TUESDAY 20 MAY 2003

MS JANE CUSSONS, MS SARAH CURTIS, MS SALLY HIBBIN, MS BARBARA BENEDEK AND MS JOY CHAMBERLAIN

  Q360  Mr Bryant: That is true in the theatre as well. There is Katie Mitchell, but there are not all that many, are there?

  Ms Curtis: No, there are not.

  Q361  Mr Bryant: Interestingly, one of the things you are saying is about directors being the key but the other is the writers because if you have not got women writers producing women parts it is a vicious circle. There are lots of women writing novels.

  Ms Cussons: Yes there are, absolutely.

  Q362  Mr Bryant: I know this is a sitting down profession, but I think we are accepting it is an important sitting down job. Why are women not writing for film?

  Ms Benedek: I chair the jury of the Film Council screen writing award for the women in film and television awards and the head of development and a number of directors were astonished that our long list was our shortlist and we sat around talking about why this was and how we could help it and we are now beginning to work with the Film Council on ways of encouraging women into writing, but we did not know the answer.

  Ms Cussons: I did go to see the Film Council last week about this very issue and we sat there and we were discussing why and what the reason is, I am trying to persuade the Film Council and I would like to see them do something in this area to try and encourage more female script writers and we came up with the fact that perhaps we could do some small scheme which is open just to women script writers. They had to admit that the majority of the scripts that they get in were written by men.

  Ms Hibbin: I think it is also to do with the mystification of work. In the same way that all the talk about camera lenses and what stops is all very mystified, there is also something about writing with people like Robert Key and all those people who talk about the art of script-writing which is a mystification process and when you are writing a novel you sit down and write your own, but when you write a script there is this body of stuff that people cite such as incidents after the 13th minute or whatever it is that people think you have to abide by. It seems to me script-writing has exactly that same mystification as you get in the more technical grades.

  Ms Curtis: And yet it is my view that for those companies in receipt of the Film Council development funding that ought to come with a little postscript saying ". . . and you will commission one screenplay a year from a female writer as part of the deal" because those deals which the companies get are a fantastic bonus for those companies and there is absolutely no reason why they should not have to work a little bit harder and go out and look for those female screen writers and maybe take a bit of a risk, but it is only going to be one project out of four or five that they fund each year and it will be worth doing. I am a great supporter of a little bit of positive discrimination from time to time.

  Q363  Mr Bryant: I am sorry that the Committee today is solely male, but our female colleagues had to present their apologies.

  Ms Hibbin: Barbara talked about gender being a disappearing subject, it is like a box that we have already ticked and we have done that, passed that, it is out of sight. You are aware that the Government appointed film board of the Film Council has only one woman on it.

  Q364  Derek Wyatt: I would like you to be less timid about fighting for what seems to me not an unreasonable request. Forgive me, I have had a marketing background in media, but surely a deal with Marie Claire and the British Film Council and I do not know who the other people ought to be in that stakeholding pattern—This is public money and we should encourage women to be proactive. It is not good enough, I think you are too timid, although it is probably because you are realistic as well.

  Ms Hibbin: It could be that we are sitting here and we are less timid ourselves.

  Q365  Derek Wyatt: The Committee might reflect on it when we come to our report, but that would be my view.

  Ms Cussons: It would be good certainly to see more women in the boardroom and the Film Council would be a very good start and to see that there is sufficient balance in the Ofcom committee.

  Ms Benedek: A word that does not get used very often these days is affirmative action. We held a session of the London Film Festival last autumn where a number of directors and teachers of directing spoke, and I noticed that again in Andrea Calderwood's evidence to you she said that she benefited from a programme targeted directly at women in Glasgow. All of the directors there, Sally Potter, Carinne Adler and Lizzie Francke (she is not a director, she is a producer), benefited from a programme targeted at helping women and we suggest that this should not be an old fashioned term.

  Q366  Derek Wyatt: We cannot just keep having Catherine Cookson and Wilber Smith in W H Smith, there must be something else out there. Twenty years ago they were approached because they are the distributer for about 70% of all books in the UK and they had the writer of the year and those first books and first novels have brought massive new writers to the screen.

  Ms Cussons: We have just started a scheme. I went to UIP and said that we had to do something about directors, so we have.

  Q367  Derek Wyatt: It should be the Film Council's role, should it not?

  Ms Cussons: Yes, it should be, but it was not, no. We now have up and running the first round of applications for a scheme called Directing Change which will give two women per year placements with top feature film directors, major commercial features and that is being funded by UIP thanks to Stewart Till. We find it increasingly difficult to get any level of sponsorship and funding for anything. We have just lost a major sponsor.

  Q368  Chairman: Is there a difference in the opportunities given for women in film compared with TV? I made a film for the BBC last year and the executive producer was a woman and the director/camera operator was a woman and there was somebody overseeing both of those as well. Are opportunities easier for women in television simply because it is not such a vying world as film is?

  Ms Curtis: I think it is a more similar environment. If you are not producing through an independent company, maybe you are working directly for the BBC or one of the ITV companies, it is a much much more stable environment, you can predict your work patterns and you are supported a lot more, whereas the feature industry is a ferociously freelance industry and what happens with women who cannot throw themselves 100% into it at any moment in their lives is they become more and more freelance. They are reduced to taking jobs on a day by day basis because without the back up of the childcare they cannot commit to a long film and that has its own knock-on effect because they never get the prestige jobs, they never get the big films because they cannot say I am going to go away for six weeks to film in France, they just cannot do that unless they have the support. They may be still working in a piecemeal way, they may be doing what they are very good at and doing it well, but they are not getting on to the films that would give them profile and awards and might lead to more women entering the industry.

  Ms Hibbin: I think television still has some remnants of public service ethic about it which does encourage those kinds of entry level and upwards. Film has become a very market orientated world and I think a very cut throat world which makes it very hard for women particularly with children. You talk about four weeks, but I have been away from home since last October, it is sort of a level of madness and for long periods of that you are working 12 hours a day. That just is not possible if you have children or if you want to have a relationship with your children.

  Q369  Chairman: Is it catch-22, ie you cannot get the opportunities if you have not got the CV and you cannot get the CV without the opportunities?

  Ms Chamberlain: I think so. I think it is also to do with the vast amounts of money that are involved in film, people are very loathe to take a risk. It is my feeling that women are seen as a risk.

  Ms Cussons: Particularly in areas like directing or script writing where because there are few of them they are a less accepted people that you would be prepared to take a risk with. There are a few A-list directors that you would take a risk with, but a new and untried woman is considered much more risky, so they will play safe. If you are looking after $20 million then of course you are more likely to play safe and go for a director who is known and experienced and that is far more likely to be a man.

  Ms Curtis: At this stage, yes.

  Ms Cussons: After our scheme I will come and talk to you again.

  Q370  Chairman: It does seem to be at that particular point. It is like classical music and the very small number of women conductors possibly for comparable reasons. Barbara Benedek, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?

  Ms Benedek: Not in the slightest.

  Q371  Chairman: Yours is a very unusual name. Do you have any connection with the director La«szlo«?

  Ms Benedek: I do, I am his daughter.

  Chairman: Wonderful.

  Mr Bryant: And that is not relevant, it is not about the British film industry.

  Q372  Chairman: No, but it is about one of the finest, most remarkable breakthrough films ever made, The Wild One.

  Ms Benedek: I am impressed with your knowledge of his films.

  Chairman: Thank you very much.

Ms Cussons: Thank you.