofia Helin) from The Bridge with all her child-hating autistic coldness, and Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham) from Girls with her warts and all reality of twenty-something fun, you can almost hear the development discussions on how these female characters are different to any who have come before.

They break new ground because they are female. So, Elinor Glyn style, here’s a 21st-century checklist for a few more dos and would-rather-you-don’ts for female characters:

Death Instinct We still have very few celebrated and charismatic female killers as protagonists. They remain the seductive other. There’s a few lurking around French cinema or Tarantino films, but how about a female Dexter rather than bunny-boilers with no

POV. Is the knife-wielding woman protagonist simply too close to the bone? Is she the embodiment of the castration complex?

Sexuality Sexual proclivity in a female character’s backstory is bizarrely still an issue of discussion in development, where fear of the slut rages on. The woman who gets it a lot is pathologised or seen as wounded, whereas we don’t worry if our male character has had 40 or 400 women—boys will be boys. It was only 20 years ago that Sex and the City dared show that women like variety… and a lot of it, too. Lesbians are getting more onscreen action but not half as much as the gay male, even if he is routinely cast as the heroine’s best friend.

Ethnicity Why the chronic lack of women of colour as protagonists? Whoopi Goldberg, Halle Berry and Queen Latifah are notable because there

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One To Watch Leanne Welham Writer/Director

are too few of them. Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) in The Good Wife, Weeds’ Heylia (Tonye Patano) and Kima (Sonja Sohn) in The Wire are so fascinating that they deserve more than secondary character status. What is really the excuse for this massive elephant in the room? A black heroine wouldn’t bring the finance, I was told recently, by a black actress about a brilliant project apparently doomed to never see the light of day. Hello, 21st century. Why can’t we have a black female having adventures Indiana Jones/Sherlock Holmes /James Bond style? I’d watch her, and I wouldn’t be alone.

Disability Ditto.

Beauty and Youth There is money to be made in more onscreen older women but, as they would appear to not fulfil the fantasies of many producers and directors, therein lies the curious case of the movie industry not capitalising on the remaining ‘virgin’ oil fields of narrative.

Just a thought…

Reactionary Values Money meltdown and the war on terror has caused us to retreat, fifties-style, into comfort-eating and happy families.

Our stories are obsessed—even the vampire and zombie narratives—with stability, kinship, finding the one, settling down and raising a family.

Even reality TV is all dating and mating, baking and faking. The knock-on effect is that our female characters are living with tighter moral parameters and increasingly bizarre versions of femininity that make pantomime Ugly Sisters look au naturel. Free-spirited Oda Mae has become cupcakebaking Doris Day. Female characters who are not defined by relationships

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or image are temporarily out of fashion as they threaten our collective need for social order and safety. Loner, hardbitten females are OK—but only if they are protecting the social order by getting the bad guys in crime stories.

Mother/Daughter Relationships If we are doing family, then mums and daughters need a revamp. Bad mums, stepmums and mums-in-law are so yesterday. Brave (below) is courageously feminist for its touching tale of a daughter learning to value her mother, and her mother learning to understand her. So it’s not The Road to Perdition, but at least they embark on the road and have to fend off a few enemies. Respect not rivalry is refreshing.

With the rise of the bromance, men are inhabiting hearth and home as never before, and giving each other a few bear hugs in the process. They’ve come crashing down through the glass ceiling, catching the baby as they land, and sharing their feelings as they go about it.

Isn’t it high time female characters shoot upwards through the shattered glass to see where they can head to next?

Helen’s book The Woman in the Story: Creating Memorable Female Characters is published by Michael Wiese Productions, and is available now ●

After training as a film editor, Leanne has written and directed numerous award-winning short films that have screened in competition across the globe. Her UK Film Council—funded Transgress premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2009 and was nominated for Best British Short at the Rushes Soho Shorts Film festival, while Nocturn premiered at SXSW 2011, where it was also nominated for the Grand Jury Prize of Best Short.

Leanne is currently in development with her first feature film, Twitcher.

What training have you received?

I haven’t had any formal training in film. After university I took a job at a production house and worked as a video editor. I would borrow the company’s camera equipment at weekends and make no-budget shorts with varying degrees of success. It was a process of trial and error but I think it was the best way for me to learn—just to go out and shoot something until I started to know what I was doing.

What kind of projects attract you?

I’m drawn to character-led stories; in particular, characters that are flawed and/or hiding something tend to grab my attention. I love stories that leave space for the audience to fill in themselves, stories that ask questions. Most importantly the project has to be compelling and something I’d want to watch myself.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a director and/or writer?

Trust your gut because it’s probably right. And also that a film is generally only as good as its script, so keep working at it until its ready to shoot.

Tell us the most significant moment in your career so far.

Probably my short film Nocturn being selected to have its world premiere at SXSW. It got me a lot of exposure and was key in helping me to find representation in the States.

You’ll die happy when…

That’s quite a tough one to answer! Maybe when I’ve made the feature that I’m writing at the moment—a female-driven action-thriller set during the Blitz called The Warning. www.nocturnfilm.com

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27/02/2013 13:41:32

24 Fps Finance and Funding

Support System

Judith Chan, Director in the Media Banking Office at Coutts, explains why supporting producers is key to financial success.

What is your main focus as a director in the media banking division at Coutts?

My role is to source and develop new business for the bank, particularly in the media, entertainment and creative sectors. In addition to meeting the everyday financial needs of companies, we are able to add value to our clients’ businesses through our extensive network of leading players in every area of the media sector.

I also act as an ambassador for the bank in these sectors, which involves representing it at industry markets, festivals and expert panels at events and conferences. This is an industry that revolves around relationships so it is important for a financier to engage with the market. The players can change quickly, so it is imperative that I remain current with the marketplace to ensure that the bank works with the best partners.

My focus is largely to work with independent filmmakers and I am pleased to say that of the top 20 independent UK films released in the UK in 2012 (as reported by the BFI), Coutts has been involved with 14 of these. The challenge as a banker is to be able to speak your credit committee’s language and your producer’s language—some call this being bilingual!

You are a specialist in structuring film and television transactions.

What does this entail?

Every project is different because you have different financing parties with different requirements and every producer is looking for the best money available, be it co-production funding, bank debt, equity funding or soft money, which can often involve international jurisdictions, such as the USA Germany, Italy, South Africa,

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Coutts' Judith Chan (above) describes herself as 'bilingual' as she is able to speak both the financial language of the credit committee and the creative language of the film producer

Ireland, Canada and Australia, to name a few. Each one brings its own challenges, so understanding the technical and practical difficulties faced by the producer helps me structure the financing.

The keys to structuring successful financing deals are understanding the risks and mitigating these, which usually means working with producers with a good track record, reliable funding partners, and specialist lawyers.

How closely do you work with film and television makers and producers?

I work very closely with producers and I encourage them to discuss their project finance plan as early as possible, as I can then guide them as to how I think the bank can best assist and help them structure the deal. Where appropriate, I would also introduce other financiers (e.g., gap/equity funds) whose funding is often compatible with the bank.

Filmmakers can often be intimidated by the prospect of managing the financial elements of their project; what advice would you give them?

The financing models are mostly tried-and-tested and the producer’s advisers (e.g., lawyers, accountants) should be holding their hands throughout the process, if required. A producer should also always engage an experienced production accountant who will manage the financial elements from the start of prep through to delivery, so the advice is essentially to align yourself with good partners.

You have recently joined the board of the Grierson Trust. Do documentary-makers face particular financial challenges?

Most filmmakers inevitably have some form of financial challenge. As broadcasters’ licence fees have

generally been declining over the years, filmmakers are faced with having to find other sources of funding to meet their budgets, or they may be enticed to accept full funding from certain broadcasters in lieu of relinquishing all rights. The challenge for the producer is of course to get their programmes financed whilst retaining their rights in order to build value in their business and benefit from the upside. The good news is that some documentary-makers may well benefit from the imminent introduction of tax reliefs for television from the government. This is expected to be in the region of 20-25 per cent of the budget, and will go some way to plug a gap.

Similarly, you have spoken on panels at the Doha Film Festival about the financial infrastructure of cofinancing films within the Arab world.

What are the particular challenges facing filmmakers in this region?

I think Arab cinema is thriving, as evidenced by the number of local and international talent being represented in the film festivals in this region, and the range of financing partners. For example, Sea Shadow was supported by Image Nation Abu Dhabi whilst The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Black Gold attracted funding from the Doha Film Institute. Much of the talent from this region are also winning awards and pushing filmmakers to the fore. The Saudi Arabian film Wadjda, directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour, won the best film and actress awards at the Dubai Film Festival in December last year and is of course attracting positive exposure for the talent and territory.

Indeed, the recent announcement in Berlin of the DFI’s partnership with Participant Media with a US$100m

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One To Watch Len Rowles Producer

fund will provide a worldwide platform and voice to films from Qatar and the Middle East. Distribution of Arab films is also being made available via a VOD platform by the likes of YallaTV, a new leading Internet channel based in Dubai focusing exclusively on Arab language films.

You’ve been involved in the financial sector of the industry for over 20 years; how have you seen many changes over that time and how has your role evolved?

The financing models of 20 years ago were certainly different to what they are today. The international studios and distributors were very active in acquiring independent product through negative ‘pickups’ and pre-sales, and bank lines of credit were readily available to film companies that could support facilities with their film libraries. Films were fully financed through these routes. Insurance companies then began offering policies to insure the financier's risk, i.e. should insufficient distribution sales or boxoffice receipts fall short of recouping

“The keys to structuring successful financing deals are understanding the risks and mitigating these.”

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the full lending/investment, the financier was in theory able to claim on the insurance policy, and some difficulties were experienced here.

Film partnerships were then introduced with the aim of helping to finance the UK film industry—these involved sale-andleaseback deals. The success of these subsequently created a demand for structured equitytype products, which resulted in many film schemes providing much liquidity to the industry While the government sought to encourage the industry with certain tax incentives, however, it soon felt that these schemes placed too much emphasis on tax breaks for individuals at the cost of genuine investment in films and introduced a new tax regime known as the UK Film Tax Credits. We all know that this has been highly successful and has made the UK film industry feel sustainable.

Equity and ‘gap’ products, however, are still an integral part of most films financed in the UK, together with funding from the BFI, BBC Films and Film4. Finance may also be available from co-production partners and tax incentive schemes around the world. Secondary funding from brand integration is increasing and will continue to be an interesting partner to filmmakers and indeed all content producers. Producers are creative and resourceful and the ‘right’ film usually finds the money.

My role has evolved with all these changes, but understanding the subtleties of the business and the difficulties faced by producers has remained key to finding the best financial solution. I am fortunate to work in this fascinating and exciting sector—may it continue to thrive! www.coutts.com ●

Len is a producing graduate of the National Film and Television School, and has produced several internationally screened shorts including animations, live action and 3D projects. Her grad film Skyborn received BIFA and Student Academy Award nominations in 2012. Fresh off her BFI Short Orbit Ever After, shot at 3 Mills Studios, Len is in development with her first feature London Syndrome, directed by Afarin Eghbal, though her company Humdinger Films.

What training or mentoring have you received?

I spent two years doing the incredible Producing MA at the NFTS that took me through every aspect of getting a film made and to an audience. My tutors were established, brilliant producers from a variety of backgrounds and my mentor was Rebekah Gilbertson who produced The Edge of Love shortly after graduating from the same course. Her wisdom was invaluable, particularly when I went to LA for the first time.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a film producer?

My tutor Karin Bamborough always reminded us that there is no room for a producer to have an ego. You need to be the supportive person that builds everyone up in order for them to feel they can deliver something special. There are also four words that I remind myself of often: charm, energy, luck and tenacity. John Hurt once told us to approach the film business with ‘charm and energy’; and Lord Puttnam said that being successful requires ‘luck and tenacity’.

What kind of projects attract you?

I’m attracted to films that transport you to different places or worlds that could only be reached through cinema. I love films that have a strong, human story at their core.

Tell us the most significant moment in your career so far.

I recently negotiated the rights to a book I adore in LA, by an author that was an influential part of my childhood. When the author shook my hand, I felt very privileged. Being the guardian of somebody’s idea feels very significant and that vote of confidence was really important at the beginning of my career.

You’ll die happy when…

My films are in cinemas, chiming with wide audiences. www.lenrowles.co.uk

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01

Insider's Point of View Alice Lowe: Writer/Actor

Show of Strength After beginning her showbiz career in cult comedy Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, Alice Lowe has further explored the dark places of the soul as co-writer and female lead in Ben Wheatley’s black comedy Sightseers. She took time out from working on her next script to discuss the serious business of comedy, and the importance of creating strong female characters. Interview: Helen Cox Although Sightseers is about a caravan holiday like no other, do you think it is so funny because there’s a lot of truth in it?

All the best comedy is in the truth of the characters; it can’t just be about the gags. I think there’s a sort of irony in the situation. The caravan is like a microcosm for them, it’s like playing house. It’s the first time [Lowe’s character of Tina] has been away from home and been out of the grip of her mother. They go away for freedom and come into very close contact with other people and have to deal

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with their lack of manners, and this produces the tension. [Co-writer Steve Oram and I] actually did a research trip where we went away for a week in a caravan, so we could observe all of those weird little tensions.

When these two characters leave for the wilds of Yorkshire they are leaving behind civilisation.

Was it a deliberate move to set it somewhere untamed?

Definitely. The route we went on is one that isn’t shown on TV or film that much. It was important to us that the places were a surprise

and not your typical tourist destination. We wanted the idea of ‘stripped of civilisation’ to run through the film. One of the places was described in the script as a desolate place. They start out in an industrial Victorian setting and then visit increasingly less civilised places. In the final place they visit, it’s like they’re the only two people alive. They’re like an evil Adam and Eve; there is no one in the world except for them. The setting reflects their behaviour until they act like cave people, regressing to something primal.

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When co-writing Sightseers, Alice Lowe (opposite page) wanted to make sure her character of Tina (below) was strong and took the audience on a journey

Tina is a very strong female character. Was it important to you that she wasn’t portrayed as the victim?

It was really important. I started off as an actress, and it’s a constant frustration to me how one-dimensional the characters are in the scripts I get handed.

They’re just either a mother or wife.

I didn’t want her to just be strong; I wanted her to have a journey.

Women usually remain constant and unchanging in film and support the man on his journey.

Tina starts off as passive and becomes quite strong.

Without giving away the ending, I just wanted people to see that there is more to it than the expected motivations of getting married, or love or having a baby.

There are parts of Tina that want that, but there are also parts that are shocking, selfish and about self-preservation. There are not enough female screenwriters or directors to tell these stories. When I write something I’m more likely to write a heroine than a hero. Men probably do that [write heroes], it’s natural and normal, but it creates an imbalance as there are more male screenwriters and directors.

There are also a lot of traditions surrounding female characters that female screenwriters struggle to get away from.

What were the challenges or perks of acting out dialogue you’d written?

I can’t understand people who just write and don’t perform. For me, it’s so much easier to improvise in character and then the jokes just come out of your mouth. To me, there’s no down side to it. You can improvise things and write

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whilst you’re on set, especially with comedy; it’s about one moment in time and capturing that one funny moment. Being able to be spontaneous is really important for comedy, and when I’m writing it’s all about rhythm and the way people speak. The beauty of writing for yourself is you can check it fits you and your character; it’s the difference between a tailor-made suit and something off the peg.

In addition to scriptwriting you’ve also previously had a career as a comic actress.

What made you decide to follow this path?

I was doing a bit of acting as an amateur and a student and I did a lot of quite pretentious physical theatre. Richard Ayoade asked me to do Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and I said I wasn’t really into

comedy. I did the stage version anyway and then quickly got an agent. I started getting comedy work and I started writing, then I got asked to write a comedy pilot without really knowing the rules about how to write a sitcom. I got in touch with a friend who was a short filmmaker and I realised it was much more my type of work.

With TV there’s a lot of rules but with film there is a lot more freedom for you to make what you want. In a way it fitted in with the experimental theatre I started out with.

What projects are you working on post-Sightseers?

Well, I’m writing a feature called Lily with Warp Films. I’m doing a little test shoot this spring and hopefully filming it this year. I’m in it but I’ve filmed so many things now I feel like it’s not enough to just be

acting any more. Also as you get older as an actress, depressingly, the roles are not as interesting. I didn’t want this project to become someone else’s vision. It’s about taking responsibility for your creative voice; it’s terrifying but it’s got to be done. Bad direction can ruin a film and it’s amazing how people can misinterpret an idea—even when you’re in a meeting with them.

Despite the lack of women in the industry I actually feel really positive at the moment. I know that what I’m writing is going to come across as very original as there are many stories about women that haven’t been written yet. I feel quite proud and lucky to be a woman, and I feel it’s new territory.

Sightseers is available on DVD and Blu-ray on March 25 ●

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27/02/2013 14:15:29

Feature Women in Film

Women in Film:

A Vicious Circle?

It is an undeniable fact that women are woefully underrepresented across all sectors of our industry, and this imbalance isn’t just shortchanging film professionals. Film journalist MaryAnn Johanson and Madeline Di Nonno from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in the Media discuss how the representation of women on screen is giving young audiences a skewed view of the gender divide, which has a detrimental impact on diversity in filmmaking.

Imagine you’re a little girl. You love movies! Movies are exciting and take you to strange places you’ve never seen or maybe don’t even exist. Movies let you meet people you’ve never met, maybe never could meet—because they’re aliens or fairies or died hundreds of years ago—and have adventures with them. Who wouldn’t love that?

You barely even notice that there isn’t a lot of fascinating stuff for girls to do in movie land; mostly girls just wait around for boys to rescue them. Borrrr-ing! But you’re a smart, clever, inventive little girl. You’ve got no problem pretending to be the (boy) Jedi Knight or the (boy) soldier or the (boy) explorer or the (boy) robot toy come to life or the (boy) furry monster or any of the other (boy) heroes whose escapades the movies ask you to share. You barely even think about the fact that you

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don’t get the chance to identify with girl warriors or adventurers or toys or monsters, because the movies are too much fun!

Imagine you’re a teenaged girl.

You still love movies! It bothers you a little that in horror movies the girls are super-sexy and halfnaked while the boys never are—it would be nice to see some supersexy half-naked boys!—and then the girls mostly end up murdered in ways that make it seem like getting killed is sexy. It bothers you a little bit that in all the highschool comedies, dorky boys end up with beautiful girlfriends but dorky girls don’t even show up on screen. But it’s still nice to see that other kids have the same problems you’re dealing with as you try to grow up, even if all those other kids are boys.

Imagine you’re an adult woman. You still love movies!

But now you’re pretty’ pissed off that men are the only people whose stories are valued, that male characters are the only ones allowed to change and grow on screen. You’re damn tired of seeing raped wives and kidnapped daughters as

the motivation for men to do anything, as if girls and women were necessary sacrifices for men’s spiritual journeys. You’ve had it up to here with ‘chick flicks’ being dismissed as pointless fluff... and are even angrier that most chick flicks

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are, in fact, absolute garbage that reduce the sum total of a woman’s dreams and ambitions to finding a husband. You’re exhausted by impossibly perfect Manic Pixie Dream Girls and leading men old enough to be the grandfathers of their onscreen romantic partners.

You still love movies. But it’s a love that gets thrown back in your face by 95 per cent of films.

Half of humanity doesn’t have to imagine any of this. We female film fans find something to love in plenty of movies in which girls and women barely feature. And, honestly, there are few individual films to which we can point and say, ‘It’s a problem that this particular movie doesn’t include more female characters.’ It’s the preponderance of movies that barely acknowledge that women are real, flawed, screwed-up people who could benefit from some growth and change—you know, just like men get to be on screen—that is the problem.

In a movie universe that was more egalitarian, for every Saving Private Ryan there would be an adventure drama about, say, women pilots who flew cargo planes on the American home front during World War II. For every (500) Days of Summer there would be a romcom about a gorgeous, kooky guy whose affections help an insecure young woman discover herself. For every Iron Man, there would be a comic-book action flick about a billionaire genius mad scientist who just happens to be a woman.

In such a universe, we moviegoers—and the industry itself—would surely be able to tell the difference between a really good movie about women that’s a hit because it’s simply a really good movie, and really crappy movies about hideous materialistic gal pals who wear expensive shoes that are hits because female audiences are desperate to see women actually doing something—anything—on screen.

In a fairer movie environment, we wouldn’t see attitudes such as that of Warner Bros. bigwig Jeff Robinov, who declared in 2007

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that the flopping of the awful The Brave One, starring Jodie Foster, meant he would no longer greenlight any movies starring women.

(Robinov continues to green-light movies starring men, even after some of them flop.)

Here’s the kicker: we can’t blame any individual filmmaker, either, for the lack of women as the heroes of their own tales.

Storytellers tell stories about what they know. Storytellers tell stories spun from their own fantasies and their own dreams and their own lives. It’s not a problem that so many young indie filmmakers these days make movies about awkward geeks who get to have sex with beautiful young creatures who, wow, just really get them. The problem is that so many young indie filmmakers are men. So where are the women filmmakers?

When the absence of women in film is brought up, it’s often dismissed: ‘Obviously, women simply don’t want to make movies.’

It’s the same thing that has been said about why there are so few women in science and technology, and it’s only a slightly less insulting version of the 19thcentury ‘reasonable explanation’ for why women could do without education: our delicate ladybrains couldn’t handle it.

And just as none of that nonsense was true, it’s also not the case that women don’t want to make movies. Madeline Di Nonno, executive director of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, notes that “film schools are 50 per cent female. It’s what happens when they get out: there isn’t a real definite type of apprenticeship in order to pull these women all the way through”.

It wasn’t always this way. “If you look at the early history of film,” says Di Nonno, “there were a lot of women because, at the time, it wasn’t a huge enterprise. When it became financially viable, men jumped in.” Indeed, a 2003 study

by Duke University academic Jane Gaines [www.news.harvard.edu/ gazette/2003/11.06/03-gaines. html] backs this up: in 1923, there were more independent production companies owned and

run by women than by men. But then the talkies arrived, business boomed and, as with every other field, as soon as there are big bucks to be made, any sort of work becomes men’s work. (If cooking is a woman’s household chore, why are there so many male celebrity chefs?)

So we can blame our culture— which almost automatically does not value any work women do simply because women are doing it—just as much as the industry.

Female filmmakers simply do not get the same support as males, and they do not have the same access to financial resources that men do. Di Nonno’s advice to aspiring women filmmakers?

“It’s very, very important that they understand the business.

If they have a deep financial understanding of the costs of making product in a very efficient way, there’s an opportunity for them to be more independent.”

And hence be able to avoid the likes of Jeff Robinov.

Male filmmakers can certainly tell horror stories about trying to raise money. Now imagine you’re a woman filmmaker, and the additional burden of having to

Above: Geena Davis and Madeline Di Nonno of the Institute on Gender in Media

Opposite: Films like Iron Man 3 traditionally reduce women to secondary characters

convince potential backers that your proposed film isn’t deficient by mere dint of the genitalia you bring behind the camera!

Yet even when there is support, female filmmakers struggle. The Geena Davis Institute has explored the dearth of women on screen and behind the camera extensively, and one of its recent studies—in conjunction with the Sundance Institute and Women in Film Los Angeles—showed that while the percentage of females behind the camera at the Sundance Film Festival between 2002 and 2012 was slightly better than the overall industry percentage of 20 per cent, it was still only just under 30 per cent.

Women at Sundance were more likely to make less lucrative documentaries over narrative films, and while the most

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Feature Women in Film prevalent behind-the-camera role for women was as producer, fewer female producers were found as the job has gained prestige over the years.

Similarly, the British Film Institute recently found that women filmmakers were flourishing at the London Short Film Festival... making, of course, only short films.

But if few or none of those artists make the transition to feature films, it certainly won’t be because they’re not interested in making movies.

The research annals of the Geena Davis Institute show that a woman behind the camera equals

better representation of women in front of it. “When there was the presence of a female screenwriter,” says Di Nonno, “we would see a 10 per cent increase in onscreen roles [for women].”

Why does it matter? is another way of shrugging off the relative absence of women on screen. If women can enjoy stories about men, does it make any difference if there aren’t many stories about women?

Yes, it does. Di Nonno explains that the Geena Davis Institute has found that, at least among American family films, female characters are portrayed in quite narrow ways. “There were no women in business, in law, in finance at the upper echelon,” she says. “There were no entrepreneurs, no investors. But there were men that held these positions.

We’re showing our youngest children that women don’t have careers.” Simply put, girls are getting an inaccurate idea of the opportunities that are open to them-including those throughout the film industry.

But while male filmmakers are part of the reason why girls and women are so absent from our screens, they can help fix the problem. “What we suggest is, make what you’re going to make, but populate it with females,” says Di Nonno. “If there’s a scene in which villagers gather, make it fifty per cent female. Because if it’s not written as such, the default will be male. Look at all the characters that you have and change some of the names to female. You don’t even have to change the character—just change the name.”

Because if we don’t address the gender balance on screen, we’re shortchanging boys, too. Little girls are not born knowing how to ‘naturally’ enjoy stories about boys and men. It’s something little girls are forced to learn in order to be full participants in our culture. There’s no reason why little boys can’t learn to enjoy and appreciate stories about girls and women, and to identify with female characters as fellow human beings with similar needs and desires to their own. We’re denying them the chance to develop a

Left: Director Lake Bell, who brought her film In a World to Sundance 2013, has described Hollywood as a 'boys' club'

“Women behind the camera equals a better representation of women in front of it.” particular kind of empathy that the movies—and the wider world—could use a hell of a lot more of.

You can find out more about the work of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, and read all the reports mentioned above, at www.seejane.org ●

Anything Is Possible

Alison Small, CEO of The Production Guild of Great Britain, explains how many women are in fact making their mark through all sectors of the industry.

How many members of The Production Guild are women?

The Production Guild membership is evenly split between men and women in the grades we represent, which includes production management and co-ordination, production accountants and assistant accountants, location managers, post production supervisors and assistant directors. Women are employed in every grade from senior production managers and financial controllers to assistant co-ordinators and assistant accountants, as well as permanently employed members such as production executives. Some of our trainee schemes are for people starting their careers in the industry, and others are for those developing into more senior grades, and they are always a mix of men and women.

What are the main challenges faced by your female members?

Everyone faces challenges in deciding to make a career as a freelancer in film and television as it can be unstable, with periods of time when there are fewer productions shooting and less work, or indeed very busy periods, when crew will be moving from one production to another. When working on production, a work/life balance can be difficult, due to the long hours that are necessary.

Individuals, whether men or women, have to organise their personal lives in order to be able to work in this way, and that can

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be challenging, but being successful in the film and TV industry demands tenacity, energy and lots of contacts.

How does the Production Guild support and advise its members At the Production Guild we support our male and female members in the same way, by doing everything we can to assist in making sure they have everything they need to succeed professionally, whether that is training, information, lobbying, representation or networking or through our availability service, and opportunities to find work. Of course we also speak to individual members about obstacles they may be facing at any particular time, and advise and assist where we can.

This could be around a member looking for permanent employment rather than freelancing, for example, or around how to move up within a department.

What advice would you give to any woman looking to embark on a career in film production?

My advice to any woman looking to embark on a career in the film industry would be to not let anything or anyone hold them back.

With the necessary skills and determination, along with a network of contacts and support from an organisation such as the Production Guild, we have to believe that anything is possible! www.productionguild.com

www.moviescopemag.com

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02

Insider's Point of View Gale Anne Hurd: Producer

Tour de Force As the producer of numerous modern sci-fi classics, including The Terminator (which she also wrote), Aliens and Tremors, as well as current TV smash The Walking Dead, Gale Anne Hurd is undoubtedly one of Hollywood’s most successful women. As the next series of The Walking Dead went into production, she took time out of her hectic schedule to discuss her incredible career. Interview: Nikki Baughan Your mother worked at MGM; is this where you got your love of movies?

She worked for Jack Dawn who headed up the make-up department [but] she quit before I was born and actually didn’t talk about it very much. It was something that I actually learned more about from her sisters.

One of them was a double and an extra; another worked in the storyboard department at MGM and then as a script supervisor.

They all had different paths. Once they married they all quit, which was standard in the 1950s.

So what made you decide to forge your own career in the film industry?

Actually, there’s a British connection! When I was in my junior year [at Stanford University] I attended a programme at Cliveden, in the Taplow area. It was an intensive

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programme in British film, broadcasting and economics.

Anthony Smith, who at the time was the head of the British Film Institute, was one of our professors and it was coordinated by a former Hollywood producer named Julian Blaustein, who had produced The Day the Earth Stood Still, Broken Arrow and Storm Center. And that’s where I fell in love with the movies!

Was it the business side of the industry that appealed to you?

No, it was the creative side.

We watched a lot of films—we actually met with [producer] Sir Michael Balcon and a number of directors. We learned the history of Ealing Studios, we watched the Ealing Comedies, and we had a documentary class taught

by Basil Wright who, along with John Grierson, was one of the founders of the documentary form. It was mostly history and

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Gale Anne Hurd (opposite, with some of

the stars of The Walking Dead), made her name by writing and producing

The Terminator (below)

criticism and understanding of film and documentary.

When you graduated you joined Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, an experience you’ve described as giving you ‘a worldview that women could do anything…’

Roger Corman and Julie Corman his wife, as well as [producer] Barbara Boyle, ran a genderblind company. And that was not the case anywhere else, I can assure you, in the 1970s. So it gave me the confidence and the self-belief that I could succeed.

Why do you think Roger had that outlook?

I think Julie was a very strong influence on him. She was producing for him at the time.

And Roger has always been an outsider to the way that things are done. He started the careers of so many people, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, you name it, and he didn’t follow other people’s rules.

He saw that women, if you gave them responsibility, were not only successful but they also tended to work harder for less pay!

What is really striking about Roger Corman is that he’s an amazing businessman as well as an incredible creative mind; did you learn a lot about the business of the industry from him?

I learned everything from Roger!

His company was so small that when you worked there you ultimately did everything. And something that was drilled into you was that you had to stay on budget, you had to stay on schedule, that film is an art form but, at the end of the day, it’s also a business. I got a holistic

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overview, because I also for a period of time ran the marketing department, so I had an education in marketing and distribution.

This obviously stood you in good stead to form Pacific Western Productions in 1982. Why did you decide the time was right to start your own company?

Actually, Jim [Cameron] and I first talked to Roger about The Terminator, [but] he said it was outside his budget range. He maxed out at about $2m a film; that was his business model. We did initially submit the screenplay to all of the major studios, and they all passed.

Why do you think that was?

In the seventies, the studios were a lot riskier in their approach [but] by the eighties it started to change. People were beginning to essentially do what I think is very much the case now, which is stick to only a few different genres, a

few directors, a few stars, and this was a film that there was very little precedent for, with a director whose only previous credit was Piranha 2: The Spawning.

But you felt strongly enough about it to make it yourselves?

Yes. And we had to put together the financing, which was also something new to me. The good news was that I didn’t know how difficult or impossible it was, so we just went ahead and did it!

Did you find a lot of people having doubts about the project because you were a woman?

I was very lucky [because] I had built relationships working for Roger Corman. The first person to step up was Barbara Boyle who was now working with Mike Medavoy at Orion; they came in for part of the financing, as well as distribution. Then I met with a woman at HBO, and she decided to put $500,000 into the film for

the pay cable rights, and it was cobbled together like that. It’s a testament to women power!

After you successfully made The Terminator, you went straight on to make Aliens yet you still ran into people who said you couldn’t do such a film…

Yes, but that’s not surprising because The Terminator was looked at as, ‘oh well that’s just a low-budget film, and this is a big studio feature’. As if there was a different set of skills needed. The skill set is transferable! But I also think there’s a perception of what a producer should be like, and it probably isn’t a 100-pound 5ft 4 woman who is not yet 30. And that was who I was back then. It was certainly a difficult film, but I was very lucky because not only did Roger Corman back me up, but the head of the completion guarantee company, a gentleman by the name of Lindsley Parsons,

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Hurd works hard to nurture and support female directors, both on TV show The

Walking Dead (below) and by producing films by female filmmakers such as writer/director Naomi Foner's Very Good Girls (below left)

called Fox and said, ‘She can do this. I can vouch for her.’ You need support from everyone that you work with, male and female.

It sounds like you have always had a lot of support from the industry in the USA...

Actually, I ran into more roadblocks in the UK than in the US, which was surprising because the time that we made [Aliens], Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister! I did have a production designer who said, ‘I won’t take orders from a woman.’ I don’t give orders, but he was still going to be answerable to me. So I stood up, shook his hand and said, ‘Thank you for coming in and I’m sorry you won’t be working on the film.’ And it was only because I had the support of Twentieth Century Fox, and of Jim Cameron, that I was able to do that. Word got around that I was tough and not very ladylike!

It certainly blew people’s minds the day that Jim asked me

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to come in and do a close-up of a shot in which the character of Vasquez, played by Jenette Goldstein, is shooting an alien in the air vent, and she had never fired a handgun before. She had the recoil wrong. So Jim had me come in, and there I am in military fatigues with a gun in my hand, shooting the alien!

You are certainly very confident in your role; do you think it’s a problem that, in general, women are perhaps not confident in their place in the industry?

I think that it’s difficult because when you are forceful, you’re called a bitch… or worse. On the other hand, if you don’t stand up for yourself, you are perceived as someone who shouldn’t be in a position of power. It’s a delicate balance, a tightrope that one has to walk to be taken seriously, to be respected, but also to be heard.

I think it’s very important to have a seat at the table.

You are very proactive in mentoring and championing women throughout the industry; is it important to you to showcase their talents?

Yes. We have a lot of women directing on The Walking Dead.

And that to me is very important, because there is also a perception that women can’t do genre and they can’t do action.

And we’ve dispelled that. Women are fantastic directors and many of them love genre. They are just not given an opportunity to direct in genre. The good news is that because we now have 16 episodes a year, we have 16 different directors, so we have a lot of opportunities.

I’m always disappointed to see TV shows that lament that there aren’t enough women directors out there as an excuse as to why they don’t employ them. You know what? They are everywhere! One of the first [on The Walking Dead] was Michelle MacLaren who has

also been the producing director on Breaking Bad. We have also had Lesli Linka Glatter who was Oscar-nominated for a short [Tales of Meeting and Parting] that launched her career; Tricia Brock, who also directs a lot of Smash; and Gwyneth Horder-Payton who has also directed on Sons of Anarchy. There’s no shortage of fantastic women directors. We also have a fantastic producer on set, Denise Huth, and she is the keeper of the flame; she’s there to make sure there’s continuity.

As someone with such an incredible career, what advice do you give to the women you work with?

It’s the same advice I’d give to anyone; the most important thing is to work incredibly hard, to have a vision for your career and what you want to achieve and to not take no for an answer!

Find out more about Gale’s current and future projects at www.valhallamotionpictures.com ●

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Feature The Middle East

Middle Eastern Promise

If being a filmmaker is tough and being a female filmmaker is particularly tough, then being a female filmmaker in the Middle East is a challenge like no other. Here, Saudi Arabian Haifaa Al-Mansour, Palestinian Annemarie Jacir and Egyptian Hanan Abdalla reveal the hurdles they have had to overcome to make their films.

What particular challenges did you face while making your film?

HAIFAA AL-MANSOUR Writer/Director, Wadjda (above) Without the basic infrastructure of a film industry [in Saudi Arabia], every aspect of the film’s development presented challenges. A big problem was casting, as we can’t have open casting calls in Saudi because of the sensitivities with women acting. Filming in Riyadh was a challenge as well; people aren’t used to having cameras around

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so we were especially cautious, even though we had permission to shoot publicly. For a lot of the outdoor scenes we knew we were going to face a lot of difficulties, from conservative bystanders to sandstorms to nervous partners, so we had to be ready to work with what we had on any given day. We used a hand-held camera sometimes to save time and give the actors freedom with their movements. I occasionally directed from a protected spot, like a van, so people wouldn’t see

me (a woman) interacting publicly with the crew (men).

ANNEMARIE JACIR Writer/Director, When I Saw You All the usual ones! Financing being at the top.

HANAN ABDALLA Director, In the Shadow of a Man The main challenge I faced was approaching the subject of ‘women’s needs’ in the aftermath of the revolution. At first I was deeply uncomfortable; I felt that I would be following a fetish that much of the Western media had

become obsessed with. There were more important stories to tell, I thought. Luckily, thanks to friends and family convincing me otherwise, I persevered despite my concerns. I came to realise that the problem wasn’t with the subject matter, but with the question itself. I started by wanting to ask [documentary subjects] Wafaa, Badreya, Shahinda and Suzanne theoretical questions about what freedom meant for women, if society had limited their choices and what their solutions were;

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things like that. I moved—or, in actual fact, they moved me—to a much more intimate place, where they started to tell me their stories: the very personal subtleties of the frustrations; the longings; the triumphs; and the inconsistencies of being a woman in Egypt.

And what particular challenges do creative women face in your home country?

HAIFAA Most Saudi women wouldn’t dare do anything that would put them on any sort of a public platform to express themselves; things like directing, acting or performing for women are seen as completely taboo in the Kingdom, so you have to have a thick skin to put yourself out there.

Because of censorship, and just social pressure in general, creative people of both genders in the Kingdom face all kinds of pressure. A lot of artists practice self-censorship and try to play it safe, not knowing that making any type of art is putting out an opinion. Even the most basic art forms somehow talk about the world and a person’s search for a place within it. Not only in Saudi Arabia but the entire Gulf region, people are reluctant to form an individual opinion. These are tribal societies where individuality is vilified, where group-think is seen as a positive part of the culture. So stepping out of that can be a painful, scary process, but ultimately extremely rewarding and beneficial to the society’s development.

ANNEMARIE I would say our challenges are the same as women everywhere in film. For me,

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being in production and being on set, I don’t feel specific difficulties as a woman per se. The challenge is felt, however, when trying to finance projects, and when looking for partners and funding.

I think women filmmakers all over the world have this problem.

HANAN The challenges that women face in the film industry in Egypt are similar to the challenges faced by women in many other countries in this male-dominated industry. The major difference is that Egypt is more socially conservative, which leads to other issues regarding the ability of women to enter into the field in the first place. The working hours of the film industry tend to be a big challenge, due to the fact that filming schedules are liable to finish very late which can cause conflicts within the family—what people will say about her, if it will impact her eligibility for getting married, along with other social taboos masqueraded by the claim that this is Egyptian ‘tradition’ and ‘culture’.

Did you choose to tell a story so close to home to directly confront these issues?

HAIFAA I want to tell stories about where I come from, and I think all good stories have within them larger issues and themes. I don’t aim to be confrontational, I just want to be honest. As far as the controversy of some of my work, I feel that there are some people that react negatively towards it just because of who I am, and they expect me to present a certain position. I like to keep those people

guessing and I think it makes me challenge myself to constantly examine my work and keep it fresh and original.

ANNEMARIE This is the story I was drawn to tell, of a boy and his mother who have just become refugees from their homeland, and how they deal with this new reality in different ways.

HANAN While planning for In the Shadow of a Man, what was most important to me was to understand and learn from the women that I filmed about what it means to be a woman in Egypt; how the inequality, the frustrations and the limitations manifest in the everyday reality.

Many of their stories are ‘ordinary’ in the strict sense of the word, and yet they reveal much about the subtleties of how gender inequality is deeply imbedded within Egyptian society, and the way in which women resist it at every level.

How do you think your film is relevant to audiences from other regions?

HAIFAA Having travelled quite a bit with the film, I feel like there is something universal about a young girl wanting a bicycle. I’m so happy to see so many people from so many different walks of life respond so strongly to the film. I really wanted to put a human face on some of the issues that we talk about in such a theoretical way, and you don’t have to

explain why a little girl would see riding a bike as something that might be fun. As the script developed, I constantly tried to look at it from the outside, to the universal themes that it spoke to. The biggest change was in the characters, as they went from being passive, helpless victims to more proactive masters of their own destiny. It was difficult to get the story to a point where it can be considered uplifting, but I felt like people would be pleasantly surprised to see a heartwarming story from such a harsh place. I didn’t want to give audiences the false impression that it would be an easy or acceptable thing for a girl to ride a bike around Riyadh, so it was hard not to imagine a bleaker end to her journey. But I think the positive aspects of the film help audiences relate to the story and, ultimately, enjoy watching the film.

ANNEMARIE It’s what a filmmaker hopes for—that their film will speak to other people and in places far and near. I think that anyone who has ever been separated from a loved

With Wadjda (top left) and When

I Saw You (below), filmmakers Haifaa Al-Mansour and Annemarie Jacir hope to tell the true stories of their region

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Feature The Middle East one, or from a place they called home, can relate to the film. The film is about a boy who rejects borders. It’s how I feel too. So I hope it reaches audiences across many borders.

HANAN I feel that many women from across the world can deeply relate to the problems that the four characters face in my film. One of the main problems facing women in Egypt, as well as the rest of the world, is the psychological barriers that can hold them back from claiming the rights they know they are entitled to. The way the weight of a social ‘duty’ or role keeps the balance between work and home life uneven, or the ways in which they feel they have to act more like men to be able to garner respect and independence. The four women in the film fight, each in their own powerful way, against this deeply imbedded patriarchy: a struggle that exists throughout the world, cutting across class, culture and religion.

What do you hope your film will achieve?

HAIFAA As I said before, I would like to add a human face to the

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concepts and theories people have about the situation of women in Saudi Arabia. I feel that most Western audiences have ideas and concepts about women in Saudi, but don’t know much about the day-to-day life of women in the Kingdom. It is hard to be a woman in Saudi Arabia and I want the world to know how strong the women are in my country.

They are tough and sassy, and the new generation has a whole new outlook and window to the world. They are empowered and motivated to improve their status within the society in ways my generation could never have imagined. They are survivors.

ANNEMARIE I hope it will mean something to someone, that perhaps someone will find a part of themselves, or of their own story, on screen.

HANAN I hope that from watching this film people will start to reappraise the relationship between women’s emancipation and the emancipation of society as a whole; that women’s demands are intrinsically linked to the wider socioeconomic problems that [Egypt] is facing.

I hope that the audience moves away from the media stereotypes of the ‘victimhood’ of Arab women, and that they are reminded not to underestimate small acts of resistance, especially when they are rooted in larger issues. I hope we can move away from isolating women’s demands from the reality of society itself, and move towards a richer understanding of the way gender presents itself in the norms, relationships and beliefs we live by.

Do you think it is the responsibility of filmmakers like yourselves to be revolutionaries, and call for change?

HAIFAA I think it is every artist’s responsibility to be honest and tell sincere and candid stories about their experiences. If artists want to affect or contribute to positive change, they should be cognisant of the authenticity of their voice. If they tell an honest story it will resonate with others who have shared experiences. My country is a different place than it was 10 years ago, and the new generation has access to information and different cultures

Hanan Abdalla's documentary

In the Shadow of a Man (below) highlights how Egyptian women are challenging their traditional place in society

and ideas that we couldn’t even imagine growing up. Change is a reality now, and in Saudi it is always a delicate and dangerous process. It won’t change overnight, not in a positive way anyway, so it is up to all of us to work with the system to try and influence that change in a certain direction. We’re seeing the harsh and disappointing realities of radical change in other parts of the region so I think we should always focus on the positives and how we can get to whatever we think that next step should be.

Change has to be from the heart.

ANNEMARIE I think as filmmakers we have to be honest. And I think we have to make films that speak to our audience, and that challenge each other.

HANAN I think there has to be a clear distinction between documentary and documentation. One is a creative art form, and the other a form of reportage. I believe that it’s a responsibility of a filmmaker to produce honest work, and that doesn’t mean that it has to be objective. In fact, in most cases it means the very opposite. But in terms of the revolution, I believe that it’s everyone’s responsibility, whether they are filmmakers, artists, lawyers, workers, farmers or doctors, with a job, or without, to bear witness to the violence of the state and to fight for justice for those who have died at its hands.

Wadjda, When I Saw You and In the Shadow of a Man are all screening as part of the 2013 Birds Eye View Film Festival, a celebration of Arab women filmmakers, which runs from April 3-10. For more information, visit www.birds-eye-view.co.uk . For more from Haifaa, Annemarie and Hanan, visit www.moviescopemag.com ●

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03

Insider's Point of View Cate Shortland: Director

Breaking with Tradition Although she has made just two big-screen features, Somersault and Lore, antipodean filmmaker Cate Shortland is one of the most exciting female filmmakers working today. Here, she explains why she is always looking to challenge expectations. Interview: Limara Salt Cate Shortland is an accomplished Australian writer and director of film and television whose work tackles myriad subjects. Her latest, Lore, is an adaptation of Rachel Seiffert’s story of the same name, which follows a 14-year-old girl, played by Saskia Rosendahl (opposite page) as she ushers her younger siblings across Germany in the wake of Adolf Hitler’s suicide and Germany’s defeat. Shortland spoke to movieScope about the challenges of directing a young, foreign cast.

Somersault and Lore both focus on teenage girls and their experiences. What is it

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about those characters that interests you?

It’s a coincidence, really. There were three novellas in The Dark Room [the original novel by Rachel Seiffert] and I actually wanted to do the last one, which is about a 35-year-old man, but the producer said we should focus on this one because this story hasn’t really been told before. He was right; it’s about the children of the perpetrators, and I’m really happy I stuck with this one.

Did you find filming adaptations more challenging than original stories?

Adaptations are so much easier because you have the bible, which is the source material, and I constantly went back to the

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Filmmaker Cate Shortland (opposite,

with Lore stars Nele Trebs and Saskia Rosendahl at the 2012 BFI London Film Festival) enjoys telling challenging stories like Lore (below)

book. Even after we changed the events within the story, I would go back to the book and take a detail from it, or I’d re-read something Rachel had written. It just fleshed out ideas I had and I felt like she was collaborating with me during the process.

Lore is filmed in German; how was that experience?

I don’t speak German but it wasn’t nearly as challenging as the subject matter. We had a fantastic dramateur who worked with me all through rehearsals and on set. She would direct the younger children with me as they don’t speak English and then I could work with Saskia [Rosendahl, who plays Lore] as she does, and I collaborated with most of the adult cast. The scary thing I always worry about is the intonation but what eased my nerves was when I was doing the press in Germany, the journalists couldn’t tell I wasn’t German!

The film has a very specific look.

How did you decide on that style?

Our cinematographer [Adam Arkapaw], who shot Snowtown and Animal Kingdom, was influenced by a film called Ballast which is about an African-American family living in the badlands. It’s very sparse but incredibly intimate and he brought it to me and I was blown away. Our other big influences were a Russian film called Come and See and the documentary Shoah, which shows a lot of testimonies. We wanted the film to be claustrophobic at times because the book is comprised of details, and we knew we had to try and capture that.

Lore has a fascinating protagonist; do you think there

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are enough films that focus on interesting female characters?

I think there are millions of roles out there for women but I think when you see a film like [Andrea Arnold’s] Red Road and that female character and the way her grief is expressed; the way her sexuality was expressed; there’s a complexity to the female character that is sometimes lacking in many films featuring women. And as females watching them, we often get these beautiful layers that we might not usually expect.

How has your experience been of being a female director working in the Australian film industry?

Australian women are tough, and we’ve had those fantastic women who set up the women’s film cooperative in the 1970s. People like Jan Chapman, who produced The Piano, Gillian Armstrong, Jane Campion—all of these great women paved the way so, once I was making shorts in my twenties, I didn’t really know there was any difference. People think of Australia as being incredibly misogynistic but I’m always really shocked when I come to Europe and see this big difference; I don’t think Australian men would even dare question that women are any less capable but it’s still really astounding that we don’t have more female directors in Australia, because the infrastructure is there. I wonder about that; maybe it’s something in the psyche.

I’ve worked with Jan Chapman who trains young producers, all of whom are women, and she got a big million-dollar grant so young women could come in and work with her and she could help them on that trajectory. I’m so proud

of what women in Australia have achieved and I’m so proud to be a part of that. I love women so much and love being around them with their beauty and humour; I’m not interested in being part of a boring old boys’ club!

Have you ever experienced any negative attitudes towards you as a female filmmaker?

When I started my first television directing job there was an elderly sound recordist who tried to humiliate me in front of the crew because I didn’t know the protocol. I threatened that he’d lose his job but I was totally bluffing, and after I said that I went into the toilet and burst into tears. I had absolutely no power but I just knew in a funny kind

of intrinsic and instinctual way that I had to speak up for myself even if I cried. I had to pretend it was OK. Would you agree that the success of the Australian film industry is down to how supportive it is of homegrown talent?

We probably make about 20 films a year and it’s like a crop of oranges; sometimes you’ll have a really wonderful and fresh harvest and some years you don’t.

The biggest thing in Australia, of course, is government funding; we wouldn’t have any industry without it and we feel incredibly blessed that we have that massive, massive support.

Lore is now on general release throughout the UK ●

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Feature Indian Cinema

Female Voices in Indian Cinema Think of women in Indian cinema, and first thoughts might turn to the beautiful, brightly dressed stars of Bollywood. Yet, as Indian cinema expert Ashanti OMkar explains, women have always played a central and crucial role in the country’s industry across all disciplines.

As Indian cinema celebrates its centenary in 2013, it’s interesting to note that the first fulllength Indian feature film, Raja Harishchandra (1913), had men playing women. The director, Dadasaheb Phalke, was unable to find a single woman who would agree to be cast in this production; such was the plight of the filmmaker back then.

Fast-forward 100 years, and women are very much a part of the cinema of India as a whole, in roles ranging from production, directing, acting and beyond.

There have, in fact, been many female pioneers in Indian cinema, such as the late Bhanumathi Ramakrishna, who was able to straddle all sorts of cinematic professions in her long career, from acting in Tamil and Telugu films in the 1930s and directing and producing films such as Ippadiyum Oru Penn (1975) and Oke Naati Rathri (1980) between the 1950s and early 1990s.

Indeed, Ramakrishna can be likened to early female directors in Hollywood like Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino.

India’s women have also added colour to the framework of international cinema, such as costume designer Bhanu Athaiya, who was the first Indian to ever win an Academy Award for her

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work on Richard Attenborough’s Ghandi. And Indian filmmakers have also made their names in foreign territories, with the likes of Mira Nair (The Reluctant Fundamentalist), Gurinder Chadha (Bend it Like Beckham) and Deepa Mehta (Midnight’s Children) now being household names across the world.

One leading female filmmaker working in India is choreographer-turned-director Farah Khan, who has created

successful high-budget films such as Om Shanti Om (2007) and Tees Maar Khan (2010).

Khan is confident that anyone— whatever their gender or location— can become a director, if they have the right approach. “Gender bias is something I personally haven’t faced," she says.

"Ultimately, it’s about selling tickets at the cinema and that’s a result I’ve been able to deliver. I have gone for full-blown commercial movies. As the audiences change,

so does the cinema—any gender of director can give them that.”

The Indian industry is supportive of its female creatives, with the country’s renaissance man, actor/director/producer Aamir Khan, more than happy to finance female directors. “The industry has gained women directors through my production house; Anusha Rizvi [Peepli Live] and Kiran Rao [Dhobi Ghat],” says Khan, “and I’ve worked with talented women like Deepa Mehta in 1947: Earth, and

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most recently, Reema Kagti. Their approach is a purely individualistic trait and nothing to do with gender.

For too long, the process of cinema and storytelling has been from the male perspective on life and relationships. I’m happy to support women directors, with their fresh mindsets.”

Khan’s wife and longtime co-producer Kiran Rao is equally as positive about the attitudes throughout the Indian industry. “I have never faced discrimination of any sort in my 13 years in this industry, or been treated any differently than a man doing the same,” says Rao. “Heavier jobs like grips or lights may be a challenge, but women take these on, and [in] every other department of filmmaking.”

Collaboration amongst women is a key characteristic of Indian cinema; as well as working with Aamir Khan on the Oscarnominated Lagaan (2001), for example, Reema Kagti was assistant director of the Indian portion of Mira Nair’s Vanity Fair (2004). She also collaborated with writer/director Zoya Akhtar on the screenplay of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) and again on 2012’s Talaash, which Kagti directed. (Incidentally Talaash, which stars Aamir Khan, Rani Mukerji and Kareena Kapoor, earned close to the highlycoveted 100 crores in India—the approximate equivalent of £12 million GBP—while making just short of £1m in the UK.) “When I saw the Oscarnominated Salaam Bombay! by

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Mira Nair, I knew I wanted to work within this industry,” says Kagti, “and I have faced no discrimination or prejudice as a woman in my 16-year career in the Hindi film industry. My ideas are not very run-of-the-mill, so that’s a difficulty I have faced!”

Sridevi Boney Kapoor, a child-actress-turned-heroineextraordinaire within Indian cinema, recently made a comeback to the silver screen after 15 years with English Vinglish and, in doing so, worked with a female director for the first time. “It was a real pleasure, thanks to [director] Gauri Shinde,” says Kapoor. “I was very comfortable. She scheduled it so my kids wouldn’t be away from me and worked on every detail meticulously.”

That's no surprise, as actresses like Kapoor are absolutely crucial to the success of Indian cinema.

The top 10 Bollywood films in 2012, in terms of box office, all boasted A-list actresses: Katrina Kaif (Ek Tha Tiger, Jab Tak Hai Jaan); Sonakshi Sinha (Dabangg 2, Rowdy Rathore, Son of Sardaar); Priyanka Chopra (Agneepath, Barfi!); Asin (Housefull 2, Bol Bachchan); and Kareena Kapoor and Rani Mukerji (Talaash). And in 2013, actress Deepika Padukone has also hit the top of the box office for glossy thriller Race 2.

Though the popularity of these films is very much driven by the acting clans of Bollywood, like the Khans, Roshans, Kumars, Kapoors, Devgns and Bachchans, the key to marketing the films are the leading ladies. They always play

pivotal roles, however small. And although very few actresses have meaty roles to play, like Vidya Balan in Kahaani (2012) or The Dirty Picture (2011), that is a changing trend, and Indian actresses are now becoming recognisable figures across the globe.

One of India’s most well-known stars is new mother Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, who has become a fixture at Cannes and is constantly in the media eye. She may bear the famous Bachchan surname due to marriage, but her prowess as a global icon is remarkable. And fellow Miss World winner Priyanka Chopra is becoming equally as well-known on the global stage, as she is not just an actress but also a successful singer in her own right, marketed by Universal Music and working with the likes of Will.i.am.

Indeed, many women working within the Indian industry try their hands at multiple roles, such as

Women like director/producer Kiran Rao (opposite), writer/ director Reema Kagti (below, with

Aamir Khan) and actress Kareena Kapoor (above) play central roles across Indian cinema

actress-turned-director Nandita Das, who was awarded the Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France for the film Firaaq (2008).

“Acting to direction was a natural progression for me,” says Das. “It gave me the space and freedom to make what I want. My gender is only one of my identities, albeit an important one. Just as there is a male gaze, there must be a feminine gaze, and that would bring in a sensibility, but this is not conscious. Women in all fields, over time, learn how to negotiate through it and hold their own.” ●

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04

Insider's Point of View Olivia Colman: Actor

Seriously Funny With roles in comedy favourites like Peep Show and Green Wing, dramas including Accused and Broadchurch and films like Tyrannosaur and The Iron Lady, Olivia Colman has become a firm favourite of the big and small screens. She sits down with movieScope editor Nikki Baughan to discuss her phenomenal career, and why she’s proud to be part of the UK industry.

It’s extremely rare that, when you meet someone whose talent you admire, they match your expectations. Those of us who work in this business know that better than most. Olivia Colman is, however, exactly how you would imagine her to be: softly-spoken and charmingly humble, with an infectious sense of humour and a way of making those in her company feel instantly at ease.

So it is that, within a short while of meeting at London’s 3 Mills Studios, she and I are in fits of laughter, which continues throughout our

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chat about her extensive film and TV career, which takes in her roles in small-screen hits like Peep Show, Green Wing, Accused and upcoming Broadchurch, along with film projects including Tyrannosaur, The Iron Lady and Hyde Park on Hudson.

Did you always want to work as an actress?

From about the age of 16, when I was in my first school play, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I wasn’t ever terribly brilliant at anything at school, and suddenly, doing a play, I was like 'oooh, I like

this'. It was the moment the light switched on for me.

You gave up teacher training to go to drama school; did that make it easy to break into TV? No, not really! Just before I went to drama school I’d met Rob Webb and David Mitchell and we were all going to do a play. We got £25 a fortnight and went to schools and did The Miser; there were only four of us, and there were about 15 characters. I wish there was a video of it, because it was terrible!

[Then] I got an agent, but I didn’t have a single audition for about

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Olivia Colman recently played Queen Elizabeth in Hyde Park on Hudson (below

left, with Samuel West as King George Vi)

three years. I left drama school and got my current agent, but still didn’t work for quite a while.

Even auditioning for little plays in fringe above pubs was really hard; I never got anything! Endless heartbreaking auditions!

So how did you finally get your break?

It was Rob and David again.

While in my final term at drama school, I got a call saying, 'you’ve been asked to audition in TV Centre'. And when I got there it was them! They needed a girl in a sketch show called Bruiser, and suggested me. That was when things started. Then they got Peep Show, and they suggested me for that again.

You’re one of a wave of very funny modern British women, including Julia Davis and Sarah Millican, so why do you think there’s this enduring stigma that women can’t be funny?

I’ve heard that said, but I’ve never met anyone who has felt that.

They wouldn’t dare say it to my face! Every year, there are women

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emerging who are very funny and continue to prove that wrong, so I don’t know why idiots still maintain that. It clearly comes from someone who is not funny themselves.

You’ve done comedy on the big and small screens; is it easier to be funny on film or a TV show?

Everything depends on a script, I think, comedy or drama. And there’s a big difference between me and a comedian, obviously.

A comedian is a whole other talent. If a gun was against my head, I couldn’t write something funny. So I can say someone’s lines, and if they are funny then it doesn’t matter if it’s on the big screen or small. It’s still the same process.

As well as screen-acting, you’ve also done a lot of theatre. You did Hayfever last year at the Noel Coward theatre; how was that?

I’m not very good in the theatre!

I don’t think I’ve ever really done a play I’ve enjoyed. That sounds awful! But I think that’s down to my fear…

You did it to challenge yourself?

Well my lovely agent said, ‘Oh, you must do some theatre, darling, and you must work with [the director] Howard Davies.’ He was wonderful and I loved the people, but I was sort of over it by the second preview. I went, 'no, I don’t like it.

I want to go home. It’s too scary'.

But the fear was helpful, and it did go away. Then I was on stage and saying my lines, but thinking about shopping lists! And I was thinking, 'well, this isn’t right. I’m doing a terrible job!'

So would you do another play?

Not for a very long time! As soon as the play had finished, I said to my husband, 'I will not be setting foot on a stage until I’m at least 60 and things are really running out for me!' And I might be completely lying, you never know.

Next year I might find a play I love and beg to do it!

Your husband Ed Sinclair is a writer; does he help you choose projects and give you his opinion on a script?

Yes, he can do, but it doesn’t make a difference to the roles I choose!

Sometimes I say 'can you read this because I don’t really get it!'

Occasionally I’ve had some political dramas through, and I’m not very… au fait. So he goes [puts on a posh voice] ‘Yes, well, it’s a little bit florid, a little bit wordy.’ And I’m like, 'OK. But does it make sense?' So occasionally I do ask him for his intellectual input!

You’ve played two formidable real-life women in recent years: Carol Thatcher in The Iron Lady and Queen Elizabeth in Hyde Park on Hudson. Is it a greater challenge to bring a real-life woman to the screen?

It depends. With Queen Elizabeth, there was very little recording of her voice, so that was really helpful! Carol was much harder, because everyone knows her voice and I am not good at impersonations. And because it was a piece of fiction, I had to go with the script.

You played Queen Elizabeth as very funny and endearing in Hyde Park on Hudson…

Thank you! Some people have said to me, ‘Oh, you played her quite tough!’

She’s certainly a strong character behind the scenes; was it fun to delve into her private personality?

Yes. That is a character that I knew about. She was such a well-loved member of the family, and she was strong. She was the first one who instigated the walkabout, and she stayed in London when her people were suffering in the Blitz and everyone told her she should move away. But that little segment of their lives in Hyde Park is pretty scary. It’s weeks away from the Second World War, and they never wanted this job; it’s been foisted upon them. And they are doing it admirably, even though they are homesick and nervous.

Were you nervous about Helena Bonham Carter’s footsteps, after she played the role in The King’s Speech?

That film came out about the time we were filming, so we had a choice to watch it or not watch it.

And I chose not to watch it until afterwards. [Helena] was amazing, but we both had different scripts, so different parts of history. Almost every year there’s similar films, and I don’t think there’s a problem with

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that at all. Imagine if you could only play a character once; we’d run out of characters very quickly!

Starring in those films meant you worked with two icons of cinema: Meryl Streep and Bill Murray.

How was that?

Yeah. It’s alright. [Laughs] It was amazing! Going for the audition for The Iron Lady, you think, 'this is ridiculous. I can’t be in a film with Meryl Streep, playing her daughter; that will never happen!' And then you get it. It was fucking amazing!

She was the loveliest woman; really genuine and friendly. The first time you meet her, it’s like 'oh my God, it’s Meryl Streep!' But within seconds it’s gone. She’s got four daughters and a lovely marriage, and she’s just really down to earth, a genuine good egg.

Was her transformation to Thatcher interesting to watch?

We didn’t really watch the process; she just turned up and she was her. So it was peculiar that you are in a room with Margaret Thatcher, which is a bit of a headfuck, but also Meryl Streep was underneath

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it! So it was really quite daunting.

She lost herself completely [in the role]; you couldn’t see her. The moment they said 'cut', she was herself again. She’s not one of those method people.

One of your greatest roles is in Tyrannosaur, in which you were directed by Paddy Considine.

Are there any benefits to being directed by a fellow actor?

A lot of people have asked, 'does he make a great director because he is an actor?' I don’t think that matters. I imagine a lot of actors would be terrible directors. He just naturally understands people. He knew that in order to get to some horrendous places, you need to feel pretty secure that no one is going to giggle. And he always made you feel incredibly brave, so that side of it he understood completely. Aside from that, I can’t imagine ever meeting anyone who can do what he can do. There was a sort of ‘I’m Spartacus’ feeling on set. If he gave a thumbs up to anyone, even a runner, it would be like, 'Paddy likes what I did

then!' He’s extraordinary. I’m just desperate to do something else with him.

It’s a difficult film to watch, given the abuse Hannah suffers at the hands of her husband. Did you feel a weight of responsibility in preparing for the role?

I didn’t want anyone who had experienced anything like that to watch and think, 'that’s not what my life was like'.

Uncharacteristically for me I did a bit of research, and the women at Refuge were amazing. I wanted to find out how well hidden [abuse] can be. Women can be hugely confident at work, but at home it’s completely different. They just don’t want anyone to know, because the implications of that and what the partner might do if they think their secret is out, it gets more dangerous. [Refuge] were wonderful and the work they do is extraordinary.

It’s also a very redemptive film, about the power of the human spirit. Hannah is not a martyr…

She was a soldier! Yes, absolutely. There was one Q&A where someone asked me ‘What’s it like playing doormat characters?’ [Shakes her fist] I was like, 'did you just watch the same film?' I was absolutely astounded. Hannah is the bravest one in that film; she suffers every day and her ability to still be positive and to love, that’s extraordinary. She’s an amazing woman, and I loved her because she was strong.

You won several awards for that role, and you’ve also been nominated for others throughout your career. Is such recognition important?

The awards we got for Tyrannosaur came from places that meant a lot to us: the BIFAs and Sundance.

You can’t pretend that that doesn’t feel great; you’ve done this thing that you are so proud of, and it was recognised. Up until Tyrannosaur I had always assumed that awards don’t matter and, weirdly, I’ve always said that I wish my job wasn’t seen by anybody, because then you could remain perfect! But that film on the whole has touched people’s hearts and had really good feedback. Awards shouldn’t matter, but it did a bit for that.

The film didn't get any recognition from BAFTA. Did you find that disappointing?

I was surprised at how much that hurt, actually. I think because for a long time I’d seen so many people who thought it was a shoe in. It’s a bit like being told you’ve got a promotion, it’s in the bag, and then you get there and you realise your name was never put forward. And most people didn’t watch it. This year I joined BAFTA for the first time and I’m thinking, 'I’m going to change it from the inside!' [Laughs] But actually it’s quite difficult. The screeners come so late, and you would have to watch about four films a day to watch everything before voting starts. So I decided that I would watch all the British films before I move on to the next films. It is hard, but if it’s the British Academy then at least watch the British films. I’m amazed by how few people do.

Do you think organisations like the BIFAs are filling that gap?

For people in the industry, the BIFAs mean more to them.

Because they genuinely do watch everything; they are passionate

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Below: Colman received huge critical acclaim for her role as Hannah in

Tyrannosaur, directed by Paddy Considine Opposite Page: Starring opposite David Tennant in the ITV1 drama Broadchurch

and all there for the right reasons.

The lovely Jodie Whittaker is a massive film nerd, and she’s on the panel for the BIFAs! And now you’re starring with her in Broadchurch?

Yes! She’s amazing. She had a tough job, playing the mother of the boy that dies. [When we were in scenes together], I had to look above her head; I couldn’t watch her because I was falling apart.

Has it become harder doing projects involving kids since you’ve become a mother yourself?

I’m much more fragile! I’ve always been someone who cries loudly in the cinema, and everything moves me. We were sent Les Miserables as a screener, and I’m so grateful I watched it at home. My husband and I were audibly clutching each other going [fake sobbing] ‘When is it going to stop?’ I’m always the one sitting in the cinema with reams of loo roll in my bag!

So how do you prepare for a role like Broadchurch, that you know is going to be really difficult to do?

Have a little chat with yourself.

You’ve got to let your inhibitions go. If you’re slightly aware of what you are doing, you can’t do it justice. Nobody looks that pretty when they’re crying; you’ve got to just not care and throw yourself in. That was a lesson from Paddy, to be brave. And you can’t stop [feeling emotion] when the script is that good.

It’s the same with the great final speech in Accused, which Jimmy McGovern wrote; I never managed to read that without [clutches her heart]. It was written so well. If I read it in here now, you would cry!

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I don't doubt it! As your own kids get older, do you think you might start doing projects that they can see?

I should probably have already done that! I did Doctor Who, thinking they could watch that. I put it on saying 'there’s mummy!'

And then I came out with a mouthful of sharp teeth and I was like 'OK, turn it off, turn it off!' It was great, though, because for a week they didn’t do anything naughty.

You’re working so much at the moment; what is it like balancing your work life and your home life? I’m having visions of Harriet in Green Wing, pulling the kids’ toys out of her handbag…

I’m marginally better than her! My husband is my best friend and my partner and it’s all completely 50/50. For me, it’s not so much juggling. I miss them when I’m working, and when I’m at home I miss work, so that’s a kind of juggle I suppose. It’s a nice juggle.

You’ve become a regular in the UK industry; would you ever relocate to the USA? I read an interview recently, where you said you wouldn't get a call from Hollywood because you look like a normal 38-year-old woman…

Well, it’s like when you turn on to The OC, or something, and you think 'oh, she’s clearly 16' and then you go, 'oh my God, she’s the mum!' I would look like a granny over there. Maybe that’s unfair, and perhaps I’m putting up barriers before they go 'oh no, you couldn’t work over here!' If they called, I would definitely go.

Hollywood seems to be the mecca for a lot of young British actors.

Why do you think they measure

success in terms of whether they can make it in America?

I’ve no idea. I’ve always loved working here, and the scope is so great here. You can be perfectly normal, average-looking and get good work. You still get a certain pressure, because you still see yourself on screen which most people don’t. Most people look in the mirror, but you don’t look at yourself animated. When you start seeing that, you think 'oh, Christ!' So you are exposed to that sort of pressure. I was never the ingenue type beauty, I was always the comedy maid, which was fine for me, so I suppose I was always a bit nervous of the rejection… But now I have got a bit more of a body of work behind me, if something came up [in Hollywood] it would of course be brilliant.

You’ve starred in a lot of short films by new filmmakers, like See Me by Catherine Shepherd.

Is it important to support upand-coming talent?

Yes. Tyrannosaur came from a short film, and although Paddy was an established actor he

hadn’t directed before. And the See Me script was just beautiful; I wanted to do it. Short films are a great place for you to cut your teeth and to learn your craft, and I think probably more helpful than cutting your teeth in an established drama on TV, because you can learn bad mistakes that way, which is important.

Paddy, when he was trying to get money for Tyrannosaur, they for a while had a certain amount of money and then some of it dropped back. And he was just like, 'I’m not fucking waiting, let’s fucking make the film'. And they made a beautiful film for not a lot of money. A lot of young people watch films which are the big blockbusters and they don’t know what we can do. [Hollywood does] make beautiful films. But you can also do a bloody good film for a lot less money. And it’s just as valid, and some of those films really are the ones you never forget.

Broadchurch is showing throughout March and April on ITV1. You can watch Catherine Shepherd’s short See Me at www.film4.com ●

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Feature Mentoring

A Better Career Through Chemistry It’s no secret that filmmaking is a collaborative process, and there’s much to be gained from sharing in the experiences of others. Mentoring scheme producer Nicola Lees explains how finding the right mentor can be of particular benefit to women at all stages of their career.

Nicki Minaj has one. Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter each had one. Dom Joly and Rihanna have each got two. Martin Sheen’s had three. The X Factor has four. A mentor is the must-have accessory for the rich and famous.

People who have been mentored perform better, are promoted more

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quickly, get paid more and have greater job satisfaction. So having one is clearly a good thing, but how do you get a good mentor?

There are a number of formal mentoring schemes in the UK, such as the one I currently run for Women in Film and TV, but competition is tough—we typically have about 200 applications for just 20 places. Most mentoring schemes have a particular brief to fill: we are helping mid-careerlevel women overcome specific challenges; other schemes are aimed at new entrants; some, such as those run by the Sundance Institute and Berlinale Talent Campus, are more project-based and designed to help writers develop their script, filmmakers develop their narrative

or producers fund their project.

Some schemes consist purely of one-to-one mentoring, while many others also provide training, workshops and peer-to-peer support. The length of schemes also varies; the WFTV scheme runs for six months, but nine months or a year is common, and informal mentoring relationships often continue for years.

The benefits of having a mentor are as varied as the schemes. Mentees report that having a senior individual take an interest in their career makes them take themselves more seriously, gives them courage to try new things, introduces them to new contacts, helps them focus, forces them to be more strategic, makes them accountable to

someone else (which counteracts procrastination) and teaches them to be more businesslike, as well as offering an objective sounding board for their concerns.

Women in particular seem to emerge with a fresh sense of confidence in themselves, as well as a renewed enthusiasm for their career. Unfortunately, research has shown that many women leave the industry after the age of 35. “Over the last 20 years the television and film industries have been substantially casualised,” notes Kate Kinninmont, CEO of WFTV. “Most people work on contract; no one now has a ‘job for life’, and few people expect to spend their career with any one employer. This has allowed a high

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degree of flexibility in the growth of, for example, independent production and innovative new VFX companies. But the unintended consequence has been a fragmentation of career development. This can affect women, in particular, because of career interruption due to family commitments.” Indeed, we set up the WFTV Mentoring Scheme in an attempt to support and encourage women to stay in the industry, as we can ill-afford to lose their skills and experience.

Selecting 20 women for each scheme is in part about identifying those people who will most benefit from mentoring at this particular point in their career. But it also makes sense for us to choose women who are not only going to gain something from taking part, but will also bring something to the group for the duration of the scheme and, perhaps more importantly, will continue to contribute to the group in the long term.

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My job at the selection stage is rather like that of a casting director. My aim is to assemble a group that is as diverse as possible: we’ve had writers; script editors; producers; financiers; directors of photography; editors; a colourist; distributors; a lawyer; a technical operations manager; an exhibition co-ordinator; and a PR expert. We’ve had women working independently; company MDs and executives from major broadcasters; women working in news, natural history, science, comedy, drama, children’s, scheduling, business affairs and 3D; women with grown-up children, women with toddlers, and women who are wondering whether it’s possible to take a break to have a family. They all bring their own perspective on the industry and how best to navigate the peaks and troughs of an evolving career. During an intensive interview process, I begin to see potential connections between different candidates and how

they might be able to help and support each other.

The mentors are handpicked based on their own background, expertise, personality and management style. Finding the right mentor is akin to an alchemy experiment; I put two different people together and hope the resulting chemistry will result in gold (or at least not prove to be an explosive combination). At this point in the process I turn private detective, using my personal contacts, the trade press, company websites and social networking platforms to track down the right mentor for each candidate. Ideally, I want to find mentors who will be enthusiastic about the role and will also get something back from the process.

“The WFTV mentoring scheme is an incredibly positive tool,” says Jane Lush, joint MD at Splash Media. “At its best it is beneficial to both the mentee and mentor. As a mentor, I have definitely learnt from the experience.”

Mentoring scheme producer Nicola Lees (opposite) knows that both mentees and their mentors can learn and grow from collaboration

“At its best [the WFTV mentoring scheme] is beneficial to both the mentee and mentor.”

Jane Lush, Splash Media

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Feature Mentoring Some mentors are even inspired to get their own.

Producer Avon Harpley is a current mentee who has also mentored several times for WFTV. “I’m passionate about being a mentor but having seen my mentees undergo significant transformation, I felt that I would also benefit from having a mentor,” says Harpley. “It’s really valuable to have to be accountable to someone who can see your situation from a fresh perspective and to be reminded of the behaviours and resources that are necessary to build a career.”

Once the mentees are matched with their mentors (who commit to provide six hours of mentoring over six months), we also embark on a programme of workshops geared towards the particular needs of the group, usually focused on CV-writing, pitching, networking skills and general confidence-building.

But what makes this scheme unique is that each mentee must deliver a one-hour seminar on the subject of her choice.

This is a particularly powerful tool as it achieves several things at once: they are forced to reflect on their experience and knowledge to date, overcome

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their fear of public speaking and deliver a polished presentation to a group of industry peers, who in turn learn something new. It’s the most eclectic, inspiring and interesting series of seminars you could imagine, and one that many film schools would covet.

Over the course of six months we might get a masterclass in networking LA-style; learn how a film composer approaches a creative brief; discover how distributors select films; hear the challenges of working as a second AD; or find out how a blockbuster action sequence is transferred from script to screen.

What’s interesting about this process is that the mentees are always surprised how something that seems mundane to them is fascinating to people who work in different roles or parts of the industry, and that in turn reignites their own enthusiasm. It also enables them to showcase their expertise to their peers in a way that general networking doesn’t; in fact, several women have gone on to hire other mentees to work on their projects. Word has spread and the mentees are now regularly asked to give their presentations to a wider audience or appear on industry

panels, which is great for raising their profile—and again, increasing confidence and contacts.

As I’d hoped, each cohort has formed a tight-knit support group who, once the official scheme has ended, act as cheerleaders and keep each other on track with regular meetings. Over the past three years, the WFTV mentoring scheme has managed to achieve an elusive alchemy by bringing together very different elements to interact in unexpected and magical ways, and the result is pure gold.

So what can you do if you want to find your own mentor?

Work out what you want from a

WFTV mentees like Emer Gillespie, Megan Stewart Wallace (above) and Gabi Norland and mentors like Nina Kellgren (below, with Norland) have much to gain from supporting each other. (Images © Daniella Cesarei)

relationship—someone to give you feedback on your CV or showreel, or someone to help you strategise your next move? Next, identify people you admire who you can approach—they might be ex-colleagues or someone whose work you admire, or who you’ve seen speak on a panel.

Professional bodies might also be able to advise or run a suitable scheme you could apply for.

When you approach prospective mentors, be brief, focused and specific about the amount of commitment you are asking for.

Most people will be happy to meet for a coffee, so start with that to test the water. Once you have found someone willing to act as your mentor, use them wisely and be reliable. Make the most of any help they can offer and then thank them and move on.

Mentoring doesn’t have to be for life, but the benefits will be.

Nicola Lees runs the WFTV UK Mentoring Scheme and the Sara Putt Associate Trainee Scheme and is the editor of TVMole.com.

The WFTV UK Mentoring Scheme is supported by Creative Skillset, Channel 4 and EON Productions; full details can be found at www.wftv.org.uk/mentoring-scheme ●

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Feature Mentoring

The Value of a Mentor Guiding Lights 2013 mentee Afarin Eghbal explains why finding the right mentor not only benefits the filmmaker but could also help facilitate a more diverse and well-rounded industry. in 2009, Creative Skillset published research indicating that the representation of women in the industry had falled dramatically, from 38 per cent to 27 per cent, and that 5000 women left the film and TV industries between 2006-2009, in comparison to just 750 men.

Wider industry research also identified that barriers to working in these industries included a gender pay gap, ageism, sexism, and bullying.

As a direct result of these findings, Creative Skillset implemented a number of measures to support gender diversity in the industry. These included supporting WFTV’s mentoring scheme, Birds Eye View’s She Writes training programme for emerging female screenwriters (attended by award-winning My Brother the Devil director Sally

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El Hosaini in 2010), the Diverse Senior Women’s Networking Group and Lighthouse’s Guiding Lights Mentor Scheme. Creative Skillset have also made funding for training available specifically for women wanting to return to the industry after a period of absence.

“In a bid to address the gender imbalance over the last few years, we have worked closely with industry to identify and remove the barriers faced by women in film and TV, " says Creative Skillset’s Deputy CEO, Kate O’Connor. "We want to help ensure that we have a truly diverse workforce, and we look forward to the results of our latest census which will outline the impact of our work in this area.”

And the results of the industry recognition of this gender divide are already being felt by the filmmakers who have benefited from these initatives.

This includes Afarin Eghbal, who has been selected for the 2013 Guiding Lights mentor programme; for her, and many other filmmakers, her involvement with such a scheme is a hugely valuable step towards a successful career.

“I recently graduated from the National Film and Television School," explains Eghbal, “where I made my debut film, the short animated-documentary Abuelas.

The film has had huge critical success, screening at over 125 film festivals worldwide and winning 56 awards, including a BAFTA nomination in 2012.

Despite it being my first film, its success has firmly put me on the map as a filmmaker, with a lot of interest being generated in my future projects.

“With all eyes upon me, I now stand at a critical crossroads in my career, facing what is very much uncharted territory with a sense of great pressure and expectation to deliver. In 2012, I successfully pitched for and won the opportunity to make and direct my first feature film, a psychological horror called London Syndrome; though it is only micro-budget, it comes with guaranteed financing and, more importantly, guaranteed distribution. The turnaround time for the film is incredibly fast; we aim to shoot during the summer,

with a final release date intended before the end of 2013. This is certainly no small feat! The nine-month proposed timeline of the Guiding Lights’ mentor scheme will run simultaneously to the making of London Syndrome, and so will perfectly accompany me through the different stages of this project: pre-production, production and post-production, all the way up to the release date. By the end of the scheme, I hope to have successfully navigated my way through the pitfalls and challenges of feature filmmaking, with the assistance and guidance of my mentor, and be able to confidently refer to myself as a live-action director , moving forward with my career.

“In an industry that seems to rely so heavily on who you know, having a scheme in place that is designed specifically to get those connections made is going to be absolutely essential in successfully launching myself as director. The prestige and reputation of the scheme itself and having successfully come on board is already making the industry sit up and take more interest. I know this is the beginning of great things to come, and I truly want to embrace every opportunity that the Guiding Lights scheme will provide.”

For more information visit www. lighthouse.org.uk/guiding-lights ●

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05

Insider's Point of View Kate Reid & Eve Hazelton: DoPs

Behind the Camera

Directors of photography Eve Hazelton ( The Underwater Realm) and Kate Reid (Blooded, Scrubber) discuss their experiences of working across a range of features and camera platforms, and why gender simply does not matter when you get behind the camera.

EVE HAZELTON When people ask me what it’s like being a female in a male-dominated industry I always think they are expecting me to play the sympathy card, to feel a little hard done by. Certainly in my experience, being a female has never held me back or caused me too many problems. Do you think being a female DoP has ever hindered you on set?

KATE REID I think it’s funny when people ask me ‘how is it being a female DoP?’ because I have no frame of reference doing this role as a male. I’m not really aware of it being an issue as, generally, when you’re on set, you’re usually the only DP. You could spend your life getting annoyed at perceived prejudices about being a woman

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in this role, but therein does not lie happiness!

EVE There have always been women on film sets, but traditionally there are some roles that women just didn’t seem to do—I guess DoP was one of them.

Over the last 20 years those walls seem to have been largely broken down. Have you worked with any other females in any of those traditionally male roles?

KATE I’ve got a female grip that I work with. I’ve yet to work with a female gaffer, but I certainly know of a very successful one that’s working in the industry, and likewise I know a few female sparks. I suppose that as the awareness of the roles increases so does the number

of people interested in doing them, regardless of whether they are male or female. I don’t consciously seek out crew based on their gender, unless the project specifically calls for it. I once

worked on a documentary about sex workers, which required an all-female crew due to the nature of the subject matter, but I think that’s the only time I have had that requirement. Really it is about

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DoP's Kate Reid (opposite) and Eve Hazelton (below) find their gender is no hurdle to working across a range of projects and platforms

building a crew who will work well with one another and are suited to the project.

EVE When you first pick up a project, how do you go about tackling it? What do you think are the most important things to consider in pre-production and how do you deal with things like selective palette and storyboarding?

KATE I usually read the script and break it down in terms of what needs to happen on a practical as well as a creative level. I share reference images or photographs with the director that I feel are relevant in terms of the feel or palette of the film. I’ve never done films that have been heavily storyboarded. Usually I work on very performance-based projects, so I will discuss coverage with the director, and we would have a shot list, but so often it's the case that the actor’s performance changes everything and any storyboards go out the window.

EVE You’ve worked with so many different camera platforms; Scrubber was shot on 35mm, Having You was shot on the ARRI Alexa, and you’ve also shot on RED EPIC, DSLR and HDCAM. Do you have a favourite medium? Or does the project and budget dictate what format you’re going to use?

KATE I really do love shooting on film and hope that will still remain an option in the future, but I also enjoy shooting digital. The ARRI Alexa has been an absolute joy; certainly when I shot tests for Having You last year and saw it in the cinema it really did look fantastic. It was very heartening.

It’s a very practical camera that’s

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easy and comfortable to use hand-held, which is important to me as, even if you don’t plan on it, you may end up shooting hand-held when you’re up against it, or it might just feel appropriate for a certain shot. So it’s great to have a digital camera that can be comfortable used in that way. Ideally it’s lovely to have that luxury of choosing a format based entirely on the perimeters of the project and desired aesthetic, but obviously budget also plays a part in this decision.

EVE A big draw for me with the digital RAW platforms is the amount of involvement I can have in postproduction, specifically colourtiming. Of course I also edit a lot of what I shoot, so maybe I just don’t like letting go! Where does your involvement in the process usually come to an end on a project?

KATE Obviously with shooting RAW, files can be manipulated any which way and, even though a colourist might grade something in a really nice fashion it might not be appropriate to what the narrative is about. I always like to be there during the grading process and, thankfully, I’ve always worked with directors and producers that recognise the value of having their DoP at the grade. As the DoP you’re obviously there from the early stages of the project and know what the ideas were and how they have evolved, and so sometimes I will get shown an early cut by the director and asked for my feedback. It’s not part of my role, but it’s great if you have that friendship with a director who trusts and values your opinion.

EVE Finally, if you could give any advice to any new aspiring DoPs out there, both men and women, what would it be?

KATE I would just say to people, just shoot as much as you can. Don’t worry about making mistakes, just go out and shoot something, even if it’s just with the video mode on your iPhone.

Play around—I think that’s how you learn what you like. And keep on being inspired by different styles, keep exposing yourself to new types of work, not just watching the types of cinema that appeal to you.

EVE ...And advice to just the women?

KATE Be comfortable being yourself and do your best work, and don’t give it too much thought!

To find out more about Eve and Kate’s work, visit www.realm-pictures.com and www.katereidfilms.co.uk ●

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27/02/2013 15:58:02

Feature BFI Film Fund

Finding the Spark As senior production and development executive at the BFI’s Film Fund, Lizzie Francke is on the front line of the UK industry.

Here, she explains how she seeks out creative potential, and why supporting filmmakers goes way beyond doling out the cash.

You have responsibility for assessing which film projects get funding from the BFI Film Fund.

What criteria do you work to?

It’s the criteria that we have laid out as part of the BFI and the fund; creative excellence is the main one. Our goal is to create a portfolio of projects that speak to different audiences, so we’re looking for a balance of things that have more obvious popular ambition and things that are also taking creative risks and pushing the boundaries of cinema. Ultimately, it’s projects that excite us and that we feel will be a good demonstration of what cinema is about.

How many projects achieve funding and support?

The average amount is about 25 to 30 a year, and we look at

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projects at all stages. Not all projects that we put production money into are projects that we have developed. You can come to us at any stage in the process, whether it’s development, production or completion. It might be that someone has made a documentary and they haven’t got the money to get it to the point where it can be screened— they may be halfway through the edit and have run out of money.

So we’re open to looking at projects at a range of points in the process.

Development is obviously a key stage in the process, and can be very lengthy. And it’s not just the development of a project, but the development of someone’s career. I first came across Clio Barnard, for example, when I was

at Edinburgh and we played some of her shorts. She brought The Arbor to us and we developed that and it went into production, and now she’s just completed her first dramatic feature [The Selfish Giant]. That’s a career development of 13 or 14 years.

So an essential part of your role is not just to bring the films to screen, but to help these filmmakers build a successful career?

We are aware that it can start in the spark of a short, [or] it can start in the spark of a screenplay that’s not quite there but that shows some promise. It’s about looking for the promise that can be grown. And it’s essential to what we’re doing with the emerging talent strategy that no matter what your postcode or

where you live, you have access to a potential film career if you are creatively strong enough. I think that, to us, it’s important that it’s across the spectrum of the UK; it’s not about just living in cities.

Having worked with a lot of emerging talent, what are some common misconceptions of first time filmmakers in terms of process or industry?

That’s a very good question!

I think that maybe there’s a misconception that [success] can be instant. But really it’s about the hard graft; it’s about being focused and dogged and having a belief in your vision, rather than expecting an instant fix. If you really are determined, it’s about playing the long game.

I do think people realise now that it’s very important to take your film on the road, to develop your relationship with your audience. That’s an essential part of the journey. I always think about my time at Edinburgh and the filmmakers who came to the festival; if it was the early stage of their career, it was so important to be at festivals to engage with audiences. I also think of someone as famous as [director] Atom Egoyan; even now he’s making big movies he knows that it’s so important for him to still go to festivals, to go and do Q&As, because those are the audiences that helped build his career.

I think that is really essential; it’s not about making a film

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and then relaxing, you’ve got to develop your relationship with your audience through your films, and nurture that.

Sometimes I come across filmmakers who are scared of the audience, and think that worrying about the audience is selling out, and I think that’s a big misconception. Your audience is what makes your film. It can be an audience at the ICA, it can be an audience at the local VUE cinema; your film doesn’t come alive until there’s someone watching it. I think some filmmakers forget that. And I say if you don’t care about the audience then you shouldn’t actually be making films.

Is it just as important to support filmmakers on their second and third feature as it is to support those making their debut?

Second and third films are really important, and [the BFI] sees filmmakers as emerging up until their third film; by then they should be in a place where they have a momentum of their own.

We do see filmmakers coming to the fund from emerging to very established, which is a reflection of the industry. In the UK it is very hard to get a film funded, so whether you’re Mike Leigh or whether you’re a filmmaker at the first hurdle, it’s very important to have money that can help support cinema. I talk to my American indie friends and they are endlessly envious of the access to public support.

The BFI Film Fund has approved over 40 development projects involving female filmmakers since January

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2012. Does the fund have a commitment to gender diversity?

Absolutely. We don’t have schemes, we don’t have pots, but we’re mindful. We treat everything on its own individual merits, but we want to see a range of stories and a range of different experiences reflected on screen. To have a range of different filmmakers from diverse backgrounds is going to ensure that the newness of storytelling is maintained.

Having worked with both male and female filmmakers, do you see a difference in their attitudes?

If there’s one generalisation— and it is a generalisation—I would say that one of the things that I have certainly seen, particularly with emerging women filmmakers, is a lack of confidence. With a young male director, there’s a presumption that things will go well, but I have had to sit down with very talented women filmmakers and say 'yes, you can make a feature film. You have got the talent.

You’ve got to focus.'

It’s our culture. Film is still coded as a masculine pursuit. Whenever there is a generic piece about cinema in

The BFI Film Fund has supported projects as diverse as Joanna Hogg's London Project (opposite,

image © Sophie Molins) and Clio Barnard's The Selfish Giant (below)

the newspapers, usually it’s illustrated with a picture of a male director or cameraman. I’m looking forward to the day when they use pictures of women, and it’s not a piece about gender in cinema. It’s just about cinema.

Find out about the BFI Film Fund at www.industry.bfi.org.uk/filmfund ●

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06

Insider's Point of View Emily Greenwood: Digital Film Editor

First Class Post

Having worked as digital film editor on films as diverse as Tyrannosaur, Berberian Sound Studio, Frankenweenie, Skyfall and Les Miserables, Emily Greenwood is responsible for ensuring a finished film matches the director’s cut. Here, she talks about the challenges of post-production work in an ever-changing industry, and her experiences as a filmmaker in her own right.

When I got into digital editing, the digital intermediate process was a new concept. It was a bit of a learning curve for the whole department, and we certainly had a few teething problems!

It’s still evolving now. I’ve worked on two 4K jobs, Captain Phillips and The Counselor but it won’t be long before the jobs are in 6K and then 8K and beyond. And with every update there are a whole new set of tools, so we are constantly learning.

Although the technology may change, however, the fundamental demands of the job remain the

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same. What I mainly have to do is match what they do in the edit suite in high-resolution format, which means going through the whole film reel by reel, split screening my high-res image against their low-res offline Quicktime version. Every shot of the film has to be looked at, and it has to match frame for frame; this may sound easy, as it’s supposed to be an automatic process but it never matches. You always come across questions and issues; various speed shots inevitably don’t match, for example, so you have to tweak those. And it’s

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Digital online editor Emily Greenwood (below) helped to give the awardwinning Berberian Sound Studio (opposite) its unique look

particularly challenging with an atmospheric film like The Woman in Black; their offline reference Quicktime had a very dark grade, so it was quite challenging to match the sync points on some scenes because I couldn’t really see what was going on!

It usually takes a week to look at an entire film, but then there are updates and VFX shots to drop in.

The main VFX shots get done in VFX houses, but then the grading session always gives the director that opportunity to do little fixes that they haven’t spotted in the offline. There’s always something to do; for example, remove puddles from a shot where it shouldn’t have been raining, add shake to a shot of rumbling machinery, tidy up a cracked wall, remove a boom and remove the twitching from a supposedly dead man’s eyes!

Digital means that filmmakers can endlessly tweak their films, and has certainly given them more choice; when they are shooting they always know they can go back into the edit suite and make changes quickly. This brings a level of flexibility that ultimately makes for a good film.

That flexibility is especially important when you’re working on lower-budget independent films, which can be more interesting and challenging because they don’t have the money to pay big VFX houses to do their effects for them.

When they come to us they know that we have the ability to do some of these effects for them. I worked on a film early on in my career, where they had these statues of dogs in the living room. Because the story was about a Muslim family, the filmmakers suddenly

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realised that they wouldn’t have dogs in the house. The director asked if there was anything I could do, and I morphed these statues into dog-bird figures and they looked perfect! It was quite a difficult shot as well, because it was moving and there was a net curtain behind it, but they have gone down in history as being one of my best visual effects.

On Berberian Sound Studio, as another example, we had to make part of the film look old; the Smoke software we use has got this whole set of tools where you can add dirt-we’re normally removing it but here we were adding it, along with lines and scratches and things like that. It was nice to be able to work directly with [director] Peter Strickland and give him a few options to have a look at.

Whatever I do in the edit suite can be viewed immediately in the theatre, and I can work on a reel at the same time as a colourist.

On independent films we tend to have the opportunity to be more creative from that point of view.

On the big budget stuff it tends to be ‘here are all the visual effects, please drop them in.’

I think being a writer/director in my own right does help in my ‘day job’ when I am having to be creative; I naturally have that understanding from the director’s point of view. Similarly, working in post-production has also really helped me as a filmmaker. I think the main advantage, other than using the facilities, of course, is when I shoot something I can work out how I’m going to do it in advance, and understand exactly how I can do something

in post-production. I don’t like that general ‘we’ll sort it in post’ attitude, but on my short Cold Warrior, for example, we had to do a stadium scene with a massive crowd and I knew that we weren’t going to be able to shoot that in real life. Because I work here, I knew exactly how I was going to do it in post-production. That helps me plan, stay on budget and keep to my time frame.

I’m currently working on turning Cold Warrior into my first feature, and that’s a challenge in itself! It’s nothing to do with being a female filmmaker, rather just being human; standing in front of someone to pitch a film is difficult. Not that I haven’t come across difficult men in the past! Early on in my filmmaking career there was a guy on the shoot of my first short film who clearly just thought ‘What do you know, you’re a woman’. I think certain types of men respond badly to women in positions of authority and, unless you’re really careful about the way you say or ask something, you can easily get slapped with some sort of dominatrix tag! But of course nature plays a big role in all this. Men are naturally more competitive than women, so in a competitive environment such as the film industry it’s not a surprise that we’re in the minority.

It’s great that women are now being encouraged to stick at it a bit longer than they naturally might feel comfortable with.

Making a career as a film director, certainly as far as I’m experiencing it, is a very slow process, and having a child often comes at the point where

a woman is peaking in that career. A feature film costs a lot of time and money, so you have to prove that you can do the job. Taking a break to have a baby and then going back to it is a difficult decision to make because it effectively puts everything on hold. If you think about it from a purely biological sense, it seems logical; if all women were naturally inclined to take charge and look after their careers, what would happen to fertility levels and the population?

Having a baby might be a choice for many of us, but when we have it isn’t. When I turned 37 last year my GP basically told me ‘it’s now or never’ with regards to motherhood. So now I’m pregnant and I’m over the moon about it, but I know that continuing my online editing work and my directing ambition isn’t going to be easy; I’ll be walking around Cannes with a 31-week-old bump in May. But that’s nature for you!

Emily is an online editor at London’s Company3 (www.company3.com), and you can find more information about her filmmaking at www.emilygreenwood.co.uk. ●

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27/02/2013 16:07:30

Feature Transmedia

Digital Initiatives In a world where audiences are more active, filmmakers are increasingly having to think about how to create immersive experiences. Few are as qualified in transmedia as Ingrid Kopp, director of the digital initiatives department at the Tribeca Film Institute. The former editor-in-chief of the US branch of Shooting People took time out from her hectic schedule to give her thoughts on this new strand of storytelling. Interview: Naila Scargill What sparked your interest in working with transmedia?

[It was] through Shooting People.

I started doing more work around how filmmakers use the web, and teaching a workshop called Digital Bootcamp. Initially it was thinking about using social media and web technologies to market films, but the more I did it, the more I was interested in technology as a creative medium in itself. That led me to consult for the Tribeca Film Institute, as they were launching the TFI New Media Fund with the Ford Foundation.

What’s the criteria for the fund, and what kind of support do you provide?

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The grants are between $50,000–$100,000. They have to be social issue and nonfiction, although we’re open to hybrid, [and] they have to be story-driven. Some projects are filmmakers who want to create an extension with new media of some description. A lot of them are interactive in their very conception; there is no film.

We accept both of those. One of the things we’re looking for are partners who can help us reach communities that we might otherwise not have access to.

I’m excited about giving people the tools to tell their own stories and it not necessarily being professional creators.

These are not traditional filmmaking teams; they are making work across platforms in all sorts of ways. It is a different kind of skill set, so you need a technologist, developers, coders, designers. We’re modelling some of our approaches on tech and start-up, so we do things like iterative development. Most people weren’t used to working in that way so the more we did, the more we saw what the needs were and started developing other initiatives.

One of which is Tribeca Hacks, which sounds very exciting…

So many people have been interested. Film was always separate from the tech industry, and now there’s a lot of crossover.

The hackathons allow us to explore those partnerships and do rapid prototyping around new technologies as they bubble up in a safe and constrained space.

What’s great is we can tailor each one for a different audience which gives us huge flexibility in terms of broadening [our] constituency.

We did the first with Zeega [a cloud-based HTML5 platform].

We’re doing five more between now and the end of June, each with a different partner around a different field. It’s exciting, because I’ve constantly wanted to share all these cool things we’re discovering.

Currently, transmedia projects don’t have as much visibility as linear film. What are the challenges in marketing this type of work?

Even though film distribution is wobbly, at least we know what that model looks like. You don’t have the traditional marketing of a theatrical release. Maybe there’s work that needs to be shown in galleries, or licence deals you can do for web products. If you create a web-native documentary that is free to view, how do you monetise

that? Or an app? Potentially you can do an app through iTunes and charge for it but that’s a disincentive for people. There’s a whole series of challenges around the business models of work that is on platforms in unexpected or free ways.

At the [Tribeca Film] Festival I’m programming for the first time this year an interactive strand called Storyscapes. It's the first year Tribeca’s going to have a jury section for transmedia work. It can be anything so long as it’s not a linear film, so it was a challenge in terms of how you exhibit the work and what that looks like. It’s been really exciting. Having that kind of visibility and seeing festivals take this work seriously will bring more distributors and exhibitors into the space.

Do you think filmmakers feel more powerful working across platforms?

Absolutely. For some, suddenly seeing code as a creative tool is exciting; it’s a whole new palette to work with. When you get the hang of those skills and you’ve got a community behind you, that is really empowering. You can carve out a path if you are savvy, where you’re not necessarily depending on the people you

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would have had to 10 years ago. That’s not to say it’s easy. It feels like you’ve got to wear 12 different hats.

With that in mind, would you recommend new filmmakers concentrate on transmedia?

I don’t think every project needs to be interactive; I’m still a massive fan of linear. But if you don’t know what tools are out there, you may be missing a trick. That’s why the hackathons are exciting, because you get to try things and see if there’s potential.

Can distributors afford to neglect interactive marketing?

If they’re not engaging with their audiences then no, because you’re competing for attention across platforms and technologies. They can’t afford to not be connecting with audiences that are often online. They’re missing a huge trick if they’re not in that space.

But it’s not always the case of trying to make things palatable

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for traditional distributors. I want to explore things as they could be, too. It’s more about how you continue to widen the possibilities for creating art. Now, every consumer is also producer so they can tell their own stories. We’d like to enable that.

Ultimately, where do you see the film industry headed? Can transmedia and linear co-exist long term?

One of the things that’s key is looking beyond the film industry.

Boundaries are shifting. You will find more cross-pollination between industries, so you’re not referring to filmmakers any more; you’re referring to creators. Conferences which are a hodgepodge between interactive, digital arts, film; those are bubbling up more. Things will co-exist for a very long time. Some of it will be marketing, some of it new forms of storytelling, some of it will come from digital artists and some will be creative technologists who

are moving more towards story, or journalists increasingly doing video work. That’s going to continue to merge as we go forward.

To find out more about the Tribeca Film Institute’s digital initiatives, visit www.tribecafilminstitute.org. The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival runs from April 17—28 ●

Ingrid Kopp (opposite) is exploring the creative and financial benefits of transmedia with initiatives like Tribeca Hacks (above)

27/02/2013 18:47:38

Feature Transmedia

New Horizons Anna Higgs, Head of Film4’s digital arm Film4.0, explains how her team is embracing digital innovation to better serve filmmakers and their audiences.

What is Film 4.0’s remit?

Film4.0 is taking a pioneering role in exploring innovation in filmmaking. It is a talent and idea driven hub within Film4 that works with emerging and established talent, supporting them to tell unique stories and connect with audiences in new ways.

How are you working to connect films with audiences?

For me, it starts with the filmmaker and the idea. What is their vision and how might we nurture them to make that vision a reality? It’s about building the feature film in a way that the filmmaker can develop a wider story universe for the film, telling stories in parallel places and creating rabbit holes that the audience will be able to immerse themselves in.

The unique part is developing the whole thing in a completely bespoke way right from the start, with the filmmaker at the heart, rather than being an add-on which is simply audience-driven.

What benefits do digital initiatives bring to a filmmaker and an audience?

Audiences are consuming content in new ways, but it doesn’t mean that those same audiences aren’t hungry for quality, crafted, authored experiences. For me, digital platforms enable filmmakers and audiences to be much more closely connected. For filmmakers, they have their own means of distribution, and for audiences they can access

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completely brilliant work in the ways that suit them. It’s a hugely exciting time.

You’re working with Ben Wheatley on A Field In England; how does this benefit the project as a whole?

A Field in England is a wholly Film4.0 project, from development, production and financing all the way through to the digital masterclass that will surround the film. Commissioning in this way means that we can work really flexibly with the filmmakers throughout the whole process, developing ideas to expand the audience and find exciting routes to them, whilst still making the best possible film. Financing the film 100 per cent has meant that we’ve been able to be innovative both creatively and commercially, with

the filmmakers having meaningful control over their work.

What can you see the future holding for digital innovation in the industry?

I’m always wary of futurology as unless you’re Marty McFly, we don’t know what’s coming! But given the exponential rate of change we’re going through, I’m really excited about the intersection of traditional media, digital platforms and our real physical spaces. The real world is the bit that’s often forgotten, but where we spend most time. So I see that as the place where some of the most exciting innovation is going to start happening—with immersive storytelling being embraced by filmmakers and audiences alike. www.film4.com/film4-productions/ film4-0 ●

Anna Higgs (above) believes that transmedia is key to connecting films like Ben Wheatley's A Field in England (below) with a wide audience

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Feature Female Critics

The Female Gaze Catherine

Jane

Wendy

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Leading female critics and commentators discuss why gender diversity is as important in the viewing, reviewing and debating of films as in the making of them, and compare their experiences in an increasingly crowded field.

What do you think are the qualities of a good film critic, male or female?

CATHERINE BRAY Editor, Film4.com Excellent spelling and grammar, open-mindedness, curiosity and an interest in and knowledge of film.

JANE CROWTHER Editor, Total Film Breadth of knowledge of all different genres and periods of cinema—you don’t need to know everything about Woody Allen or film noir, but you do need to know something and be able to understand where films you are reviewing fit within the industry and film history. And while it’s important to review film esoterically, it’s equally important to understand audiences; who is likely to see this and what are their anticipations? The best critics manage to combine both of these elements, offering insightful criticism without alienation. And probably the most important quality is a continued enthusiasm for film... nothing worse than a jaded critic hating everything!

WENDY IDE Film Critic, The Times This may seem an obvious thing, but it helps if you like cinema.

There are some critics who approach the vast majority of movies as if they are some kind

of ordeal that must be endured in order to get access to the catering. And yes, obviously, some films are pretty onerous.

But I think the critics I most enjoy reading are the ones who clearly have the capacity to be surprised and excited by the medium, who are open to every film, however lowly, and who don’t pre-judge without seeing the movie. It also helps if you have a lively turn of phrase and are aware of the hoary old clichés of critical vernacular and avoid using them where possible.

LARUSHKA IVAN-ZADEH Film Editor, Metro To be both informative and entertaining. To be considered in your reaction to a film and provide an informed context for it. To remember to write for your reader and not fall into the trap of writing for other critics. To maintain an enthusiasm for your subject and not get jaded by the vast amount of bad films you watch!

MARYANN JOHANSON Creator and Editor, flickfilosopher.com Critics need a certain fearlessness. It’s needed in order to break free of the illusion of ‘objectivity’ and embrace one’s own unique biases and personalities and let those be reflected in one’s criticism. With so many people writing about

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combined with an understanding of the filmmakers’ craft and hard work. A love of film and the true meaning of criticism: not a love of digging the knife in for effect.

FRANCINE STOCK Presenter, The Film Programme, BBC Radio Four An informed and judicious enthusiasm; concise yet vivid description; humour; contextual memory; a distinctive jargon-free style; and the ability to extract something from the screen that will make the review compelling even for someone who will never get to see the film.

Why do you think female film critics and commentators are important to the industry?

CATHERINE I don’t love the way this question is phrased; it feels like the burden of proof is somehow on women to prove what they are able to contribute.

That’s not where the burden of proof lies. Any discipline will always be at its best when it selects from the brightest and most capable, regardless of factors like age, race or gender.

Shutting out talent because of age, race or gender would always mean you shut out some of the best, which can never be good for a discipline. If you care about a subject, you need to encourage the best people to contribute to it.

JANE It’s important only in as much as every industry should reflect that half of us are female!

I don’t think that women should be reviewing ‘women’s film’ but just that there are enough of us working in the industry to give young women thinking of doing this as a career an example to work towards. When we’ve got Kathryn Bigelow competing on a director level, Barbara Broccoli wrangling a billion-dollar franchise and actresses like Jennifer Lawrence dominating screens as strong female characters, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t see the same reflected in the film press.

WENDY While I think it’s wrong to say that our job as female film critics is to speak for all women— after all taste is not necessarily proscribed by gender—I think it is

© Ian Mantgani

film online, it’s the only way to distinguish oneself. Critics need a wide-ranging appreciation of film history and genres, but also the fearlessness to not be bullied by them. But probably the most basic necessary quality of a good film critic is that you have to love film. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard professional critics moan and groan at the prospect of a given film. Sure, we all joke about the trial that, say, the latest Adam Sandler movie might be, but if you wouldn’t genuinely want to be watching a movie—even a really crappy one— than doing almost anything else, you shouldn’t be a critic.

KAREN KRIZANOVICH Freelance Film Journalist Wow, I can think of a lot of bad qualities first. What does that say about me? Being easy to read, I think, is important. Not pretentious. Not egotistical. Fair and, increasingly, being aware of the plight of the filmmaker. Also, to find out as much as you can about the film before you write about it. I ignored the scriptwriter a lot in the early days; that, I regret. It’s so easy to write a funny review that’s snide and so hard to write a good review that is supportive of what filmmakers are trying to do. Filmmaking is the hardest art. It really is.

KATHERINE MCLAUGHLIN Freelance Film Critic The ability to write about film in an entertaining and accessible way, with an informed and passionate voice.

JENNIFER MERIN Film Critic, About.com and Founder, Alliance of Women Film Journalists An encyclopaedic knowledge of film; a keen ability to observe details; writing skills; credibility and independence; a perspective that interests readers; and a platform from which to reach them.

ANNA SMITH Freelance Film Critic and Vice Chair, London Film Critics’ Circle Excellent writing skills. An open and analytical mind. The ability to be concise and fair. The knowledge that your primary responsibility is to the readers,

MaryAnn

Karen

Katherine important to act as stewards and to be aware of the flow of images of women into the world and its impact on culture and society.

Left alone, there is a segment of the entertainment industry which would be happy to relegate female characters to little more than tits on a stick. And while you don’t need to be a woman to point out that this kind of characterisation is cheap and unsatisfying, or that it is rather sordid to use violence against women for entertainment purposes, it adds weight to the argument.

LARUSHKA Because the film industry is still hugely maledominated. In terms of product, the biggest-budget blockbusters, the ones with the most significant cultural impact on a global

scale, are still made by males for males, with female characters marginalised to wife/girlfriend roles. Having female film critics and commentators may not redress that, but they can at least give voice to a female viewer’s perspective using the heft of a respected, wide-audience media platform. Given all film criticism is ultimately subjective, it’s important that the media includes a diverse range of opinion-formers from all backgrounds and persuasions.

MARYANN Because most of the critics and commentators right now are men, and they’re critiquing and commenting on a medium that caters to their biases and perspectives because most movies are made

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Feature Female Critics

by men. Women critics are the little kid who’s not afraid to point out what the courtiers won’t say; that the emperor has no clothes.

It’s not that most male critics are afraid to admit that the emperor has no clothes, it’s that most male critics honestly cannot see that the emperor has no clothes.

I’ve lost count of the number of films that have enraged me with their anti-woman attitudes that male critics have apparently not even noticed. Until movies are made by as many women as men, women critics are a vital check on the industry. And when the gender ratio of filmmakers is 50/50, hopefully that of critics will also approach parity, so that

we can continue to get a varied perspective on film.

KAREN It is important to have varied points of view, and gender is as valid as any other point of view. A lot of times, I’ll read a review to see if I can tell if the reviewer is male or female. The fact that I get the answer wrong quite often (but not always) is quite heartening.

KATHERINE Variation of opinion is important in criticism, whether that be male or female. Female film critics provide a different opinion which is vital, but many critics come from very different backgrounds and speak to their audiences as such, so for me it’s about diversity rather than gender.

Jennifer

Anna

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JENNIFER Women, by virtue of the fact that they are women, have different perspectives about everything in life that might be represented or reflected in the movies. Women film journalists articulate unique perspectives on issues such as how women are represented in film, whether they are treated as full characters or eye candy, whether their potential for heroism is defined by masculine ideas and images of heroism, whether they’re cast into situations where their conduct is likely to influence bad behaviour in youngsters who see the film.

Women comprise at least 50 per cent of (potential) cinema patrons; they want and deserve to read or hear professional women’s advice about which movies deserve their precious time and money. The industry would be wise to heed women film journalists’ reviews and comments, as well, to recruit more women moviegoers—those who now stay away because they find the current fare boring or, even worse, intolerable.

ANNA Aside from basic gender equality? Women love films as much as men and may feel underrepresented if they see very few women in film criticism.

Gender should have no bearing on which topics we can and can’t review—we all review anything and everything. But there may be cases where a female critic can have a deeper understanding of the target audience than the available male reviewers, and no doubt vice versa, which I’m sure our editors take into account when commissioning freelancers.

FRANCINE Why should women not be important in any area? There have been many outstanding women critics right back to Iris Barry and beyond.

It may be an anomaly that film criticism is still largely a male activity (and there may be practical considerations of time, commitment, etc., that contribute to that) but the whole industry is changing and criticism will move along with that.

Have you ever been subject to any criticism of your work based purely on your gender?

CATHERINE I’ve not been subject to gender-based criticism by anyone who had two brain cells to rub together. Of course, that’s not quite the same thing as saying I’ve never been subject to genderbased criticism. I’d have serious reservations about commissioning a writer whose work, blog or Twitter feed suggested they had misogynistic, homophobic or racist tendencies, so it’s really up to writers how employable or otherwise they want to make themselves. One example of a presumption I do experience is that a lot of people who interact with the Film4 Twitter feed, which I write, assume they are interacting with a male writer.

JANE No, never. I’ve been fortunate to have always been judged on my abilities and not my age or gender.

WENDY There were all kinds of grubby little trolls crawling all over my review of Transformers.

One scoffed that he was going to read my review, then he noticed it was written by a woman so he didn’t think it was worth his time.

It didn’t bother me. What does rankle is more subtle; the fact that publications tend to commission me to write reviews of films which are perceived to be women’s interest, like romcoms and things about childbirth and wombs.

LARUSHKA I have to say that being a female in the film reviewing ‘fraternity’ has, if anything, probably been an advantage, in terms of getting work. Often a broadcaster will want to get a female expert on to provide a gender balance. I probably would say there are more female film reviewers now than when I started, though we are still in the minority. And certainly more in senior editorial positions which means they, in turn, have the power, and possibly the inclination, to commission/hire women writers.

MARYANN I am constantly subject to gendered criticism. Sometimes it’s (relatively) benign; admonitions to stick to girly romantic comedies (which I generally hate) and avoid boy stuff like action movies (which I tend to go easy on).

Readers who are unfamiliar with my tastes assume, based solely

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on my gender, that I couldn’t possibly appreciate the oeuvre of Bruce Willis and must love anything Nicholas Sparks has touched. Sometimes it’s downright repulsive; instructions that I need to ‘get laid’... because, it would seem, this relieves a ladybrain of pesky thoughts and opinions.

I’m also told, on a regular basis, that my opinions don’t matter because I bring feminist critiques to films. I’m often instructed to see the male point of view. I think it upsets many male film fans to be confronted with the notion—which they will not get from male critics— that their perspective has built-in biases that are catered to by our culture to the point that they appear neutral.

KAREN Never. I never felt my gender made any difference to others because I never thought of myself as ‘a woman reviewer’. Upon reflection, however, it probably made a difference to me. Being a woman made me and maybe

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still makes me quite chippy. I feel I have more to prove. I can’t relax. It’s always a competition. It’s miserable!

But that could be because I’m just insecure, not because I’m female. That said, I like a good scrap in filmic terms, if I think the opponent is worthy. I don’t think you can say intellect or aggression are necessarily male qualities.

KATHERINE I’m not sure I have; perhaps behind closed doors but never directly. I’ve had both males and females criticise my opinions on films but that, in my opinion, is probably down to a matter of taste. And I am known to love bad taste, which offends some. I’ve only been writing about film for three years, but in that time the only issues I’ve had have been with certain PR companies who may not hold a female opinion in such high esteem due to the audience at which they are trying to aim a film. It’s a shame but with the support of the publications I write for I’ve been pretty

successful in writing about the films I really care about and that’s the important thing for me.

JENNIFER I have never had my work criticised because I am female, and only rarely have I felt that I’ve been denied assignments because of my gender—and that was by a particularly misogynistic editor who favoured (dare I say it) young boys. I have, however, heard fearsome tales from female colleagues and have at times felt marginalised by male peers and by some industry personnel…

ANNA Probably, although luckily I haven’t witnessed it first-hand.

I try not to read the ‘bottom half of the Internet’. I’ve certainly had a hunch that the occasional snarky tweet about my TV work, for example, might not have been posted had I looked like the way people perceive film critics: i.e., studious-looking men. You definitely have more to overcome as a woman in interviews, too, with

certain actors and directors— it pays to show them you’re intelligent as soon as possible. I’m finally ageing enough not to be mistaken for the intern, at least!

I do think attitudes have changed, in that major magazines have made a concerted effort to employ female film critics alongside their raft of male reviewers. But I never felt that my gender was a barrier to getting into film criticism.

If you’re talented, determined, personable and efficient then that’s the main thing.

FRANCINE I‘m not aware of any gender-based criticism and I get equal amounts of positive comments from men and women.

I always knew I’d never want to compete in any macho, listy, in/ out games kind of film comment.

It’s great but there’s room for more. 10 years ago, I was often the only woman in screenings; that’s less common now.

To read more of this conversation, visit www.moviescopemag.com ●

27/02/2013 18:59:21

Theatrical

Trance

Director Danny Boyle Screenplay Joe Ahearne & John Hodge Stars James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel, Rosario Dawson DoP Anthony Dod Mantle Editor Jon Harris Locations 3 Mills Studios, London, UK Opens March 27 Danny Boyle’s filmography really is the cinematic equivalent of The Beatles’ White Album; he never makes the same film twice, and is as skilled at science fiction (Sunshine) and horror (28 Days Later) as he is at human drama (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) and comedy (Millions). And, true to form his latest, Trance, is something entirely different and entirely magnificent.

McAvoy is Simon, a fine art auctioneer who finds himself in the middle of a high-value heist; knocked unconscious, he looses his memory. Unfortunately for him, gang leader Franck (Cassel) believe he is the only man who knows the whereabouts of a missing painting, and brings in hypnotherapist Elizabeth (Dawson) to unlock the secrets of Simon’s addled brain.

This journey through Simon’s confused mind is utterly mesmerising; his shifting memories cut a swathe across the narrative,

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changing the course of his story as more are exposed. The contrast between Simon’s subconscious and the everyday are beautifully handled, and bring the talents of cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle and digital colourist Jean-Clement Soret—both long-time Boyle collaborators—to the fore.

When Simon is under hypnosis, filming angles are off-kilter and colours are otherworldly, packing a sensory punch in comparison to the urban greys of the London landscape.

And, indeed, while it may have been filmed in the familiar surroundings of the capital, it—much like Eran Creevy’s Welcome to the Punch, also starring McAvoy—turns the city into a bewildering labyrinth of backstreets, basements and anonymous doors behind which all manner of nightmares can unfold.

The performances keep pace with Joe Ahearne and John Hodge’s deliciously twisting tale. McAvoy is, as ever, endlessly watchable

as Simon, an affable everyman who seems to be paying the ultimate price for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cassel is surprisingly seductive as Franck, and his interactions both with Simon and Elizabeth increasingly beguiling. And while it may appear that Dawson has been reduced to a supporting role, hers is a powerful, restrained performance that is at the core of this story.

As the boundaries between fantasy and reality, dreams and dark desires become increasingly blurred, Trance is reminiscent of both Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan and, closer to home, Boyle’s own Trainspotting as it explores the ravages of a fractured psyche. Yet it has a deep and twisting DNA all of its own; fully revealed when Simon finally uncovers his deepest buried memory. It’s a blistering climax to a stunning film, another Boyle triumph that simply must be seen. ● ● ● ● ● Nikki Baughan

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Byzantium

A Hijacking

Bernie

In 1994 Neil Jordan adapted Anne Rice’s novel Interview with the Vampire, producing an epic, male-led look at what it meant to live as a vampire. Jordan’s second foray into this territory comes from a play written and adapted for the screen by Moira Buffini, and takes one of the most interesting aspects of the first—the creation of a child vampire—and approaches it with the same air of sadness and longing, but from the female perspective.

Clara Webb (Arterton) is the fierce protector of her younger sister Eleanor (Ronan) who has lived as a sixteen-yearold for 200 years. A dilapidated seaside setting and their digs at the Byzantium guest house on the seafront mirror the faded grandeur of their existence as vampires; having to turn to the oldest profession to maintain their lifestyle seems Clara’s only option as they try to run away from their past.

The growing pains of a girl who can’t grow up are explored wonderfully through Ronan’s haunting performance; as Eleanor starts to suffocate under her sister’s grip, Ronan stylishly spins this character to tormented teen. And the elegant ambience and grimy aesthetic will surely keep you entranced, even if the story sags and lacks originality. ● ● ● ● ● Katherine McLaughlin

A cargo ship is boarded by a volatile band of Somali pirates, its Danish crew held hostage in the sweltering bowels of the boat, in this lean, claustrophobic drama. But this is not the swaggering action movie that the premise might suggest. Writer/director Lindholm’s emphasis is on muted tension, authenticity and realism, and it is this commitment that gives the film its devastating impact.

Lindholm’s direction and storytelling is taut and to-the-point. There is not a surplus scene in the movie; no unnecessary flab and padding. The action cuts deftly between the rapidly deteriorating situation on board the boat and the headquarters of the shipping company in Copenhagen.

On the ship, our main focus is the affable ship’s chef, Mikkel (Asbæk). He’s a big, engaging bear of a man who gradually loses his irrepressible spark as the protracted negotiations drag out. Back on land, we follow the CEO of the company (The Killing’s Malling) who decides, against the advice of the expert negotiator, to handle the bargaining process himself. His main point of contact is Omar (Asgar), the pirates’ comparatively level-headed spokesman. It’s a battle of wits.

Meanwhile, the ship becomes increasingly inhospitable; it reeks of sweat and the clammy fear of the unpredictable will of the pirates.

This is accomplished and uncompromising film-making from a talent to watch. ● ● ● ● ● Wendy Ide

This is true. In rural east Texas in the 1990s, assistant funeral director Bernie Tiede was the most beloved man in the town of Carthage.

‘Bernie was a very loving man, a charismatic person’ whom all the ‘dear little old ladies’ had crushes on. We learn these things via documentary-style talking-head interviews —some with the actual people this happened to; a disconcerting thing to behold, because they’re intercut with bits of Famous Hollywood Funnyman Jack Black as Bernie. And we keep expecting Black to be ‘funny’. Which never happens, except in a charming, down-to-earth way that’s all about finding the core humanity in what could have been a risible caricature.

There are two other famous faces here: MacLaine is the wealthy, bitchy—or perhaps mentally ill—widow whom Bernie befriends because he’s just that nice a guy. And McConaughey is Danny Buck, the slick and slippery local district attorney, who appears because…

Well, to explain exactly why Bernie is a story, and what prompted director Richard Linklater’s coscreenwriter Skip Hollandsworth to have published the original 1990s Texas Monthly essay this is based on, would be a spoiler.

It is a disquieting upside-down portrait of crime and punishment—sad and strange, ironic and discomfiting—so unlike the quirkyindie-comedy genre it’s best slotted into, if somewhat uncomfortably. ● ● ● ● ● MaryAnn Johanson

Director Neil Jordan Screenplay Moira Buffini Stars Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan, Jonny Lee Miller, Caleb Landry Jones Opens May 10

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Director & Screenplay Tobias Lindholm Stars Johan Philip Asbæk, Søren Malling, Abdihakin Asgar Opens May 10

Director Richard Linklater Screenplay Skip Hollandsworth & Richard Linklater Stars Jack White, Shirley MacLaine Opens April 26

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Theatrical

Compliance

Director Craig Zobel Screenplay Craig Zobel Stars Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker, Pat Healy Opens March 22 Opening lightheartedly, Compliance gives the impression of a slacker movie; its setting is a fast food restaurant staffed by young people not appearing to do much work, who don’t take their manager seriously. The tone changes rapidly, however, as it establishes its raison d’être: a man impersonating a policeman telephones, claiming a staff member has stolen from a customer. Fuelled by the psychology of group mentality, what transpires is a surprisingly shocking film that promotes some self-examination. Empathy with the characters is impossible—or is it?

What is most effective about Compliance is the reaction it provokes; disbelief mixed with underlying an fear that we could be as naive as the characters; this is what keeps the eyes glued to the screen, as opposed to the obvious message regarding an automatic compliance with authority, perceived or otherwise, which is frightening in itself.

At no point does director-writer Zobel attempt to establish the caller as genuine, astutely presenting the story as senseless as the reality—it is based on fact—the characters seemingly trapped in a bubble of their own victimhood. The film’s climax skirts a tad too close to exploitation, which threatens to derail the momentum; the worst, however, is hinted at, the story remaining the right side of psychological. It’s smart, but also frustrating, and almost a relief when over. ● ● ● ● ● Naila Scargill

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Promised Land

Director Gus Van Sant Screenplay John Krasinski, Matt Damon, from a story by Dave Eggers Stars John Krasinski, Matt Damon, Scoot McNairy Opens April 19 Completed with a contentious finance package, which includes a fund in Abu Dhabi, Gus Van Sant’s Promised Land is an earnest story with a predictable message.

Budgeted at $15m, this tale of small town life turned upside down by the riches offered by fracking—a high pressure process that forces natural gas out of deep recesses in the earth—was to be Matt Damon’s directorial debut. Busy with other commitments, he approached Good Will Hunting director Van Sant to take over the reins.

Working from a script by Damon and costar John Krasinski, and based on a story

by Dave Eggers, the plot follows Damon as a wholesome farm boy ostensibly shilling the concept of fracking to desperate farmers in America’s Midwest. Along with his sales partner Frances McDormand, the duo work hard to persuade the town to sell the land under their land—a plan that works pretty well until fast-talking Dustin (Krasinski) hoves into view, stealing Damon’s potential love interest and showing in vivid detail what permanent harm fracking can do to the environment; think dead cows.

The cast put in solid performances, and the first two acts of the film move believably and compelling to a fairly dull finish, with the complexities of economic and environmental tragedies laid out and unsolved. ● ● ● ● ● Karen Krizanovich

The Place Beyond the Pines

Director Derek Cianfrance Screenplay Derek Cianfrance, Ben Coccio & Darius Marder Stars Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper Opens April 12 In the 1950s, the master of melodrama Douglas Sirk might have told this story primarily for women, with expressionistic colour and lavish strings. Today, director Cianfrance sweeps us through in a rush of action sequences (brilliantly shot by Sean Bobbitt) and heightened emotional confrontations.

Gosling and Cooper play a pair of young fathers, stunt rider outlaw and anxious cop, who battle personal demons to love their sons. The film is structured in three sections (Cianfrance was inspired by the formal composition of Abel Gance’s Napoleon); at the end of the first, the two men cross over for a moment; we see in the third how their sons grow up.

The narrative cracks on yet retains the intimate truth of Cianfrance’s previous collaboration with Gosling, Blue Valentine. If the plot is fraught with coincidence, a certain fatalism seems appropriate to the formal structure-these men represent a 21st century dilemma; how does a tough guy express both love and masculinity?

The women (Eva Mendes, Rose Byrne) are left to react and suffer, yet Cianfrance ensures they, like the diamond supporting cast including Ray Liotta, remain clearly defined. But this is primarily a two-cylinder Gosling/Cooper engine, revved-up but, for all its bravado, impressively sincere. ● ● ● ● ● Francine Stock

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Theatrical

Robot & Frank

Stoker

Spring Breakers

Retired thief Frank (Langella) is less than enthused when his exasperated son Hunter (Marsden) buys a robot carer to keep his father on the straight and narrow.

“That thing is gonna murder me in my sleep” he laments. Tasked with improving Frank’s health, the robot (voiced by Peter Saarsgard) serves up brown rice instead of cheeseburgers—further fuelling Frank’s distaste—and his gardening project definitely isn’t a hit. In fact, it isn’t until the robot accidentally steals something that Frank sees potential in his new, computerised companion…

On the surface this film may seem little more than a light comedy with the added bonus of an adorable android, yet its over-arching message is truly thoughtprovoking. Frank is himself a relic. The film is set in the near-future with slightly more advanced technology than we have now and he has given up trying to catch up. Instead of receiving support from the people around him, however, he is left with a synthesised version of real care. It isn’t difficult to foresee such a reality in the not too distant future… but is it right?

This engaging narrative probes deep into society’s poor treatment of older citizens and boasts pitch-perfect performances; Susan Sarandon as Jennifer, the local librarian, particularly stands out. ● ● ● ● ● Helen Cox

Fundamentally, Park Chan-wook’s English language debut is a lament for the loss of childhood innocence. For India (Wasikowska), a girl forever living in the shadow of her widowed mother Evelyn (Kidman), the arrival of her Uncle Charlie (Goode) marks something of an awakening; her realisation that it's time to put away childish things is perfectly encapsulated by the shoes that are so important to her.

Charlie’s arrival shakes the very foundations of India’s life, and the seismic change that’s taking place in and around her is reflected in cinematographer Chunghoon Chung’s off-kilter visuals; camera angles are skewed and shadows dance in every corner. This, along with Clint Mansell’s evocative score and Thérèse DePrez’s gothic production design, intentionally brings a horror movie sensibility and a heightening sense of unease. Indeed, the vampire genre motifs that run through the film—the family name of Stoker; the seductive stranger; the heightened soundtrack—seem entirely by design, and effectively underscore the bad blood that ties this family together.

A film which touches on many things— youth and beauty, guilt and betrayal, family and fate—Stoker positively demands an emotional response. A film that both seduces and ravishes, it gets under the skin from the very first and stays there until the final credits roll; in disorienting reverse, of course. ● ● ● ● ● Nikki Baughan

Disney poppets in bikinis toting guns and taking drugs? Spring Breakers can only be a film from Harmony Korine, writer of Kids and director of Mister Lonely and Trash Humpers.

It may be his boldest film yet: Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine (Harmony’s wife) star as a trio of teens who rob a restaurant to fund their trip to the orgiastic Spring Break. Along for the ride is religious pal Faith (Gomez), who has second thoughts when gangster Alien (Franco) enters the scene.

The tone is hard to gauge. Opening with lascivious shots of topless college kids grinding to a grimey soundtrack, it’s certainly making a statement: this is going to be as over-the-top as Spring Break itself, treading a fine line between funny and disturbing.

Korine gently pokes fun at the way his four heroines see Spring Break as a life-changing experience, but there’s also an understanding of the importance of experience, of escape, of life outside the norm.

Along with bursts of surrealism, the ambiguous tone doesn’t make this an easy watch, but it’s a provocative one with darkly funny moments. Franco has tremendous fun playing a gold-toothed, gun-toting rapper while the girls gamely give it their all. Some scenes are just too silly to swallow but for those willing to submit to Korine’s bold brand of exploitation humour, Spring Breakers is an entertaining and thought-provoking ride. ● ● ● ● ● Anna Smith

Director Jake Schreier Screenplay Christopher D Ford Stars Frank Langella, James Marsden, Liv Tyler Opens March 8

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Director Park Chan-wook Screenplay Wentworth Miller Stars Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode Opens March 1

Director & Screenplay Harmony Korine Stars Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, James Franco Opens April 5

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