“If I may be so honored to have all the female nominees in every category stand with me in this room tonight. Meryl, if you do it, everybody else will”, said Frances McDormand during her acceptance speech at the 2018’ Oscar. And then, Meryl Streep stand up, with the other Oscar’s nominees. Only eleven women.
Have you ever heard about Alice Guy and Lois Weber? They marked the history of cinema. The first one, “only” directed the first spoken movie. The second, produced the first colored movie. And they were forgotten.
Cinema is about representation. The critical eye of society about a theme, even if it’s a fantasy look. Cinema should be about representation. Here comes the controversies: they can make movies about women and with female protagonism (like Wonder Woman), but the cinematography industry walks like a spiral. Eventually, the low tide.
Before, the movies were produced to target a defined audience: men. Nowadays, according to researches made by the Motion Pictures Association of America, the female public is 51% on the ticket office around United States. And, then, where are the films directed, produced and starred by us, women?
These movies exist. They are in the dreams and on the papers of every little girl that grows watching Marvel launches a new male super-hero movie. And they (the little girls) asked to themselves “why can’t I save the world too?”. They save, on their thoughts. But no one encourage them to keep working.
The movies stay at the draft book
Society is sexist, which is a fact. Because of that, we need the feminism to fight and give support to our ideas. For us, women. And, if we struggle together, the movies will take life.
“Look around everybody. Look around, ladies and gentlemen because we all have stories to tell and projects we need to be financed,” McDormand said. “Don’t talk to us about it at the parties tonight. Invite us into your office in a couple days or you can come to ours, whichever suits you best. And we will tell you all about them.”
In a survey, the Polygraph analyzed hundreds of Hollywood famous movies. Between the 2,000 films that were analyzed, 307 of them counts with 90% or more of male speech. In 1,206, the men space are large, varying between 60% and 90%. The equality occurs in only 314, in which female has more speech on 173 movies.
Image Source: Polygraph
The research also showed that are more men working on the cinematography industry than women. The biggest reason was the profitability that a movie written and directed by some guy had. The financial return was smallest on females’ movies. So, being a men is more successful. Is it really?
Image Source: Polygraph
NO. When we have strong roles, the repercussion is always worldwide. And this can’t go off on the next day. The more we talk about and watch movies at the cinema, at home, on TV, on Youtube or Netflix, the more the industry will realize that we have our place.
We are tired to be the girlfriend that supply male necessities. We want to be super-heroes, gangsters, business women, chiefs, executive, journalists, sportswoman, doctors or singers. We want to be what we want. We are going to be everything. And women.
In 2018, only 11 women were nominated by the Academy. Between them, the fifth female director on the history of Oscar, Greta Gerwig – but she didn’t make it.