The fight for inclusion of marginalized voices is a loud one, one that has been championed by many. But this fight can seem frustrating when we continually see outdated prejudices permeate the film industry. As we continue this work, it is important to remember how far we’ve come, that we are moving forward. This should not foster complacency but instead offer inspiration for the hard work that lies ahead.
This month at the Walker Art Center, guest curators Melody Gilbert and Kelly Nathe have created a tribute program called Women with Vision: Then and Now. Women with Vision (WWV) was an annual film festival that ran from 1994 to 2010 at the Walker, largely helmed by Senior Curator Sheryl Mousley. The festival featured international and local women filmmakers including Claire Denis, So Yong Kim, and Deepa Mehta. The festival began in 1994 when Curator Marlina Gonzalez brought the Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC) festival to the Walker from Chicago, where it was launched in the 1980s—long before these conversations around inclusivity were mainstream.
I reached out to Gilbert and Nathe to hear their thoughts as they created this tribute. I asked them what has (or hasn’t) changed for women in film since the beginnings of WWV in the 1990s.
MELODY GILBERT (MG)
The main thing that has changed is that there are more of us and more opportunities for support and advocacy. But other things haven’t changed at all. Just look at the most recent Academy Awards nominations for best director: all men. So, yeah. It’s frustrating at times, but for those of us who do this work we just keep doing it and try to be supportive of each other.
KELLY NATHE (KN)
The biggest change I see is that the barriers to becoming a filmmaker have been almost entirely eliminated. Traditionally, filmmaking by its very nature was restrictive: you needed access to expensive equipment, whether that came through school, or public access stations, or rental houses, and you needed money for video tapes and film stock and processing. Now all you really need is your smartphone and, as a result, the overall number of films made by women has certainly increased.
However, when you look at Hollywood numbers, not much has changed. We’ve all probably heard by now how only five women have been nominated for a best director Oscar in 92 years, and only one woman has won, Kathryn Bigelow in 2010—which, incidentally, was also the last year the Walker presented Women With Vision. But a lot has changed in respect to awareness and advocacy on behalf of women directors. Organizations like Film Fatales are also addressing the gatekeepers of emerging talent, like lobbying the talent labs to foster more female voices and pressuring film festivals to commit to programming parity. “50/50 by 2020” has been the battle cry on the festival circuit the past few years, and while most of the major festivals still have a ways to go, most tout the percentages of films they have selected that are directed by women, so the needle does seem to moving in the right direction, slowly but surely.
WWV had a rich history of lifting up voices, not just from the US but also globally. Interviewed in 2006, Mousley talked about bringing Indian filmmaker Deepa Mehta for the first ever screening of her controversial trilogy:
Over the past 10 years Deepa Mehta has conquered silence like no other filmmaker in this festival. She just completed her film Water. We are proud to have the first public presentation of the newly completed trilogy: Fire from 1996, Earth from 1999, and now Water. All three films have been controversial in India. The first film, which depicts a love story between two women who find themselves in loveless marriages, caused an uproar, including the burning to the ground of the cinema where the film was first shown. Earth, which takes on the divisions between religious groups that erupted when the country was quickly divided at the end of British rule, was met with protest as well. It took several years to be able to shoot the final film, partly because the set was torched and thrown into the river and other things were set up to stop Deepa from working, but she moved the film to Sri Lanka to complete it. The courage of this filmmaker to tell her stories of how long-held traditions and age-old rivalries affect the role women play in society exemplifies the theme of confronting silence.
The Walker continues this work to this day. Twenty-nine percent of directors shown in the Walker Cinema last year were women, and in 2020 we’re intentionally looking at raising this number. In addition, the work has grown with the discourse, with an intensified focus on intersectionality. We know that hard work has gone into the improving climate of the film industry. I asked Gilbert what she saw as the impact of WWV.
My indie filmmaking career kicked off in 2002 when Sheryl Mousley selected my first indie doc, Married at the Mall to screen in the Women with Vision program. I was so honored—in fact, I still can’t believe it!—and I know there are so many other women in our region who came up through this program just like me. I always wondered what happened to them and how this program impacted their lives. Over the years, I’ve also had other films selected, including my feature documentary Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness in 2007. Sheryl has always been supportive of my work and the work of other women filmmakers over the years, and many of us are very grateful for her early support.
We begin to see this mantel taken up by others, the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF) creating its Women in Film Initiative, and Women in Film and Television opening its Minnesota chapter to support women in the industry. When asked about the history of the festival and her commitment to this work, Mousley stated:
I have always believed that filmmaking is women’s work. When I came to the Walker in 1998, I took on the annual film program that had started in 1994 called Women in the Director’s Chair, which had a local sidebar called Homegirls. I turned the program into Walker’s Women With Vision festival, always keeping the local filmmakers at the center. After my eleven years with the festival, and only when a woman, Kathryn Bigelow, in 2010 finally won the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director, did I hear the shout, “We’ve won!” While ending the series on a high note, I vowed to continue showing women filmmakers at Walker throughout all our programs. I am proud to say that 25 percent of the Walker Dialogues are women, and the year-round cinema program continues to give voice to local filmmakers and celebrate the legacy and influence of women in international cinema. I am proud of all the Minnesota filmmakers who have shown their films at Walker. It is a wonderful history and confirmation of home-based talent.
Creating a tribute program for a series with this must history is not easy. I asked Nathe about the experience of creating this tribute.
The first thing we did when moving forward on the Women With Vision reunion was comb through all of the printed programs from WIDC and WWV, which caused all these great memories to come flooding back: of the films and the filmmakers and of the events themselves. The biggest challenge to guest curating this program were our limitations: we only have one evening and one afternoon to show films from 16 years of WWV/WIDC programs! We experienced the expected challenges in tracking down filmmakers, people have moved on our out of the area, and some years the printed programs did not list the names of the Homegirls or their film titles. In the end we found a selection of films that represent nearly every year WIDC and WWV were in existence. It’s a fabulous lineup, a great cross-section of genres and formats—but by no means is this a complete representation of the breadth of this program.
The strides we have made as a society are not insignificant—and the efforts that got us to this point serve as inspiration for the work that is still left to be done. The upcoming events celebrate this great program and history along with the amazing filmmakers who were showcased. Melody summed up the goal for this tribute:
To reunite, celebrate, and encourage the women with vision to continue to create.
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