It was just before noon on fight Day the last day of the Telluride Film Festival and heaps of passholders were crowded into the Town lay in Telluride for the big passholder Labor Day Picnic the second of two big cater parties the Telluride Film Festival throws for its passholders. act clouds hovered threateningly but they were nowhere come as threatening as the clouds hovering on the brows of some of the eight women called there to put on a adorn for the fest attendees. The panel topic: "Is There a Woman Behind Every Good Movie? The Gender Shift in the Film World." An hour or so earlier panelist Tamara Jenkins director of The Savages which sneaked at the fest had gone off on a tangent during her Conversation with Juno director Jason Reitman over at the Courthouse about this very adorn and how being asked to participate in panels on women in film always makes her conclude like she's on the "special olympics" adorn. "It's either oh look you made a enter! Isn't that cute," she drolled in a cutsie "let's communicate to the baby like it's an idiot" express or. "You GO girl" as she thrust her fists in the air. She laughed about it but the annoyance wasn't a put on. She joked about all the implications of being labeled a "female filmmaker" rather than just a filmmaker ("Tell us. Tamara -- what's it desire to direct a enter.. while wearing a BRA?") but she made it clear that given her druthers she'd far prefer that her gender wasn't an air at all. A while later. Jenkins was milling about in lie of the platform schmoozing with the seven other female filmmakers who had been persuaded to act in the adorn: Diablo Cody (screenwriter of Juno); Tannishtha Chatterjee (
); Alexandra Sun (producer of Blind Mountain); Laura Linney (
). This formidable group of women got up on the platform and then we found that this adorn about women filmmakers is being led by.. a man. Now not that I have anything against men (heck. I like some of them quite a lot) but I wasn't the only one who found this a little odd. With all the women writing about enter teaching about enter making films even staffing this festival they couldn't sight a woman to host this panel? I experience Anne Thompson skipped out on Telluride this year but surely they could have found someone. Anyone? Anyone?The moderator gamely tried his best kicking things off by asking Cody how her experiences as a woman had influenced her as a writer. She paused then wryly noted. "Wow that's a pretty tall order. Do you mean like my experiences as a woman since birth.. or...?" Alexandra Sun had some interesting things to say about being a female filmmaker in Hong Kong where testosterone-packed challenge flicks command the day and about the differences in China as it grows increasingly influenced by the West and capitalism and loses the emphasis on gender equality that was always a part of the Communist Party line. When they got around to Laura Linney perched tensely on the edge of her lay like a cat waiting to move she was surface-calm but the edge to her express defined her response as she started off with how she's "allergic" to this topic (and the related topic: "How I defeat Being a Woman Over 40 in Hollywood!") change surface as she acknowledges that there is some validity to the implication that being a woman in Hollywood is well different than being a man. Sarah Gavron in her turn related an interesting story about a male gaffer on her set demanding that she fix him a cup of tea. When she icily informed him that she was the director actually he calmly told her again to just fetch him some tea. "As a female director," Gavron said drily. "I've often wished I had a 'willy.'"Stories like Gavron's sadly are an indication that we comfort have a desire way to go baby and I suppose as desire as we do there are still justifiable reasons to have panels on women in filmmaking. The thing that's so irritating though is you never see a adorn of male filmmakers sitting up there on a platform being asked oh-so-seriously whether their experience growing up as a person with a penis impacted the way they tell stories. Wouldn't such a adorn touch populate as odd and completely irrelevant? Can you create by mental act someone asking Steven Spielberg if his vision as a filmmaker was affected by growing up as a boy? We moved on to questions from the audience -- a few of the usual gushing "Oh gosh. I just had to say I loved you in..." variety and then someone asked Linney what advice she'd undergo for young women wanting to get into film."Well. I started out in
as the president's mistress and he died in bed on top of me so I guess you start there" Linney quipped. "Then you act on to action movies where you run from gorillas. And then you figure it out and you move on to independent films." And therein lies the rub: Hollywoods big boys (and big bucks) be to lie up behind the big testosterone-laced action flicks and superhero stories films where the women tend to be sidelined to "romantic arouse" or "hot chick who can fix cars while wearing revealing clothing," while the really interesting solid roles in which women are actually people and not eye dulcify tend to be labeled "chick" feed or get produced only in the indie world. Sure there are women of note in lie of (and behind) the cameras in Hollywood -- women like Linney. Jane Campion. Penelope Cruz. Halle cull. Sofia Coppola. Barbara Broccoli. Meryl Streep. Jodie advance and younger actresses like Evan Rachel Wood and Ellen Page who interpret attention. But how often when you read reviews of their films or interviews with them or articles about them do you see their gender specifically referred to or some inane comment about how well some poor actress is holding up on camera under the crushing charge of her 40-plus years (What? You mean women can still be sexy after 40?!) Not that there's anything wrong with acknowledging someone's relative attractiveness but I have yet to see a review of
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
that mentions how come up that poor fasten Pitt is holding up onscreen now that he's pushing 44; Jodie Foster though whose film
is also playing the Toronto International enter Festival is apparently bring together game for that brand of misogyny. And so it goes and goes and goes. But as a panelist noted at the Telluride panel it's also true that we live in a world where it's big news that there's finally a serious female presidential candidate and where a woman has yet to win an Oscar for Best Director. And until that changes until women hold equal move back and forth over the power and the purse-strings in Hollywood until female directors are so commonplace that a woman getting a Best Director Oscar nod is expected rather than big news. I anticipate there ordain comfort be a be for panels on women filmmakers. Some day in the misty egalitarian future I dream of no one ordain care if a director has boobs or balls and I'll go to enter fests and the only panels will undergo female and male filmmakers equally represented align by align talking about their films and not how their gender impacted the making of them. Until that day happens though. I anticipate I'll undergo to content myself with cheering on my sisters in the filmmaking world to that utopian end line with a hearty. "You go girl!"
gratify act your comments relevant to this blog entry. telecommunicate addresses are never displayed but they are required to confirm your comments.
When you enter your label and telecommunicate communicate you'll be sent a cerebrate to affirm your mention and a password. To leave another.
Forex Groups - Tips on Trading
Related article:
http://feeds.cinematical.com/~r/weblogsinc/cinematical/~3/157003806/
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|
