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Women in Communications: Film By Michelle Fawcett Entering the Park School of Communications four years ago, I was a bright, smiling freshman with dreams of Hollywood who didn't see a difference between men and women filmmakers or how they are treated. Today, I still smile a lot, but I'm not nearly as naive. At the start, men and women are equal in either their lack of knowledge of filmmaking or their little bit of knowledge acquired in high school programs. I came in with some photography experience, some video, and absolutely no film experience. This was intimidating in production classes when others seemed to have a better grasp of the equipment than I did, but more intimidating was the overwhelming amount of male classmates, teaching assistants and production professors. In the four years I spent in film classes, the only female production professor I had was in introduction to photography and I only had one film course in which the women outnumbered their male classmates. This year, a little over a third of the senior film workshop class is women. While still not half, the number is far more encouraging than four years ago when there were only three women filmmakers at the final workshop screening out of about 26 filmmakers. While the film major tends to decrease in huge numbers of men and women from freshman year to senior year, the percentage of women changing majors or dropping out appears higher. This affects the remaining female film majors as well. Too often when I've seen other women leave film, I've questioned myself and if I can really handle heading into this male-dominated industry. Interning in Los Angeles enhanced my understanding of how uphill this career path is as a woman, but this too is something I could easily learn at school. Any communications school is just a microcosm of the industry. It's subtle, but if you observe, you'll see condescending looks from some men when women are working with the equipment, you'll hear the stereotypes said when women are in charge of technical aspects of communications, and if women work with just other women on films or shows, you'll hear the women referred to as "card carrying feminists" and even "men-haters." Another hurdle for women in communications is dealing with the depictions and representations of women provided in the work of classmates. When a female character is brutally murdered, attacked or portrayed negatively without context, the representations hold a silencing effect on the women in class. Too often we're stunned by what we see and speaking up against certain images pushes out a voice not widely accepted by classmates. Though many women are affected by these images, few will speak up knowing how some men in the class will take such comments as an over-reaction of women. It is easier at first to stay silent, and harder to speak up the more it happens. I remember in high school I had a voice. I had a loud, clear voice. Somewhere between there and here, I lost it. Two years ago, I found it growing slowly louder again through the Women of the Communications Industry Club's Ithaca College chapter started by Jen Bohbot, a graduating Television and Radio major that year. She knew how important it was for women to form a support group and have networking opportunities with women already in the industry. Looking back, this support system is what held me in the major through graduation. I realize men and women filmmakers go through self doubt, but for me, it was more than self doubt. There wasn't a female role model in the production realm of classes and most of the speakers coming into the school were men. I was influenced by the lack of women around me and scared that I couldn't make it in film after all. Then, the club came around and I met women who had graduated from Park and moved on into the industry and came back to speak to our club about their experiences. I found Women Direct and was exposed to great work by women who work outside of the mainstream Hollywood system. Though it took until senior year, I finally found my role models as well. Internship supervisors in Los Angeles, visiting women artists, film theory professors, and the female classmates who've been there since freshman year, are all strong female voices and women that I truly admire. In the end I'm reminded of the first month of freshman year when a close friend and I were at Cornell Cinema. We bumped into Professor Pierre Desir and introduced ourselves. Both of us wide-eyed freshwomen couldn't wait to start making our own work and were impressed by this filmmaker we hoped would one day teach us. Pierre very wisely told us to stay with it, because the department loses too many women film students before senior year. I never forgot that moment and though, at the time, I didn't fully comprehend why too many women leave the major, his advice was always in the back of my mind. Four years later, my voice is back and louder than before. I am a graduating filmmaker. Michelle Fawcett x3. She is out of here. |
