IWD 2017: Things are improving for female filmmakers, but there's no time for complacency

Mia Bays is the producer of 12 features and 4 short films (including 2005 Oscar-winner ‘Six Shooter’, and 2008’s BAFTA-nominated ‘Scott Walker – 30 Century Man’, exec produced by David Bowie ) and Director of Birds Eye View Film, a UK charity that advocates and elevates the female perspective in film, since 2015.

Birds Eye View believes in the power of film to reflect and effect change within society. Established in 2002, Birds Eye View ran a film festival until 2014 that showed films by women from all over the world to audiences at the BFI Southbank annually and through touring work and smart female-focused initiatives. We are now in a new phase of work, having transitioned from a film festival into an organisation run by film industry insiders keen to use their influence to champion films by women both to audiences and to the industry.

Bird’s Eye View has adopted this approach because we strongly believe that the economic, social and moral arguments go hand in hand: that the market for films made by women is hugely under-exploited and that more diverse perspectives and stories on the nation’s screens will encourage a more empathetic and inclusive society. If more films by women connect to bigger audiences, more of them will be made. And the industry and audiences will benefit.

To this end, we focus on events that spotlight and promote women’s films, raising awareness of the work amongst the public and industry decision-makers alike. We adopt smart not worthy strategies to do so and and we believe men are central to the debate and welcome them to our work and to the films. Change can’t happen unless everyone is onboard. We see the new Birds Eye View as epitomising the ‘Be Bold For Change’ message which is the theme of this years International Women’s Day.

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We are encouraged by the work that is happening to effect change – there has been heated debate within the industry about this topic over the past year particularly, plus globally the profile of the Women’s March and the push for equality and women’s rights is high on many people’s agendas. The discussion is increasingly translating into action with initiatives recently launching all over the world to address equality issues, including at Birds Eye View.

A key part of our strategy are development programmes that seek to bolster the work of female and BAME filmmakers and distribution executives, by equipping them with the tools to climb higher and realise their ambitions through individual work. Equally, the aim of our work is to grow a professional network of mutually supportive women and men who want to enable and accelerate change because they believe that the world is a better place if we see through both eyes not just one.

In terms of films by women, the signs are encouraging. In the last twelve months alone Bird’s Eye View has promoted a range of commercially successful and critically acclaimed, award winning films by, and, in most cases, about, women; including ‘American Honey’, ‘Certain Women’, ‘A United Kingdom’, ‘Raw’, ‘The Fits’ and ‘The 13th’. We are excited by this work and look forward to spotlighting ever more original and inspiring films by women in the coming months and years.

While there are more films by women being made, there are no grounds for complacency. This is because there is still a long way to go before true gender equality and parity is achieved. The statistics speak for themselves and, we hope, will galvanise more people into action: In the 88 years of the Oscars only four women have been nominated for their directorial achievements and only one woman has claimed the top award (Kathryn Bigelow for ‘The Hurt Locker’). In UK films between 2005 and 2014, women accounted for just 13.6% of working film directors, and on average work with lower production budgets and are still paid far less than their male counterparts.

This year our #IWD2017 event, hosted by Melissa Silverstein of Women & Hollywood (a brilliant advocate for change in this space), is celebrating the filmmaker Gurinder Chada OBE (Writer/director/producer) who is Birds Eye View’s Woman of the Month.

Most noted for her critically and commercially successful Indian-themed, culture clash, comedy-dramas like the BAFTA award-winning ‘Bhaji on the Beach’ (1993) and the runaway hit, ‘Bend it Like Beckham’ (2002), Gurinder has brought us ‘Viceroy’s House’, a serious-minded, period epic that boldly revisits the build-up to Partition of India. Starring Gillian Anderson, Hugh Bonneville, Huma Qureshi and Manish Dayal this upstairs-downstairs tale dramatises the political wrangling leading up to this tumultuous historical event, filtering it through the consciousness of two servants – a young hindu man and muslim girl – who have fallen in love across the growing religious and cultural divide.

Gurinder once said that she wasn’t afraid to be a pioneer: “When a door is ajar, you need to open it fully. And once you are in that room, you need to see what other doors there might be and where they might lead.” To split the infinitive, Gurinder is: boldly going where not many British female film directors of Punjabi Sikh Kenyan Asian origin, have gone before!

Bird’s Eye View thus salutes Gurinder and everyone else out there who is breaking new ground and pushing for progress, wishing a bold and bright International Women’s Day to all.

For more information visit birds-eye-view.co.uk.

‘Viceroy’s House’ is in cinemas now. Watch a trailer below.

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