Fri, Sep 24, 2004 page17

• Spanish film festival is flop for women directors

  • AFP
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  Filmmaking is still largely a man's domain, if the offerings of the San Sebastian film festival in Spain and similar events are anything to go by.

  Of 16 films entered into competition categories this year, in this northern resort on the Basque coast, only three are the work of female directors: Letter for un Unknown Woman, an adaptation of a Stefan Zweig novel starring China's Xu Jinglei, Brothers by Denmark's Susanne Bier and Argentine Maria Victoria Menis' El Cielito.

  And of the more than 30 independent films screening out of competition and produced under the sections "New Directors," "Latin Horizons" and "Zabaltegi Specials," a mere six are from women.

  Even among the ranks of the various professionals who are responsible for what films will sell in the future there are far more masculine than feminine faces to be seen.

  "Cinema remains a male-dominated milieu. Once you come up against the producers, the distributors, programmers, you are faced with a majority of men," says French-born Algerian jury member Yamina Benguigui.

  The jury's composition, at least, does strike a gender balance. "When you come along with sensitive subjects, relating to society, and which have a `feminine slant' on things -- let's just say you don't get much of a reaction and we don't have much of a network to call on," says Benguigui, who has produced a range of documentaries and fictional works.

  Producer Francine Jean-Baptiste, here to present Moroccan Daoud Aoulad-Syad's Tarfaya, which she co-produced, agrees. "In the cinema the woman is turned into a star, an object in front of the camera -- but behind that there's very little, not just at the level of the decision-making process but also in terms of technique and artistically," she said.

  But Jean-Baptiste, the founder of Mandala Productions, says she does not favor the idea of all-women director film festivals, which in her view would "ghettoize" the genre.

  She laments, nonetheless, the obstacles that her sex face in the industry, observing that many "have difficulties finding a position because they think she won't make the grade because it's too physical, or because she has kids.

  "There are also very few cinematographers -- and yet the lighting and women have things to say to one another and they can greatly contribute to a film's creativity."

  "As a producer I add a touch which the director does not have, I re-center the view. A [female] producer can understand a director with her sensitivity. I also think that women are courageous and defend their projects very well when they believe in what they are about," she said.

  Tarfaya, the tale of a woman, Touria Alaoui, who wants to leave her homeland for Spain by boat, has also been put together by a female director, Andree Davanture, who she says has sought to "highlight the woman, not in her plasticity but in her attitudes and speeches."

  Yamina Benguigui says it is time that women in the industry linked up to show their "feminine solidarity," and has already launched an initiative bringing together Algerian and French filmmakers and actresses, some of them immigrants, to help add a finishing touch to her films and compare notes.

  As a result, four Algerian women were accepted last year into Paris' Femis school of cinema.
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