Here's me pictured with actress Gabrille Scharnitsky, who played a double agent in the spy film we screened at Cannes, called Third Falcon
Fortunately
I have attended 15 Cannes Film festivals, so at the very least people
know about our company and in fact we have a coterie of buyers who regularly
look in to see our films. It is heartening that phone calls made in previous
years do result in good screening attendances presently. But our films are
independently submitted to the commercial market at Cannes and not the
Festival, which is a completely different organisation. We don’t submit many of
our films to the Festival unless we have a film with the gravitas in
subject matter with good performances we submit it to the festival. As yet none
of our films have been selected. Not that I’m complaining, the Marche Du Film,
which is a separate organisation to the Festival houses the biggest film market
in the world below the under belly of the Festival. I often think how strange
it is that the press rarely venture into the vast ‘selling’ halls, where large
and small distributors compete cheek by jowl with each other.
So what was
the atmosphere in the market like this year? After being there for 10 minutes
in the heat of the Riviera one can usually sense the mood of the crowds, just
by the speed of the walkers in the street and their general demeanour. If they
are sad, angry or hopeful, the crowds are like a barometer of the full sense of
the Film Market. Often as the heat and dust hits your nostrils the mood on La
Croisette is sensed in a visceral way. Listen and you will hear films being discussed,
lauded or dismissed out of hand. In Cannes 2013 the street was strangely
buoyant, an odd feeling in a highly charged economic recession, but buyers and
sellers were taking a smart approach to the down turn. It was business as usual;
there was hope in their eyes, which had not been seen in earlier years. What
was different? It seems many of us had made the switch to finally accepting
that much of film distribution would be done by downloads, after the expensive
cinema window showcases are accomplished. In the fall of the DVD retail outlets
in the high street, DVD sellers were not abundant, as if it was a given, that
they had switched to creating bright accessible film download websites in the
last year. The Cannes weather compounded the confirmation that ‘Download’ was
the way forward. As buyers and sellers got drenched in full days of strangely
bitter post global warming rain, they moaned that they could be selling their
films at home via internet direct to the buyers computer without all the
expense or the misery of global travel to a place that was not equipped to
handle bad weather in sodden pavilion style ‘tents’. There is nothing like
soaked feet and ruined shoe interior linings in drenched wet puddles, to
sharpen the mind.
Independent
Sellers and even film producing Buyers, will always be critical of the main
Film Festival because ultimately the ‘Big’ Films are their competitors and
often the public are denied knowledge of ‘Smaller’ films because of the loud
noise the other films make by being selected for the Festival. But the Festival
itself could make more concessions to the Independent Lobby, who after all pay
for the Festival via their high cost registration passes to both the market and
the Festival. Instead the Festival treats the Market attenders, often famous
film makers in their own right, as second class citizens, making the festival
run parallel to the market without much cross fertilisation between the domains.
This kind of division is not healthy for business creativity. It was also touched upon in Alex Baldwin’s HBO documentary,
‘Seduced and Abandoned’, which portrays the funny, gritty side of the festival
from the point of view of a fading film producer.
Surprising
the French, despite the cultural routes of its old eighteen century revolution
up hold a kind of film making ‘Ancient Regime’, where the ‘beautiful’ people
are feted and often film screening invites are only available, in the main to a
wealthy French elite. A Red Carpet paparazzi agreed with me when he confessed
he spent much of the day filming unknown models appearing as ‘film stars’ going
along the main Competition Carpet. He showed me his laptop record of his days
shoot, where he would have to skip expensively dressed ‘Models’ before he would
find his pictures of the real movie stars, who were attending for Competition
Premieres. It seems in this case all that glitters is not ‘Gold’. This kind of
thing also pervades the Movie making Matrix.
Women and
Cannes
It does seem
the Cannes Film Festival promoters do listen to the bloggers, because Women
were treated with much more respect both at street level and in the
Competition. The Palm D’or reflected a small shift in attitude, when the Film
Blue is the Warmest Colour was chosen for the prize, directed by a man I may
add. ( More on this at the BBC website here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22676798 )
But this gesture
to feminism was marred by the highly charged sexual content, which marginalised
the impact of bringing women into the fold of the ‘Competition’. It would have
been better if the efforts of the only female Film Director in the Competition,
Sophie Coppola for her film Bling Ring had been rewarded with a prize, to show that
positive access was being granted to women. This again was not the case, the
worldwide statistic for Women Film director’s remains at 5% and there does not
seem to be any scheme within the Festival directed to correct it. Perhaps it is
time that Women themselves made an impact on the Festival organisers by
requesting an Award Section in the Competition for Women – an actual Female
Film Director Award. This would go towards encouraging women Directors to
submit and also it would guard against film selections who deliberately dismiss
women, due engrained prejudices in the
process.
It was also
noticeable that the breaking of the ‘International’ prostitution ring in Cannes
had come into effect so that there was no evidence of it openly at street
level, though an actor told me he suspected he may have blundered into it at
‘rooftop’ level when he was invited to a party.
Entry to the
film industry for Women does seem to be confined to the acting side of things
and often other types of work in the supervisory, producing and directing roles
have been accessible to Women who in many cases were already connected to the
film industry to their family or second generation routes. Such nepotistic
structures do not help the Women, who in their own right have the talent to
progress, if only the industry would just let them through the door.
As for
myself I came into the film industry by my own efforts, with hard and often
difficult work. I have directed 2 feature films and helped produce over 20
films. It was not easy and often I had to deflect the patronising and
dismissive prejudices of men.
We are the
sum of our own talents. For Women in particular in the film industry this must
be the case, but the glass ceiling remains a heavy weight that refuses to budge,
both inside and outside the industry.
The Cannes
Film festival must be seen to lead the way in opening up the film industry to
Women, but the attitudes within its own structure must be challenged by both
men and women alike. Nothing will change if men keep selecting films which promote
women as only sexual objects with characterisations portraying them as being
incapable of participating equally in society, both in the job market and at
home. Until that day, the prohibitive statistic for Women film directors will
remain at the bottom of the work graph as only 5% of the film industry
workforce.
Our films
are distributed by the sales company Stealth Entertainment Group, and we assist
their sales during film markets.
Written by
Film Maker, Producer, Director, Writer and Mother
