Recently at the Sundance Film Festival, Kristen Stewart proclaimed she would quit acting in other people’s movies until she got her own film project funded. She told Variety, “Yeah, I will quit the fucking business. I won’t make a-fucking-nother movie until I make this movie. I will tell you that, for sure. I think that will get things going.”
The activist in me shouted “You Go Kristen!” But the cynic in me thought, “Well, I guess we won’t be seeing her on screen for a while.”
That’s because Hollywood is a land far, far away from gender producing parity.
According to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film’s The Celluloid Ceiling: Employment of Behind-the-Scenes Women on Top Grossing U.S. Films of 2023, only 22% of the executive producers, producers, directors, writers, editors, and cinematographers on the 250 top grossing films of 2023 were women. That’s a 2% decline from 2022.
So much for the “Year of the Woman”. Objects in the mirror may appear closer than they really are.
Dr. Lauren M. Lauzen, the Center’s founder and executive director’s Indie Women project tracked women behind the camera at 20 U.S. film festivals (including Sundance) and discovered that “Films with at least one woman director had substantially higher percentages of women working as writers, editors, and cinematographers than films with exclusively male directors.”
Not surprising. Women need to make more movies in order for women to make more movies.
Back to the biggest Barbie in the room. If Kristen Stewart can’t get her film project made, who are the females who can?
The Women in Film and Pepperdine University’s 2023 study Obstacles and Opportunities for Women Entrepreneurs in the Screen Industry revealed that 18.6% of studio subsidized film deals were women and 18% of non-studio funded production companies were women owned.
Basically, not very many women.
50% of the U.S. and global population is female and women account for 50% of the theatrical box office. Yet such a small smattering of us are breaking through.
How do we change this self-perpetuating paradigm?
In the It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World: Portrayals of Female Characters in the Top Grossing U.S. Films of 2022 study by Dr. Lauzen shows, young women and girls are simply not seeing themselves on screen equal to their male counterparts.
We can’t dream what we don’t see.
The women coming out on top are still a select few with an incredibly small number having greenlight power or access to ongoing capital.
While we can absolutely celebrate 2023 films like Origin, Anatomy of a Fall, and Past Lives, we’re a far cry from systemic transformation. 22% or 18% should never be viewed as progress. We should consider 50% the baseline and build from there.
Women in Film and Pepperdine break down four actionable areas for change:
1. Fund Women-Owned Companies
2. Expand Networks
3. Increase Financial Literacy
4. End Systemic Bias
As an industry we can do better. As women, quitting isn’t the answer. Mobilizing to make more F***ing movies makes way more sense. I’m game to enlist. Who will join me?
Comments