“At least for the main competition, we have achieved almost complete parity without having to modify our selection criteria and these [female-directed] films have been positively welcomed. This goes to show that Venice doesn’t have any kind of bias,” said the Venice Film Festival’s artistic director Alberto Barbera at a seminar on gender equality and inclusivity earlier this week at the festival.; her film premieres Friday.
Anna Laura Orrico, under secretary of state in the Italian Ministry of Culture and Tourism, pondered the way society creates such a divide early on. “Even today, girls and boys are educated differently. We see girls playing with dolls and boys with cars, girls told to pursue humanistic studies and boys to pursue science, even though the first person to write a mathematics textbook in Italy was a woman [Maria Gaetana Agnesi].
Connecting via Zoom, Susan Newman-Baudais, project manager at European film funder Eurimages, said that while more female directors are applying for support, progress remains to be made. “These figures are not rising fast enough to allow Eurimages to reach its strategic goal of allocating 50% of funding to projects led by women,” she said, also mentioning annual scholarships awarded to female directors.
Adriano De Santis of Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Italy’s National School of Cinema, and Paola Sangiovanni of Scuola d’Arte Cinematografica Gian Maria Volonté discussed film school practices. “Things are changing,” said De Santis, focusing on his school’s departments, including sound, which used to be all-male. He also suggested that in the future, the role of a director wouldn’t be as important.