The irony of this festival is that its goal is to not be around in 5 years time. To eventually not be relevant because there is zero need to have a festival geared for female talent and female stories because the stories presented in Hollywood and around the world are a balanced showcase of the human experience from both sexes.
Our goal is to achieve a lot of success and then fold into oblivion simply because there is no need for this festival.
This festival was created by the FEEDBACK Film & Writing Festival as a simple reaction to a strong need to showcase female talent from around the world in a more profound way.
When putting together the weekly festival, the administration noticed a lack of a female presence in the stories being shown at the festival.
A classic example and analogy to the frustration is how the festival noticed that even the smaller roles in a screenplay were written for a man to play. There was zero reason for this in many stories. How a police officer, or a political campaign manager, for example with 3-4 lines in a screenplay was a “HE” character. Why? And these are the screenplays written by the winners! The talented one who have obtained agents and have began/beginning their careers as a writer.
The festival quickly realized when doing the casting for the writing festival readings and setting up the film festival each week two distinct things:
- There are so many talented female actors out there who don’t have enough roles to play. 64% of the assigned roles in a screenplay out of over 500 winning readings from 2013-16 were for males. A woman character got only 36% of the roles! And it’s safe to say that so many elite & talented women out there are sitting on the sidelines for no other reason than there is a lack of diversity in Hollywood and around the world in the stories being written.
- There is a silent revolution happening around the world with female indy directors. The festival has noticed out of the last 100 films shown at the festival in the last year, 23 of those films were directed by a female. That is a great achievement in relation to how it is with Hollywood produced films, (4 out of 100 of the last films directed by a female.) but is that really something to be proud of? If 50% of the world’s population is female, then shouldn’t 50% of the films be produced and directed by a female? This is what the goal of this festival is.
Simply put: There NEEDS to be more stories told from the female point of view. And those stories need to be presented.
FEEDBACK Female Film Festival 