Women’s Panel Review (SBIFF 2012)

Reviewed by Jacqueline Kaden. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

 I am a feminist. So once I heard that there was going to be a Woman’s Panel at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, I immediately got excited. Going into an event titled “Women’s Panel,” I was pretty excited to get to hear stories about women fighting the Patriarchy and kicking men’s butts in the film industry. The moderator of the panel was the poised and dangerous business woman Madelyn Hammond. The panel featured Julia Louis-Dreyfus (producer of picture Paris and accredited actress), Dede Gardner (producer of tree of Life and close friend of Brad Pitt), Melissa Cobb (Producer of Kung fu Panda who has worked with VH1 an Olympus Pictures among others), Leslie Urdang (producer of Beginners), and Denise Ream (producer of Cars 2 who was worked on Harry Potter in effects and animation as well as with Lucas Films). With a power-house panel of women like these, I knew the event would be full of stories of fights and battles to overcome gender stereotypes to become the ladies  they are today!

However, I was in for an extreme disappointment.

This panel of women would have been better titled “A Panel of Women” rather than “A Women’s Panel” considering how little talk there was about feminism, patriarchy, or any kind of discrimination along the lines of gender in the industry. The panel began slowly with Hammond asking the panelists what their jobs are like, what do they do, how do they get along, stressors, and other things strictly related to making their films. When it came time to ask some of the panelists about any kind of discrimination they’d faced, the question was met with evasive answers along the lines of the fact that they’d never been discriminated against.

I was shocked to hear these shifty answers coming from women in such high places. I waited until the floor was open to the audience to ask questions. Again, question after question about their experiences with discrimination were met with answers similar to (I do not quote verbatim), “You just need to ignore your gender and do your work,” and like, “I have never really experienced discrimination, I just sort of do what I love.” On the surface, answers like these may seem perfectly good. But as a friend of mine pointed out to me later after talking about these answers, saying to a woman to ignore her gender is like telling an African-American to ignore their skin color. It is not something one can just ignore; on the contrary, it should be taken into special consideration.

Whether or not these women realize it or not, there is discrimination against women in the film industry coming from many angles. For example, I remember seeing a commercial for one of the for-profit schools such as Universityof Phoenix or Academy of Art Universities where they were advertising a film studies major. In the commercial, the first three fourths of the spot were shown with a young man behind a camera pressing buttons and looking out at his actors. There was a man talking with actors, directing them on something and them smiling a nodding as he talked (two of the three actors were women) and it wasn’t until the last fourth of the commercial where we see a female seamstress sewing a costume and a female makeup artist smiling and applying makeup. Though costume and makeup design and acting are important roles, in no way are they as important as directing or shooting a film. This example alone shows how women are simply expected to take the side roles while men really lead the show.

The Panel of Women was disappointing to say the least (and that is a very large understatement). I was very let down and do not expect to go to the panel again until I hear of significant improvement in the way of discussions on Equal Rights in this Women’s Panel.