The Bird's Eye View film festival has come to Glasgow. Featuring rarely-seen work by leading filmmakers from 1928 to the present, it's a celebration of the achievements of women within an industry dominated by men. In the elegant surroundings of the Centre for Contemporary Arts I talked to managing director Amy Mole about what she hopes to achieve with the tour and why she chose the locations she did.
"We're really interested in developing our year-round touring profile and bringing the best of the festival outside London," she says, stressing that she wants to reach audiences of both women and men across Britain, not just in the capital, and to connect with a diversity of people in the fimmaking community. In choosing venues, she looked for venues where she already had good contacts, such as the CCA and GFT in Glasgow - next stop is the Tyneside cinema complex in Newcastle. An important consideration in choosing venues, as in choosing films, was that she should provide great entertainment for audiences of both women and men. Bird's Eye View isn't about women making films just for women, and is wary of the ghettoisation that can come from being limited to particular genres - it simply wants to demonstrate that there are good female filmmakers out there and help to advance their careers.
Female filmmakers are not a new phenomenon - in fact, they dominated the industry in the early days. One of the tour's films is the silent comedy My Best Girl, starring Mary Pickford and Buddy Rogers. Pickford was an important political figure in her day and worked hard to improve the lots of actors within the industry. "She has incredible presence on screen and I feel really inspired by her," says Amy.
The tour also features a collection of shorts including the award-winning Love You More, a timely choice given that its director Sam Taylor Wood is about to release Nowhere Boy, a portrait of John Lennon in his early years. Plus there are several films by Xiaolu Guo, director of Once Upon A Time Proletarian, who is travelling with the tour to speak directly with audiences about her work and the position of women in the industry. Amy describes having seen her speak on a panel at the London Film Festival and being blown away by her intelligence and force of personality.
Alongside their tours, Bird's Eye View are undertaking a series of initiatives to support new female filmmakers. "We're about to launch a competition called She writes," explains Amy. "It's in partnership with The Script Factory and it'll be open to women across the UK. We'll announce the winners at our festival in London. They'll then get to meet high flying industry mentors who will help them to develop their scripts. There'll be opportunities to network, we'll take them through a series of actor workshops, and finally they'll have a public script reading." This is similar to the Last Laugh competition which Bird's Eye View ran last year to encourage women to write comedy - three of the films from that project are now on the development slate. The Bird's Eye View festival in London will take place in March and there will be a month-long BFI retrospective, this time focusing on the blonde as a cinematic icon.
Cynical readers may feel that in this age of equality it's inappropriate for female filmmakers to get extra help. Amy counters this with some rather startling statistics - at present, only 12 percent of screenwriters and seven percent of directors are women. Why is this? She doesn't think it's due to conscious sexism or any kind of conspiracy, but cites subtler factors, one of them being simply that women are less likely to go into an industry that they see as male-dominated. Consequently, Bird's Eye View aims to raise the profile of women who've made it. "We want to create a good environment for women filmmakers and show them that they can dare to dream," she says.
There is also the problem of audience demographics - in fact, women go to the cinema about as often as men, but most films are still aimed at young male audiences. They tend to have a male perspective and there are not enough female protagonists. Yet Amy notes that Mamma Mia! has become the highest grossing film in the UK ever, and the previous highest-grossing one was Bend It Like Beckham, also female-led. The audience is out there - it's just a matter of making people see it.
Finally, Amy has some advice for aspiring female filmmakers. "The most useful thing you can do is to talk to lots of women who've made it and get all the advice you can. Don't let the toughness of the industry affect you. Most filmmakers have difficult moments early in their careers, but you can overcome them. You need to have ambition and believe it's achievable." There's also something audiences can do. "We have a thing called the First Weekenders Club. Most people don't realise it but going to see a film on its opening weekend means the people making it get a lot more money. This is a way you can support women in the industry."
To find out more about Bird's Eye View and the First Weekenders Club, visit www.birds-eye-view.co.uk
