Last May I had the incredible opportunity of participating in an intensive documentary film workshop with five other young women taught by a few very accomplished women in the film industry. We learned everything from stories, to sound, to camera equipment, to editing, to funding. The program is called the Kris Anderson Connexions Youth Forum, a collaboration between DOXA film festival in Vancouver and the NFB, and it is meant to help young female filmmakers get a foot in the door of a male dominated film industry. It was such an amazing experience to be surrounded with technology and women, all teaching and helping each learn in such a non-judgmental environment. As someone who'd never used Final Cut or a professional quality video camera I was quite intimidated to be working in the National Film Board studios, but after a being given instruction I picked it up so easily and made an amazing little film which screened for 500 hundred people at the DOXA festival. It was so empowering to be encouraged and supported to learn things that have always been for "guys". I realized that it wasn't that I was incapable of learning technology, it was just that I'd never has safe and supportive learning environment to experiment in.
I was in amazed to learn in our Girlhoods Studies class that my experience was not uncommon, that it is a documented phenomenon experienced by many young women. Andrea Richards, author of Girl Director, comments: "I think it honestly doesn't occur to girls that they can be a film director -- the possibility has never been planted in their heads because it's so off limits through cultural and gender stereotypes" (quoted in Lipkin, 2009, p. 148). My own experience confirms Richards assessment of the situation. I had never even considered fillmmaking until being introduced to it as a method of present research in a femininst participatory action research class, the thought had never occured to me that I might have ideas worth sharing through film. Still, even after working on three films, I doubt my abilities. I still have this feeling that for some reason I'm incapable, like it was a fluke that I managed to do it all, that I couldn't do it again. I'm intimidated to be in the public eye, I feel like I don't have anything to share that others would find interesting... but I know I do.... it's weird. Elline Lipkin (2009)writes how "girls have to overcome the perception that this [filmmaking] is a sphere in which they don't belong -- no small hurdle to jump" (p. 148). Learning about this stuff in girlhoods is really helping me understand that it's not just me and my own deficiencies that keeps me from jumping in, its the culture I've been raised in.
Looking back on the blog I wrote for the NFB website (see below) following the workshop, I'm surprised to see how I started to realize there were systemic and cultural forces working against me before even reading the theories in Girlhoods Studies that affirmed my own experiences. But still, even knowing this, it doesn't change the reality, the fear, the insecurities... but it does help.
DOXA Connexions: Barriers
The big moment had finally arrived. I stood on stage beside 5 brilliant aspiring filmmakers. We waited prettily in our party dresses and high heels to introduce our films to a sold-out house at the Rio Theatre. My friends and family filled the entire front row. Despite being blinded by the spotlight, I grinned at them proudly. My years of hard work had gotten me here. I could get used to this. The announcer began thanking sponsors and volunteers. I kept smiling.
Then the announcer turned his attention to us, the participants of the 6th annual Kris Anderson Connexions Youth Forum. But what he said made my stomach crunch and my feelings of excitement and anticipation curdle into confusion and smallness. “The Connexions Youth Forum is designed to help youth who face barriers in attaining their goals as documentary filmmakers…”
What!?! Barriers?? Really? And all this time I thought it was a program for talented young women. But I haven’t faced any barriers, I thought to myself. Actually quite the opposite. Through my privilege as a Canadian university student, making films found me, picked me up, and coddled me. I was troubled by this and continued thinking about it over the next few days.
Am I just a girl being given a chance to break through barriers? Or do I actually have talent as a filmmaker? This is a question that taunts many female artists. We are given special recognition for our womanhood, rather than for our art. The same goes for many artists of “marginalized” identities. We remain in special categories, we have our special shows, and are celebrated for our ‘different’ (non white male) identities.
I now realize the barriers I face are not obvious at the surface level. Women filmmakers are dealing with internalized barriers. Barriers arising out of the collective psyche that tell us women and technology don’t mix. Don’t touch those buttons, mind the wires, nevermind the lingo, you wouldn’t understand. It is the reason that in my youth I was an aspiring actress, not a filmmaker; a model, not photographer; a dancer, not a music producer. As a woman I am conditioned to see myself as an object of the public gaze, not as a cultural creator.
It is only in recent years, in the safety of academia (where I have always excelled), that I began touching the buttons, using technology as a medium to enhance research. But it was not until the incredible support I received in Connexions Youth Forum that I am now hoping to pursue documentary filmmaking as a career.
Throughout the Connexions program I felt empowered, excited, motivated and capable. Surrounded by incredible female mentors and peers, and equipped with a PD 150, a tripod, and a shotgun I broke through barriers that I had never even considered challenging.
So next year, if they decide to introduce the Connexions participants as ‘aspiring female filmmakers’ rather than ‘youth facing barriers’ (which skirts around entrenched sexism anyways…), this conversation about ‘barriers’ remains a necessary one. To address a problem such as sexism within the film industry we must recognize and name it. And although we must continue celebrating those who break through these barriers, we must not forget that their art is still art, and must to valued and integrated into mainstream culture as such.
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