Wellywood Woman

So Mockingjay had a big opening.  And here's @licoricehazel's immediate response– That' s all terrific. And as a New Zealander, I'm especially proud and delighted because 'our' Lorde curated the music. And wrote and performed some of it too. But I'm also remembering that men wrote almost all the Hunger Games scripts and directed all of the films. And I'm reflecting on that depressing data on women who make films and about the (mis)representation of women and girls in films. It continues to pour out. A storm. A flood. A tsunami. It's almost overwhelming. In September, the  European Audiovisual Observatory   released  Female Directors in European Films: State of Play and Evolution Between 2003 and 2012   –  the first substantial study to measure the director 'gender divide' at pan-European level. Since then I've been thinking about the various recent reports and their interrelationships, in an attempt to understand wh...

Kate Sheppard as green light Yesterday was the 121st anniversary of women's suffrage in New Zealand. Yes, we were the first country in the world to give women the vote. And this year the Wellington City Council has commemorated this with some special pedestrian green lights near Parliament, portraying suffragist Kate Sheppard . Also yesterday, I caught up with the British Film Institute (BFI)'s  'three ticks'  policy, 'designed to address diversity in relation to ethnicity, disability, gender, sexual orientation and socio-economic status'. Green-lit in July, the policy went live on 1 September. The BFI is the largest public film fund in the United Kingdom, invests over £27m into film development, production, international sales and distribution, and supports around 30 new film productions each year. From now on, to be eligible for BFI Film Fund support for production, producers who apply must demonstrate their commitment to encouraging diverse represent...