BIRDS EYE STEW

Still on the subject of women in film - is there such a thing as a celluloid ceiling? Yes, according to this item -

film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2025932,00.html

Not sure what to make of this one. For a start, I’d like to know where they’re getting their figures from – that only 7% of UK filmmakers – by which they mean directors – are female. And that only 12% of screenwriters are women too. How does anybody know for sure the numbers of females out there making – or not making – films?

The piece is a plug for Bird’s Eye View, a film festival celebrating women filmmakers. While it’s great to see us girls get a platform for our work, I fail to see why they’re getting their knickers in a twist. Bird’s Eye View director, Rachel Millward, blames the clash between raising children and the culture of film – as she says, 'Working insane hours, filming on location, the insecurity of the job.'

Big deal. I ask myself – is this any different from what any other group of working women have to put up with? Okay, the location filming might be a bit tricky, but so is working as a sales rep for a cosmetics company, a jobbing musician or an airline stewardess – only they don’t bitch about it. Call me an anti-feminist but it’s really simple - if a woman wants/needs to work, fine, but don’t moan about not being there for the kids. Women are not superhuman, even if some of them think they are.

Watching Allison Ander’s film Grace of my Heart on telly a while back, I noticed buried in the end credits a thank you to her six child minders. and no, I'm not making it up. Which got me thinking – would a male director who happened to be a father ever put up a caption like that? No, they would have been laughed at. So maybe the problem lies less with the way women in film are treated by the business but more on the way they say want to be treated – and what they say is that in some cases they want to be mothers first and film directors second. Not a great sell, is it? ‘I’d love to direct your picture but right now I need to buy Huggies/express some milk/read the nippers a bedtime story? If I were a producer, I’d think twice about hiring a woman.

If I sound hard-faced, maybe you need to ask one of the many female UK film producers why there’s so few female directors. God knows, there’s enough of them to go round – Andrea Calderwood, Alison Owen, Rebecca O’Brien, Ruth Caleb, Robyn Slovo, Gillian Berry, Margaret Mathieson – to name a few. The fact they outnumber women directors surely shows up their unsisterly bias because they sure ain’t hiring out of their own gender pool.

For Gurinder ‘Bend it Like Beckham’ Chadha to bemoan the lack of opportunities for women filmmakers smacks of condescension, especially when she’s carved a such a lucrative niche for herself. Like – ‘I’m dead successful but I’ve suffered prejudice too’ – when for years she’s traded on prejudice by declaring herself a one-woman positive discrimination case. You can’t have it both ways – either you’re shut out of the club or you’re not. And you’re not, Gurinder, you're helming in Hollywood – so count yourself lucky and shut up.

What these women seem to forget is that the film business is every bit as hard for men. And if, as the article claims, it’s soooo much easier to get a job in the States, then how come only seven per cent of American directors are female too? Has it ever occurred to them that these figures only reinforce the fact that very few women really want to direct? Maybe if women moaned a little less and fought a little more we might get some movies made. It worked for Leni Riefenstahl...