It is a fact that nowadays women are an essential part of the team in State film festivals. All of us in this sector know that the teams working on production, communication, copy management, guest services, protocol and other areas of film festivals are mostly composed of women. But what if we take a look at the management posts at the festivals, and the programming teams?
I would love to crunch some numbers for what I am saying here, but I fear that no institution has found the issue sufficiently relevant to merit a study: how many women form part of film festival management teams? how does this percentage vary depending on the “category” of the festival? how is this percentage distributed gender-wise in each working area at the festivals? has the percentage distribution changed over the years?
This is not a matter of percentages, although percentages and statistics are essential to put the reality in the spotlight. Nor is it a matter of presence quotas, although quotas are definitely essential tools to correct the dynamics of the power structures established.
Real diversity in film festival teams is vital to create plural spaces for programming, reflection and encounters. Comprehension of the concepts of intersectionality and sustainability in terms of their transformational potential, and not simply as terms to be automatically repeated until they have been completely stripped of any meaning is a challenge we cannot avoid.
Creating a less competitive ecosystem, in which strategies of cooperation and symbiosis are increasingly more solid at festivals and within each organisation. Building work methods that are more horizontal and sustainable, both in terms of the environment and the people forming part of it. Breaking the dynamics of exponential growth: more and more projections, more venues, more premieres, more guests, more, more, more. Breaking the paradigm of festivals as a business model. Acknowledging their usefulness as spaces generating new scenarios and focusing on an increase in their social incidence… Could these be some of the guiding parameters for some possible alternative trajectories?
María Zafra
Director
Mostra Internacional de Films de Dones de Barcelona
