About Us
Birds Eye View celebrates and supports international women filmmakers. Founded as a positive response to the fact that women make up less than 10% film directors and less than 15% screenwriters, BEV demonstrates that until we have a balanced perspective on our screens, we are missing half the picture.
Through our annual festival we celebrate the outstanding contribution of women directors to cinema, entertaining audiences with the rich diversity of women’s creative vision. Through our talent labs, we nurture new female writing talent and bring feature films with a fresh perspective into development.
A Brief History
Birds Eye View was founded as a short film event in 2002 by Rachel Millward and Pinny Grylls. In November 2003 Rachel took this shorts event on a tour to ten UK cities, with guest speakers including Juliet Stevenson, Meera Syal and Sophie Fiennes, attracting publicity in Elle, i-D, Dazed, Harpers Bazaar and the Guardian. By March 2005, she had launched the UK's first major festival of women filmmakers at the BFI Southbank, ICA and Curzon cinemas. Since then Birds Eye View has grown into a festival with a global profile, run three specialised training labs which have between them brought six commercial feature films into development with partner production companies, commissioned over 15 original live scores to silent films and continued to put the spotlight on the lack of women filmmakers throughout the year.
"If this is what being a bird is, I’m proud to be one"
Joanna Lumley, BEV Patron