BEV celebrates & supports international women filmmakers. The flagship BEV Film Festival runs at London's BFI Southbank and ICA, with exclusive previews, shorts, retrospectives, training and cutting-edge live performances.
Yes it is true that this year has been a great year for women directors. And yes the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director was Kathryn Bigelow earlier last month. But at the same time we know that since the recession there are less women working in the industry. And just to stress this point further….as Cannes Film Festival announce their line up for 2010, we see that there are in fact no women in the competition category. Although Agnes Kocsis represents women’s cinematic vision with Adrienn Pal in the category of Un Certain Regard, and two female directors appear in the Special Screenings category – Sophie Fiennes with Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow and Sabina Guzzanti with Draquila – L’Italia Che Trema, there are absolutely no women in competition. I was genuinely quite startled as I continued to check through the list of names, but mostly saddened that such a significant festival on the film calendar lacks diversity to such a degree. So many female directors have told BEV that they hope Kathryn Bigelows win represents something of a ‘watershed’ and yet this list suggests otherwise. Lucky that BEV is here eh?
BEV were lucky enough to get an exclusive interviewSusanna White, acclaimed director of multi award-winning series Bleak House, Jane Eyre and Generation Kill to name but a few. Most recently she made her first foray into feature film: Nanny McPhee And The Big Bang. We talked to her aboutthe film, her chameleon like ability to portray different Worlds in her work so successfully, her career to date and why she thinks she has only just directed her first feature film. Dubbed by many publications ‘the British Bigelow’ she also talks to us about the challenges of being a woman in a male dominated industry and encouragingly comments “hopefully we are at a watershed moment.”
Watch our interview below. Watch the Nanny McPhee And The Big Bang trailer here.
Photographer and video artist Shirin Neshat is one of the world’s most respected Iranian artists. Among her best known works are Women of Allah (1990), Turbulent (1998) and Rapture (1999). Neshat is based in New York and exhibits internationally. Following several short films, Women Without Men is Neshat’s first feature, and has already won a Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
We were lucky enough to catch her for a video interview at Artifical Eye‘s HQ when she was in London for the UK Premeiere of Women Without Men at the London Film Festival in October 2009. On the eve of the film’s opening screening which BEV are co-presenting at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival we though we would share it.
Birds Eye View are very happy to be screening Wanuri Kahiu’s award-winning From a Whisper as part of our festival. The film explores a family’s experience of the US Embassy bombing in Nairobi in 1998. Our Senior Programmer, Emily Seed, was lucky enough to catch up with Wanuri for a chat.
She did it! Kathryn Bigelow has made film history by becoming the first ever woman in all 82 years of the Oscars to win the Best Director Academy Award for her low-budget war drama The Hurt Locker. Filmmaking women across the world, including we BEV-vers, stood up and applauded her in front of our TVs at 5am this morning! Bigelow’s fellow nominees were her ex-husband James Cameron for Avatar, Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds, Jason Reitman for Up In The Air and Lee Daniels for Precious. Daniels would have been the first black director to have won this Oscar if his name had been in the envelope opened by Barbra Streisand (herself the first woman to win Best Director Golden Globe for Yentl in 1984), and we hope this happens soon, but this year is all Bigelow’s, and all yours!Read the full story
Our big festival First Weekenders Club film is stunning French drama The Father Of My Children, on release by Artificial Eye from Friday 5 March. Our Senior Programmer Emily Seed chatted to director Mia Hansen-Løve yesterday in London.
The award-winning The Father Of My Children is released tomorrow by Artificial Eye in cinemas around London and the UK.
Yes it is true that this year has been a great year for women directors. And yes the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director was Kathryn Bigelow earlier last month. But at the same time we know that since the recession there are less women working in the industry. And just to stress this point further….as Cannes Film Festival announce their line up for 2010, we see that there are in fact no women in the competition category. Although Agnes Kocsis represents women’s cinematic vision with Adrienn Pal in the category of Un Certain Regard, and two female directors appear in the Special Screenings category – Sophie Fiennes with Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow and Sabina Guzzanti with Draquila – L’Italia Che Trema, there are absolutely no women in competition. I was genuinely quite startled as I continued to check through the list of names, but mostly saddened that such a significant festival on the film calendar lacks diversity to such a degree. So many female directors have told BEV that they hope Kathryn Bigelows win represents something of a ‘watershed’ and yet this list suggests otherwise. Lucky that BEV is here eh?
