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What happens when 225 women are collectively rejected?
It’s a question BAFTA can surely answer.
On Tuesday, unsuccessful applicants to the academy’s ‘Elevate’ programme – a yearly initiative designed to ‘elevate’ individuals from under-represented groups (women in ‘high end TV and features’, in this instance) – were sent an email.
‘Thank you for your application…’ it read.
‘With almost 250 applicants, the selection panel had some very difficult decisions to make.
‘We regret to inform you that you have not been successful in your application on this occasion.
‘The judges were really impressed by the passion, commitment and skill demonstrated by entrants and they would like to extend their thanks to you for your interest in the scheme and…’
Etc.
It was standard rejection speak, nothing out of the ordinary... if you looked solely at the email, that is. Check out the ‘sent to’ part of it, and you’ll discover why BAFTA had to do some major damage limitation...
Because sitting neatly in rows in the ‘cc’ bar, were the email addresses of all 225 rejected female applicants. Weren’t those addresses supposed to have been hidden in the ‘bcc’ bar, you might ask? (They were.) Had someone at BAFTA made an unfortunate mistake? (So it would seem…)
Alicia MacDonald, writer-director of ‘Domestic Policy’, kicked-off the email chain.
‘As with any news of rejection, my heart sank a bit,’ she recalls. ‘I contacted two of my director mates who I could see were on the reject email to say ‘commiserations’ and ‘how mad was it that they’d managed to ‘cc’ everyone in?’!
‘I hesitated before ‘replying all’ – I figured sending a snarky response to BAFTA wasn’t gonna do me any favours but then thought ‘sod it’ and went with “Hard luck everyone!”
‘Someone would’ve started the conversation anyway but it was just amazing to watch the flurry of emails that followed – a mix of angry, consolatory and humorous responses to the gaffe.’
At one point BAFTA tried to wade in to contain the commotion; a second email was sent out informing applicants they had been ‘cc-ed’ in error and asking them not to contact any of the other email recipients.
Bringing together a vast community of creative women and expecting them to silently accept their collective rejection? Never going to happen…
The women took their conversation off email and a Facebook group was set up. First point of discussion? A hashtag. #BAFTAsLucky225 was swiftly agreed upon and award-winning writer-director Diane Jessie Miller was the first to tweet it out.
‘Some days we get good news, some days we get bad news... and some days bad news turns to good news... #BAFTASLUCKY225,’ she wrote.
A number of others followed soon after. ‘Proud to be one of the #BAFTASLUCKY225,’ wrote Eva Sigurdarottir (@evammsig).
And later: ‘A rejection email worth being CCed on! Feels like just the beginning - very pleased to be one of #BAFTASLUCKY225’ wrote Lucy Patrick Ward (@Electro_Pirate).
The story gained momentum as tweet after tweet spread the word of BAFTA’s error. So plentiful was the Twitter traffic, #BAFTAsLucky225 reached Number 9 on the social media platform’s trending sidebar.
Speaking about the incident, Diane Jessie Miller says, ‘Although it was a mistake… what they have done is incredible! This has brought to the forefront how many talented female directors there are out there.’
If ever there were an example of how to turn a negative into a positive, this is surely it. But underneath the upbeat view of this as a tale of sisterhood and ‘women for women’, lies a far more serious issue. The fact that women are – as BAFTA identified – vastly under-represented in the directing category for TV and film.
How under-represented are they exactly?
In the UK, a gender inequality study, published last May by Directors UK showed that in the last ten years, the number of female directors had remained stagnant, with women making up just 13.6% of working film directors. What does this mean? That men are six times more likely to direct a film than women.
And the problem is worse in the States.
As Vanity Fair reported in February, a study recently released by U.S.C.-Annenberg, entitled ‘Inclusion in the Directors Chair’, uncovered that out of the top 100 highest-grossing films from the years 2007 to 2016, just 44 were directed by women. Women are ‘grossly underrepresented’ in the director category, the report identified. And there has been ‘no meaningful change in the prevalence of female directors across the top films’ in the time period studied either. Which means, like in the UK, there has been no significant progress in a decade.
Why?
As #BAFTASLUCKY225 highlighted, it’s not because there simply aren’t enough female directors trying to make it, or because the talent they have to offer isn’t up to scratch. On the contrary – BAFTA were so impressed with the high standard of submissions, at the end of their original email they asked unsuccessful applicants to sign up to ‘a network of female directors’ who would be invited to attend ‘select sessions’ of Elevate’s programme.
Why else could it be then?
The Directors UK report appears to have found some answers, identifying four key causes: there is no effective ‘regulatory system’ to focus on gender equality; confidence in women’s ability is lagging in the industry; the quick turnaround on a number of projects means there’s no time to implicate ‘positive HR practices’; and existing inequality in the industry generally perpetuates itself.
It makes for depressing reading. And whilst it might only ‘officially’ apply to female directors in the UK, we can imagine it’s likely to be a similar case in the States, indeed, around the world.
‘I’ve directed a feature film and lots of other things as well and I’m still struggling to make a career and a mark for myself, and the question I constantly ask myself is: “Why is that?”’ Diane explains.
‘I’m a writer-director, so it’s not ok to [say] there isn’t any material for me to direct. I write my own material. And I’ve directed other people’s things.’
‘I think it is a male-dominated industry,’ she continues.
‘Women are also penalised when they go and have children… I have categorically chosen not to have children because I want to have my career.’
What needs to happen, she says, is that women should stop being offered training schemes as a consolation for not getting work. ‘We’re already trained,’ she points out. ‘That’s a big thing that’s come out from the conversations of the #BAFTAsLucky225, is that we don’t need training – we’re already doing this job. We don’t need to ‘shadow people’…
‘What we need is to have the opportunity for people to see our work... Someone quoted [yesterday] that “female directors are hard to find”. No, they’re not! We’re everywhere.’
Writer-director Alicia MacDonald agrees. ‘[We need] opportunity. Women don’t need more schemes or training, we need jobs.’
Jobs for women? Sounds unnervingly similar to ‘Votes for Women’, the message put out over 100 years ago by Dame Millicent Fawcett who, it was revealed this week, is set to get her own statue in Parliament Square. One would have thought in a century, attitudes towards women might have changed a bit; it appears in some areas, they haven’t.
So it’s time for that mega change now. For TV and cinema to wise up and get hiring. ‘Never has rejection come with such a silver lining,’ tweeted screenwriter and director Kat Wood (@katruthwood) of #BAFTAsLucky225 on Tuesday.
Let’s hope that the silver lining comes in the form of work from the bigwigs of silver screen… and that they quickly come to realise how women are just as capable as men of producing cinema and TV gold.
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