3rd Annual San Francisco Women’s Film Festival

Scarlett Shepard, the executive director of the Women’s Film Festival in San Francisco, invited me to show a trailer of my movie. Scarlett (left) is shown with me, Shelly.

I was honored that I would be asked and I very much wanted to support the festival in any way that I could, so of course I said “Yes”. I didn’t even have a trailer at that time! I was happy that I did agree because it gave me the chance to meet a lot of interesting filmmakers. It also forced me to work on the trailer which I knew that I needed to do. The festival website can be found here.

I got to meet independent film director Guinevere Turner. Guinevere Turner has appeared in many films including Go Fish, Dogma and Chasing Amy. She is also a writer and has worked on the television series, The L Word and the movies American Psycho and The Notorious Bettie Page among others. In the picture to the right Guinevere (left) is shown striking a pose with me(right).

She showed two of her short movies. One entitled “Hung” was about a group of lesbian friends that take a potion that cause them to grow a penis for a day. You can imagine how funny that would be and it was! I’m very interested in movies that cause the audience to step outside their normal roles as men or women. I like movies that make people consider what they might do differently and then asked why don’t they do that anyway. Why does the ownership of a penis give them “permission” to do something they would like to do or experience? We are so very accepting of gender roles even though we claim not to be.

I would encourage people to attend this festival as it brings visibility to many new filmmakers that you may not see in other film festivals. Sadly, the filmmaking industry has a very poor record of inclusiveness for women. Women accounted for only 7% of directors in 2005, representing a decline of 4 percentage points as compared with 11% in 2000. Visit this site for more information women in filmmaking:

http://www.wmm.com/resources/film_facts.shtml

At the college that I attend filmmaking classes, I noticed that there were less than 50% women in the class. Maybe somewhere around 25-35% women, depending on the class. This suggests that women, for whatever reasons, do not enroll in film classes at the same rate as men. Maybe it’s because the lack of role models or maybe it’s because of the technical aspects of filmmaking. I’m not sure. Further, as you move into the more advance classes there are even fewer women. This suggests that many are not continuing to completion. How will the future of filmmaking change if we can’t get women through the filmmaking schools? What can schools do to change this trend?