Study finds women, people of color underrepresented at top film festivals
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E-mail Xinhua, January 26, 2020
Women and people of color are still underrepresented at top film festivals from 2017-2019 worldwide, said a new study released on Saturday.
The study titled "Inclusion at Film Festivals" released by the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the Time's Up Foundation overviewed the gender and race/ethnicity of directors, festival programmers and executives at top film festivals from 2017-2019 in the United States and abroad.
A total of 289 narrative competition movies were programmed across the 5 top films festivals, Berlin, Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Venice, from 2017-2019 with 303 directors attached. Overall, 25 percent of competition directors were women. This calculated into a gender ratio of 2.9 males to every one female, according to the study.
Focusing on directors that were not white, 35 percent of helmers were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. This is a ratio of 1.9 white directors to every one director of color.
The study said that the crossing of gender and underrepresented racial/ethnic status revealed an all too common story. Around 47 percent of all narrative competition directors were white males followed by 27 percent who were underrepresented males. White female directors were roughly a sixth of all helmers (17 percent) and women of color were only 8 percent.
The study also assessed the gender and underrepresented status of the festivals' top executives including president, head, director or artistic director and found that the five festivals were run by 7 males and 3 females. Only 1 of the 10 executives were from an underrepresented racial group.
Turning to top programmers or selection committees, the study suggested that a full 47 percent were female and 53 percent were male as of 2019 across the 5 top film festivals. Only 21 percent of programmers were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups across these prestigious distribution platforms. Overall, only 7 percent of programmers were men of color and 14 percent were women of color.
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