Independent TV critic Thinus Ferreira is attending the 10th annual Silwerkskerm Festival at the Bay Hotel in Camps Bay. The hybrid event – in-person and virtual – takes place from 23 to 26 March.
Women working in South Africa’s film and TV industry shared
some of their hair-raising anecdotes, challenges and suggestions during a panel
session about women in film at the 10th Silwerskerm Film Festival.
Kaye Ann Williams, senior manager: M-Net 101 script,
reality, films, co-productions, moderated the Women in Film panel discussion at
kykNET’s 10th Silwerskerm Film Festival currently taking place at The Bay Hotel in Camps
Bay, Cape Town, where female panellists in film and TV production shared their
experiences of the local industry and how to foster opportunities and embrace
challenges.
Williams said women in South Africa’s film and TV industry
“often find themselves in a room where you’re meant to get a project off
the ground, and you need to convince everyone that you’re credible, that you
know what you’re talking about”.
“Often women think ‘, Do I belong here? Am I too loud?
How can I be more assertive?’ There are all these questions that men don’t ask
themselves in these spaces; they just go and talk and do what they need to
do.”
“Women to women mentorship is so extremely important to
me in the film industry.”
Layla Swart, co-owner and producer of Yellowbone
Entertainment doing Blood Psalms for MultiChoice’s streamer Showmax, said,
“my biggest challenge has always been to try and not get into a mindset of
being a victim. And often it’s hard because often you are – often you are
judged, often you are looked at differently, often you are not as trusted as
your older or male counterparts.”
“I’ve cried in meetings against my better judgment,
fighting against who I actually am all the time until I got to a point where I
said to myself I’ve got to live in the power of being a woman, of being the
feminine and knowing what I can contribute to a space or environment or a
project.”
Screenwriter and director Amy Jephta said if she were ever
to write a memoir about her career, the title would probably be “Three
white men and me”.
“That has always, almost always been the ratio of the
spaces and places I find myself in – me and two white guys, me and three white
guys”.
“The spaces where it’s been equal, who look like me –
who are Black and women – are spaces usually that I’ve created; it’s rooms
where I’ve consciously tried to diversify that. You can never forget your
positionality in that room; you can never forget your politics and the politics
of your body in that space.”
Creating a space for women
Thandi Davids, executive producer at StoryScope and
co-chairperson of the Independent Producers Organisation (IPO), said that
“at our last big feature doc we had to fire a director of photography who
came in from Canada because he refused to take direction from a director. He
literally would not listen to her; it was completely astounding.”
“It’s really important for us to create an enabling
environment on every level, and look at bringing women in on every level,”
she said and noted that on a recent project, “We’ve just tried to find a
female composer – you can’t find a female composer.”
“If you pitch a project, knowing you’re going with
women, and pitch with a female writer, or pitch with a female director – if
this is what your vision is for the project, say you’re not going to change
that. [Someone says] a male writer will be better. No. No, I want a female
writer; I want that voice in the room.”
Davids also shared with delegates a story of how sometimes
it’s also women – not just men – bringing other women down.
She said it’s also important that women don’t just open the
door for other women but create and change a team to move things forward.
“If you’re out the door, that idea is out the door. If you’re trying to
change something, take a team with you and bring people with you so that that
vision remains when you’re gone.”
Vlokkie Gordon, owner and producer of Advantage
Entertainment, said, “I often say the hardest thing is your first three
no’s.”
About getting more women into the industry, Williams said,
“It can’t just be the producers thinking ‘I need a female DOP’, it needs
to be the broadcasters, it needs to be the government institutions, it needs to
be training platforms. We should all be intentional about filling up those
spaces or at least equalising and balancing them out. That’s a responsibility
we should all bear – it doesn’t just lay with AFDA or just the
broadcaster.”
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