Guest post by Dr. Alicia Kozma, Director of IU Cinema.
This fall, we will be premiering the first half of a year-long program called Women on Top: Legacies of Women in Global Cinema. It’s a program that combines film screenings, industry guests, student masterclasses, and keynotes that center diverse women film professionals from across the globe in the past, present, and future of cinema culture.
Why are we doing this? In addition to the fact that IU Cinema has a longstanding commitment to showcasing women’s film work, we wanted to expand that commitment to think about women’s contributions in different ways. Traditionally, we’ve focused on women directors. While it is true that women represent on average only 10% of all feature film directors, they are even less present in other critical areas of filmmaking. Gender and film advocacy organizations like Women and Hollywood, New York Women and Film in Television, the Celluloid Ceiling report, and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative note that, for example, 85% of Hollywood films fail to hire women production designers; women make up only 6% of cinematographers; there is one woman special effects professional for every four male professionals and BIPOC women make up less than 1% of special effects leadership positions; and while women editors are a slightly larger 22%, 73% percent of films failed to employ a women editor in 2021. Highlighting women directors is critical, but it is not enough to fully encompass the myriad contributions women across the world have made to film.
Women on Top takes up the unique challenge of expanding the knowledge of, and conversation around, women in film by curating a range of global, inclusive voices from the past, present, and future of cinema to showcase the diverse talents, craft, and voices of women in film. Crucially, centering women filmmaking professionals is not just an awareness initiative; it has a material impact on young women today entering the film industry. Statistically, the top film schools in the U.S. graduate an equal number of men and women students. Both men and women novice film professionals are accepted at equal rates into prestigious industry development labs, like those for writers, editors, and directors run by the Sundance Film Festival. The early films of up-and-coming men and women directors are also accepted into renowned film festivals at approximately the same rate. Yet far fewer women than men transition into the professional film industry.
Many of the few women working in film today posit this is because young women professionals lack a deep knowledge of the ways women have already shaped the film landscape, while also having almost no women mentors to look up to, to guide them, and demonstrate the real possibility of a career in the industry. It has become a catch-22: the reason there are so few women in the film industry is because there are so few women in the film industry. By expanding the knowledge of how women have been — and are — in the film industry past a small set of examples, this program is materially demonstrating to IU students and the broader community that there is a place for them in film.
The Fall 2022 semester Women on Top programming consists of several programming blocks and guest voices. “Enduring Upstart: Márta Mészáros” focuses on Mészáros as the rare women writer-director-cinematographer to emerge from 1960s Europe and carve out a lasting career. Her deeply personal films encompass her own life experiences as an orphan whose father was killed in the Stalinist purges, a Hungarian raised in the USSR and caught between Soviet oppression and her country’s struggle for independence, and a woman navigating the promises of a burgeoning feminist movement. Returning time and again to themes of motherhood, nontraditional families, relationships between women, and the traumas of 20th-century Hungarian history, Mészáros has created a cohesive body of work that is uniquely attuned to the social, economic, and political forces that govern the lives of her complex, typically working-class female characters. The film will feature a virtual introduction from scholar Elena Gorfinkel (Kings College, London).
Kinuyo Tanaka’s Love Letter brings this Japanese icon’s work to the U.S., where it has been almost impossible to see until now. One of the most recognizable and revered Japanese actors of the mid-20th century, Kinuyo Tanaka appeared in no fewer than 250 films, and, in 1953, she made the daring decision to move into directing, becoming only the second Japanese woman to make feature films. Love Letter deconstructs romantic melodrama while systemically attacking the hypocrisy of Japanese society towards American influence and critiquing the stigma “comfort women” were labeled with after doing what they needed to survive in postwar Japan.
New Voices: Shaandiin Tome and Rayka Zehtabchi highlights the work of two BIPOC women who have worked collaboratively as well as on their own individual projects. Shaandiin Tome (Diné) is an Indigenous writer, director, and cinematographer whose work spans documentary and narrative forms. Her narrative projects have been selected for the Sundance Creative Producer’s Fellowship 2019, Sundance Talent Forum 2020, and Sundance/OneFifty/WarnerMedia’s Indigenous Intensive Fellowship 2020. Rayka Zehtabchi is an Iranian American producer, production designer, and director whose documentary short Period. End of Sentence. won an Academy Award in 2018, making her the first Iranian American woman to win an Oscar. This event will screen a total of five short films, including their collective project, Long Line of Ladies, in which an Indigenous girl and her community prepare for her Ihuk, the once-dormant coming-of-age ceremony of the Karuk tribe of northern California. The screening will be preceded by a virtual introduction from filmmakers Zehtabchi and Sam A. Davis.
Maya Cade’s programming residency and Jorgensen Guest Filmmaking lecture are also part of this series, showcasing how women as curators and public film intellectuals are changing the landscape around the films — and film professionals — we consider “important.” Maya’s visit to campus will also include a mentorship session with IU filmmaking students, providing critical insights into how curators and programmers make decision on what films are shown and in what environments. This is information budding filmmakers and other professionals often must figure out on their own, often leading to missed opportunities and decreased audiences. After all, film art deserves to be seen, and it’s programmers like Maya who make the critical connection between practitioners and audiences. We’re doubly thrilled that Maya’s interlocuter for her Jorgensen conversation will be Isabel Sandoval, the award-winning trans Filipina actor-writer-director. Isabel is a past Jorgensen guest, and in 2019 her film Lingua Franca made history as the first film screening in competition at the Venice Film festival to be made by a trans woman of color.
Our final fall programming block, “Mermaids, Wolf Warriors, and Matt Damon: Resistance to ILM’s International Standard of Effects Realism in the Global Marketplace” is a keynote lecture from Dr. Julie Turnock, Associate Professor of Media and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and the Director of UIUC’s Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies. Dr. Turnock’s talk will be bookended by two screenings: one of the early special-effects classics, The Black Hole, at the I Fell Community Arts Center in partnership with Cicada Cinema, and The Mermaid, a visual feast of stunning special effects from China.
Thanks to a generous grant from Indiana University’s Women’s Philanthropy Leadership Council, all Women on Top programs are presented free of charge.
Dr. Alicia Kozma is the Director of Indiana University Cinema. She researches, writes about, and teaches film. Learn more at www.aliciakozma.com.