Queen Latifah in 2008 (credit: Affiliate Summit on Flickr, CC 2.0)
Minority directors are underrepresented in
film at a degree of three to one, while women are underrepresented at a rate of
seven to one, according to UCLA’s 2018 Hollywood Diversity Report. There is clearly room for
progress here in terms of equality, especially for women who are black or of
another minority identity. Rapper, singer, actress, label president, author,
real estate developer and entrepreneur Queen Latifah is out to shift the
scales; she recently teamed up with Tribeca Studios and Marc Pritchard, Procter
and Gamble’s chief brand officer, to launch the Queen Collective (TQC). TQC has
a goal of “accelerating gender and racial equality behind the camera.” Two
inaugural documentaries backed by TQC premiered in April 2019 at the Tribeca
Film Festival, and they are now streaming on HULU.
Leading discussion at the opening New York City screening. Left to right: Luchina Fisher, producer; Lynn Paltrow, Executive Producer, National Advocates for Pregnant Women; Civia Tamarkin, Director, Writer and Executive Producer; and Dr. Ruth Shaber, Founder, Tara Health Foundation and Executive Producer
Collectively, state legislatures passed 288 restrictions on women’s reproductive rights between 2010 to 2015. Now, a new film tells the stories of women’s horrific health experiences, and the imprisonments, both actual and threatened, that are a consequence of these laws.
Birthright: A War Story is a new documentary that exposes the radical religious right’s infiltration state legislatures. This movement’s goal is not only to strike down women’s constitutional right to abortion but also to curb women’s access to birth control. Some seek to put the rights of fetuses above those of women.
Film Fatales, a collaborative of women film makers and television directors, has received two new grants.
Want to see how philanthropy can amplify movements for women’s equality? Look no further than this new funding collaboration between the Harnisch Foundation and the Adrienne Shelly Foundation, which will create long-term growth for women film makers and television directors.
“The Harnisch Foundation’s strategy for social change includes supporting creative communities, and investing in the power of storytelling,” said Ruth Ann Harnisch, Founder and President of the Harnisch Foundation. “Film Fatales hits both of those targets, giving women more opportunities, visibility, and connections. We share the goal of gender parity in making media.”
Film Fatales, once a relatively small network of women filmmakers sharing resources, has evolved into something much bigger. What was once a group of women in New York gathering for mentoring and support has blossomed into an organization of “over 500 women feature film and television directors in New York and Los Angeles, and scores more in sister cities across Europe, North America, and Australia.”
The evolution of Film Fatales has taken the 2017 Sundance Film Festival in a new direction this year, where twenty members of the network are premiering films, episodics, and virtual reality projects. These new works include the popular Amazon series I Love Dick, co-directed by Jill Soloway, Andrea Arnold, and Kimberly Peirce, and starring Kevin Bacon and Kathryn Hahn.
Film Fatales also hosted Sundance’s opening weekend Women’s Brunch, a female filmmaker dinner with Kickstarter, and held their annual Film Fatales party at the event, with sponsorship from Blue Fever, Luna Bar, Tangerine Entertainment, and the Utah Film Commission.
Now, with new funding from the Harnisch Foundation and the Adrienne Shelly Foundation, Film Fatales is on the runway for a major takeoff in production of films by women. These two new grants will help the organization develop long-term sustainability, so that the large gender gap in film and television can begin to be closed. As of 2015, only 16 percent of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on top-grossing films were women.
The first of these two new grants, from the Adrienne Shelly Foundation, is a recurring grant for $10,000 and will fund media efforts which will raise the visibility of Film Fatales productions as well as other feature films by women around the world. This is the first time the Adrienne Shelley Foundation has given a grant to an organization instead of directly to filmmakers.
The Harnisch Foundation is providing a second grant of $25,000 to Film Fatales for General Operating Support. With over $10 million in grants since 1998, the Harnisch Foundation is also a funder of Women Make Movies, Sundance Institute, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, and Chicken & Egg Pictures.
Films directed by Film Fatales at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival:
Band Aid directed by Zoe Lister Jones
Beach Rats directed by Eliza Hittman
Before I Fall directed by Ry Russo Young
Bitch directed by Marianna Palka
Buena Vista Social Club documentary directed by Lucy Walker
Deirdra & Laney directed by Sydney Freeland
Hold On directed by Christine Turner
I Love Dick co-directed by Jill Soloway, Andrea Arnold, Kimberly Peirce
If Not Love directed by Rose Troche
Landline directed by Gillian Robespierre
Lemon directed by Janicza Bravo
Motherland directed by Ramona Diaz
Step directed by Amanda Lipitz
Strangers co-directed by Celia Rowlson-Hall and Mia Lidofsky
This is Everything directed by Barbara Kopple
Through You co-directed by Lily Baldwin
Tokyo Idols directed by Kyoko Miyake
XX co-directed by Annie Clark, Jovanka Vuckovic, Karyn Kusama, Roxanne Benjamin
