Bentonville Gina Davis and Wendy Guerrero on Planning a Truly Diverse Film Festival

Bentonville Gina Davis and Wendy Guerrero on Planning a Truly Diverse Film Festival

While film festivals continue to struggle in 2022 with other criteria of gender equality and inclusive selection, the Bentonville Film Festival has been continuously programming for most films by women, BIPOC, stone, disabled and other historically excluded films since its inception in 2015.

The festival returned for the eighth time on June 22nd and will continue in person in northwest Arkansas through June 26th and virtually until July 3rd. More than 82% of this year’s competition lineup is from creators identified as female or gender-inappropriate. ; 65% who identify as Black, Native American, mixed-race, Asian or Pacific Islander; 62% who identify as LGBTQIA+, 42% who are over 50 and 20% who identify as having a disability.

Festival founder and president Gina Davis and Festival and BFFoundation president Wendy Guerrero spoke the hollywood reporter On how it consistently achieves this diversity of programming, how the festival has influenced the careers of its filmmakers, and how cinematography has influenced the changing cultural landscape.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity..

How did the founding of the Bentonville Film Festival and its foundation coincide with what Gina was already doing with the Gina Davis Institute on Gender in Media?

Gina Davis: At my school we focus exclusively on screen performance. We mainly focus on what children see first when we teach them about unconscious biases. But this festival allows us to explore on and off the camera.

wendy warrior: I always see it as a continuation of the work that Gina was doing. Gienna had a brilliant idea from the start creating this inclusion quiz, asking questions about people who were nominated for the festival and who, as far as I know, were very different from other festivals before we started. I remember Gina saying, “We can make more producers realize that it’s up to them, make sure that in addition to the camera [crew] There is also a representative of the population, if you can fill out this questionnaire.” Our festival now asks around 35 questions: What is your team composition? 50% female or diverse?

We have seen that some festivals have difficulty booking different groups of cinematographers. How do you do it?

Davis: When I was in Australia recently, someone told me that every year they have a short film festival which is very famous and successful and every year only 17% of the films are directed by women. They were educated people, very intelligent, and they were trying very hard to improve, and they were still below 20%. Finally, a few years ago, they said, “Let’s try to get the names out of the movies.” Fifty per cent.

Wow.

Davis: It went straight to 50-50. So it was unexplained bias while they were trying. This just shows how deep the unconscious bias is. So maybe skin, I don’t know, there are a lot of famous directors, but maybe they should take the names off the movies. It’s very difficult to overcome your personal unconscious bias because you think you don’t have it.

Warrior: Personally, I have no difficulty finding really well-made, very entertaining, high-quality films shot by women or another underrepresented society. I don’t understand when we can create a program with documentaries, narratives, short films, episodes, women’s stories or lesser-known themes. I think our Participation Questionnaire will help you because if you are a producer and you are applying to a festival, you will answer all these questions from the beginning. You can still checkout and ship, but first we’ll look at the requirements for this inclusion. We don’t look at names. We look to see if this film fits our mission. And do they meet our criteria? Then he moves to the screens and people start looking at them. We also talk to agents and managers, we have curators and we do the whole process of what all other festivals do, but honestly I think the turnout rate changes the data for us.

When talking about prejudice, there are sometimes assumptions about what a one-woman movie will be or will be, or something else historically dismissed by the creator. How broad were the stories featured at your festival?

Warrior: The first year of the festival was a special year for me capital That Alicia was a ranger and ran away. These were women on Wall Street who were making money and they were at the table making these important financial decisions. The characters in this movie have been doing business and big business globally. It was really exciting and a movie that we still don’t see enough of. We have a lot of great movies this year that are about fertility and non-traditional movies about women. we have a movie called cat parents That a director has addressed the stigmatization of male cat owners because she always refers to a “catwoman.” There are all kinds of amazing topics that you wouldn’t normally think, “Oh, this is a female director.” We like to get rid of clichés and ideas that this is a niche. Our festival is not a niche. It has all kinds of wonderful stories, directed and narrated by so many amazing people that represent the world we live in, that’s exactly what our festival is all about.

How did festivals virtually or hybridly affect directors from historically excluded backgrounds during the first two years?

Warrior: Filmmakers were initially nervous about showing their film in a hybrid environment because they didn’t have the trust of distributors and didn’t understand: “Is this considered a premiere? Or is there some sort of contract I’m going to lose if I show it at an online festival? We had to get over that a little bit in our first hybrid year, but I feel like dealers now understand that this is a different landscape and environment. Some films only opt for digital projection and event organization, which makes it look like a one-off projection. So I think they have more options to show their film the way it works for them. Now everything is open. We can go back to traditional ways, but I feel like I have more opportunities. Older models are falling apart.

One thing I’ve learned about education in the last couple of years is how much I’ve increased access to a virtual or hybrid model for people with disabilities. Is this something you always knew?

Davis: I am excited about this aspect and we will keep it because people from all over the world can come to our festival and participate. This, of course, is correct. This is fantastic, so let’s keep this article going.

Warrior: Traveling is sometimes difficult for people. Film festivals can be expensive. That’s why we love having a virtual version. As Gina says, we now have a global audience. We had people from Germany, Copenhagen, Mexico and all over the world. I think first we had 30,000 people in the hybrid year, then 150,000 practically last year.

What are you most excited about this year’s festival?

Davis: What I like most is being in Bentonville because the city is very supportive. The whole area is incredibly involved in the festival and there are many local volunteers and people who want to help and get involved. It even starts for me on a plane in northwest Arkansas, because a lot of people will say, “I know where you’re going.” It’s so much fun to feel part of the community.

Warrior: We have a lot of feature films, music and experimental films this year. We open Jane’s seven faces, which belongs to this category. We also have films about incarceration and civic engagement. So we have over 50 categories as well. We really feel like it’s underrepresented when everyone is talking about young, rookie filmmakers. There are a lot of talents that have been around for a long time and you may never surpass this star, but many of these movies are worth watching and people should pay attention. Then we also do a section on regional films and filmmakers where we highlight stories from the NWA area.

Tell me about “Gina and her friends.” It seems this is the main event of the festival every year.

Davis: People love it. We did this from the start. We chose scenes that make them all men and all of them women. We don’t just sit on chairs, we usually stand for a while and do a little choreography. Super funny. As a general rule, every year we choose a scene in which a woman was stereotyped and we will have the role of a male actor. We shot a scene from the movie. M*W*S*H Once, where two children were leaning against a car, they looked at a woman and talked about her. And we had a son… (laughs). It was so funny.

This half year alone has had a major impact in terms of policies that can affect the lives and livelihoods of women and other historically oppressed people in many ways. How can managers influence change?

Davis: What happens on screen happens in real life; We meet him time and time again. The ITUC An effect where, as soon as these programs started, women got very much into the field of forensic medicine. So we know that what you see on screen will happen in real life. It’s an opportunity to really normalize the reflection of the population as it is. There are documentaries and movies that deal specifically with abortion, but movies that show women taking responsibility for their own lives, making their own decisions and happy men making decisions with them, have LGBTQ characters just living their lives. It helps a lot I think.

Warrior: As much as we can share these stories, especially in the middle of the country, I think they change hearts and minds more than any kind of statement. Storytellers share what’s important to them and it’s our job to let them see and hear those stories at festivals like ours. We had moments at the festival like collaborating with Common Sense Media on how to talk to your kids about how pronouns change. We’re doing “fat in front of the camera” this year and we call it specifically. Talking to our speakers and moderators, that’s what they say.

On the contrary, how did you see the impact of the Bentonville experience on filmmakers?

Davis: Part of our goal is to see people make a second film. It’s very difficult for talented filmmakers to get the next project.

Warrior: We plan to award more than $75,000 in grants this year. According to Gina, that’s really the money these people need to make a second movie. We love introducing and creating shadows and stuff like that, but we really talked to our partners that it takes money to get people historically underrepresented in our industry, even at the doors and on the ladder. Tom Huang will receive $25,000 from NBCUniversal. Mars Wrigley is awarding a $25,000 Short Film Director Award and the opportunity to work on an M&Ms campaign. We are in a unique position where many of our studio partners as well as our [consumer packaged goods] Partners and their agencies can provide filmmakers with opportunities. Because keeping a director’s life really does require money. We talked deeply with our partners: How do we give them more access and opportunities in all areas of entertainment?

Source: Hollywood Reporter

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