When people speak of the Female Gaze they very often refer to women directors. I find this a bit strange as my first association with gaze would be the camera. This often neglected team position – director of photography – should be regarded as part of a creative triumvirate, alongside the director and writer/s. More so than the producers. But strangely enough, often only the director, writer and producer will be included. There is a type of film we casually call “Bügelfilme” in German (and I don‘t know the English expression for that. It‘s films that don‘t need to be seen in order to be understood, so you can do your ironing while you listen to the dialogue and the music, which will tell you everything that you need to know. If there is an English expression for these types of films, please tell me in the comments section, tnx.). So aside from these Bügelfilme, the vast majority of films will be characterized by their visual side and thus by the camera department quite considerably. Who is with me on this? The ARD (German public broadcaster / channel one)! On their TATORT pages (CRIME SCENE, the German top cop drama, 90 min. films on most Sunday nights) they name the TRIUMVIRAT and the composer – in the same ordcer as in the end titles of a film: music / composer, DoP, writer, director. The German TV awards Grimme-Preis list the author, director, DoP and head of sound for the nominated films.
We see this phenomenon internationally as well. There are these really remarkable, profound statistics from the British Film Institue BFI for roughly 200 UK films per [Weiterlesen – Read On]
28. November 2017
by SchspIN Comments Off on Was Hänschen lernt… – Teach an Old Dog Tricks!
Es gibt ein altes Sprichwort „Was Hänschen nicht lernt, lernt Hans nimmermehr.“ Nun können wir natürlich darüber sprechen, wie viel schwieriger es ist, eine Fremdsprache im Alter zu erlernen, das Spielen eines Musikinstruments oder die Grundbegriffe der Glazialmorphologie. Wir können aber auch einfach sagen, ,Ja, mag sein, aber auch Erwachsene können noch viel Neues dazulernen‘.
Nehmen wir als Beispiel Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), der 1797 im Alter von 39 Jahren Admiral wurde und dem einige Monate später, beim Angriff auf Santa Cruz de Tenerife, nach einer Schussverletzung der rechte Arm amputiert wurde. Er war Rechtshänder, und lernte danach mit der linken Hand zu schreiben. Nach einiger Zeit war seine neu erlernte linke Handschrift nicht mehr von der ursprünglichen rechten Handschrift zu unterscheiden (nach Stephen Kurdsen: „Reading Character From Handwriting“). Sagen wir also, dass wir unser Leben lang lernen können, und unser Leben lang beeindruckbar und beeinflussbar bleiben können. Im Guten wie im Schlechten. Und dass nichts für die Ewigkeit ist. Im Schlechten wie im Guten.
Was Hänschen nicht gelernt hat, kann Hans ja nachholen
Dass Film und Fernsehen unsere Sicht und unser Denken beeinflussen können ist bekannt, das gleiche gilt auch für Bücher, z.B. jene, mit denen wir in der Schule oder als Erwachsene lernen. Für den heutigen Text habe ich ein paar Erwachsenensprachbücher durch die rosa–blau–grüne NEROPA-Brille betrachtet.
Im ersten Beispiel geht es um das Thema Arbeit und Berufe im Englischunterricht für Erwachsene (Reihe Refresh Now, Klettverlag. Zusatzmaterial). NEROPA fragt: für welchen Beruf ist das Geschlecht wichtig? Spontan fallen mir Henker, Papst, Ayatollah und Hebamme ein, aber diese Berufe sind nicht abgebildet. Sondern:
Every now then I get asked if script writers can also work with the casting method NEROPA to modify the striking gender imbalance between female and male roles on television. The clear answer to that is “not really“ and “yes of course“ at the same time, and that is something I will talk about today.
Ideally the NEROPA check is performed by three individuals. Six eyes won‘t read thesame way , three brains will tick differently and people will have had different experiences in their lives. So the 3 will most probably find differing neutral roles in the investigated script, i.e. roles whose gender is not essentioal to the plot. Then the three will talk and agree upon a final list of neutral characteres (see also NEROPA-Check).
“not really“
A script – at least as long as it hasn‘t been altered by order of commissioning editors or others – represents the author‘s intention, it presents characters exactly in a way the authors meant them to be, they do and say exactly what the authors want them to do or say. If the authors were to nerope* their scripts they most probably end up with zero neutral roles as they were all intended to be who they are. Just ask a child about their soft toy: “Ah, so he‘s called Berti Bear. But couldn‘t it also be Berta Bear or Brownie Bear?“ No of course not. Everyone can see it‘s Berti Bear. (Actually I can‘t, but that‘s just the point. Stuffed animals‘ gender is in the eyes of the beholder. Or rather keeper.)
I imagine the characters in a script are like the stuffed animals of a writer, they have been playing / occupied with them for weeks, months or even years. They know them inside out, they know who they are and why they even are in the story in the first place. So the chances that an author will say „yes of course, these four or ten roles can be neutral“ (or worse “sure, they can be deleted“) are pretty dim.
“yes, of course!“ Now the author could go about getting a couple of other persons, have them use NEROPA on the script and then discuss the neutral findings among the three of them. But that does not really [Weiterlesen – Read On]
On Oct. 5 the New York Times published the article “Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades“ by Judi Kantor and Megan Twobei. Since then more women, actresses, models and also employees and journalists came out and spoke about sexual harassment, intimidations and even about rape. It is obvious that anyone accused remains innocent until tried by a court of law, but in this case the accusations are overwhelming – quite contrary to the common situations where it‘s testimony against testimony and an offense or criminal act can‘t be proven. There have been discussion about how it could have been possible for Harvey Weinstein to act unnoticed and undisturbed for decades the way he did, but it soon became clear that the way he treated numerous young actresses at the beginning of their careers was an open secret.
In the meantime, Weinstein has been fired from the Weinstein Company, from AMPAS Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, from the BFI British Film Institute, and a statement was issued by the International Film Festival of Cannes.
Some reports also mentioned other cases of sexual abuse, US actor Bill Cosby, Fox news reporter Bill O‘Reilly, Roy Price, head of amazon video department as well as US president Donald Trump. All in the USA, far away.
German media have also been covering the Weinstein scandal, some mentioning the social context as for example Julian Dörr did in the Süddeutsche (a German newspaper) from 14.10. in his German article „If you want to prevent abuse you can‘t ridicule Feminism” (more articles to be found in the Additional Reading section).
What I found quite surprising though is [Weiterlesen – Read On]
13. October 2017
by SchspIN Comments Off on Was wir hören sehen wir? – What we hear is what we see?
Heute geht es um Sprache, Onlinerecherche und Onlineübersetzungen sowie eine Auto-und-Fahrrad-Metapher.
Sprache, Bewusstsein und Veränderung
Sprache verändert sich, seit es Sprache gibt. Sprachempfinden und -verständnis sind subjektiv, wie sicher alle bestätigen werden, die schon einmal „ich hab doch nur gesagt..“ „ja, aber gemeint hast du / das klang total nach..“-Diskussionen mitbekommen haben. Neue Wörter finden den Weg in den Duden, und neue Formen werden ausprobiert, um neuen Anforderungen an Sprache zu begegnen. Mit den Wechselwirkungen von Sprache, Denken und Bewusstsein will ich hier gar nicht erst anfangen. Was früher normal war ist heute passé. Frauen sowohl mit dem Nach- als auch dem Vornamen ihres Mannes anzusprechen (z.B. Frau Joachim Sauer) ist hochgradig unüblich, und auch die stillschweigende Übereinkunft, dass sich alle Frauen von männlichen Begriffen mitgemeint zu fühlen haben, hat ihre Allgemeingültigkeit verloren.
Natürlich gibt es immer noch Frauen, die von sich als Schauspieler oder Frisör oder gar Einzelhandelskaufmann sprechen. Und es gibt weiter Texte, die mit dem Satz „der besseren Lesbarkeit halber verwenden wir in diesem Text nur die männlichen Form“ beginnen. Aber zum Glück setzt sich immer mehr durch, von Frauen und Männern, also z.B. von Leserinnen und Lesern, Wählerinnen und Wählern, Nachbarinnen und Nachbarn zu sprechen, mit in der Schriftsprache den Lesefluss nicht störenden Zeichen wie /, _ und * zu arbeiten (Leser/innen, Wähler_innen, Nachbar*innen) -bzw. die grammatikalischen Möglichkeiten der deutschen Sprache zu nutzen und „der Antragsteller“ zum Beispiel durch „wer einen Antrag stellt“ oder „der Antrag wird gestellt von“ zu [Weiterlesen – Read On]
18. September 2017
by SchspIN Comments Off on Film Professions in Germany 2017
In 2014 I wrote about 32 teampositions behind the cam era for German film productions and 2 positions in front of the camera, analyzing information from the database of Crew United (Filmcrafts: Some with Women, Some with Men?). The text I‘ve finally completed today – literally after months – is an update with data from 2017, both for the team positions and the actresses and actors (including an age analysis – for which I used data from Filmmakers and the federal agency ZAV Künstlervermittlung).
Reference Values
35 Film Jobs
Training
Acting
Population
Final Thought
Reference Values for Statistical Film Analyses
For past evaluations of groups of films, (e.g. the German Top 100 Films, TATORTE / Crime Scenes- TV movies, TV movie of the week, nominations for film awards) I‘ve used two points of reference aside from the 50 % threshold: the share of women in professional associations and that for the division in the data base of Crew United. In most cases / film groups these values were not reached, as the following graph demonstrates. It depicts the shares of women for seven team positions for the Top 100 German films 2012 to 16:
Women are underrepresented in each case. This is – perhaps surprisingly? – not only the case for those professions that have a low share of women, men are hired disproportionately for divisions like costume design (91 %) or casting (87 %) as well. I wrote about this three years ago, now it‘s time for an update. Vincent Lutz of Crew United in Munich kindly sent me the absolute figures of women and men in 34 film jobs.
34 Departments
In the next gallery you can see the percentage of women and men in all 34 jobs for 2014 and for 2017, and then the female percentage for the jobs arranged in 6 groups (Logistics, Idea, Image, Look, Tuning and Acts). There, the massive columns are for 2017, and the striped for 2014:
It is not possible to say if the differences between 2014 and 2017 are trends or not. However, we see the ratio between men and women in the different divisions. Unfortunately, due to the lack of age data, it is difficult to talk about career starters and leavers, and if the numbers are different for the sexes. We can only have a look at filmschools to find out something about the numbers for and ratio between women and men starting in a film job.
Training
It is not so easy to get reliable figures on training for film professions. Luckily enough, two studies were published in February by the FFA German Federal Filmboard (Gender and Film and Gender and TV Movies, both in German) that provide some figures for the training for seven professions. Every year, roughly 250 people graduate from the film schools and film universites, 60 to 70 of them as directors. The next table contrasts them with the corresponding figures from the Crew United database, which are remarkably lower:
In “Gender and TV movie – a study by the University of Rostock and the Fraunhofer Institute, commissioned by the TV networks ARD and ZDF“ the figures are commented on in the following way (accentuations by me):
If you compare today‘s situation of the film industry with the the figures of the students that graduated 15 to 20 years ago,and who could be firmly settled in their professional lives, it becomes apparent that the numbers of alumni and of those studying today hardly differ. Both then and today there are predominantly men in the sound and camera departments. The share of women in directing and of the directing alumni is about 44 %. It‘s similar for production design. On the other hand there are more women studying to become producers today, and less for editing, 15 to 20 years ago their share was 82 %, but today it‘s only 51 %. (source).
On the other hand, the share of men woring in the film industry is higher than their share of students and alumni. As far as editing is concerned, editor Sabine Brose explains this through the digitalisation in this job which made it more attractive to men. And what about all the other film professions and jobs that are not on this list? How many people start every year? What about independent film schools, and film makers without any formal training or those that change their profession within the industry? Take actors- or actresses-turned directors as an example, they usually do this without studying at any film school. By the way, is that something that actors tend to do more than actresses? Well, that‘s a topic for another day.
Here in Germany and of course in other countries as well, a lot is being talked about directors – not in the least because of the activism of Pro Quote Regie, a group of female directors, and the 42 – 44 % figure is widely know as the share of women among film school graduates for directing. It‘s also widely known that the share of female directors for film and television productions as well as for federal funding is much lower. This training-working-gap is something to be found for other film professions – behind and in front of the camera – as well.
It’s useful to have data on the age distribution in film industry‘s workforce, and on their children etc. to start discussing if more women are trained today than 20 years ago or if women leave the industry when they start a family (also read: Cinema, Career, Children: Can the Film Industry be called a family-friendly Workplace?)
Acting
It is often said that in the acting profession there is the same 1:1 women-men-balance as in society. This idea is supported by the following table which shows the share of women and men for the data base of Filmmakers (a German casting data base) and for the film actresses and actors in the federal agency ZAV.
This is only half true though, since we encounter a similar phenomenon as in those film professions that were investigated by the FFA, directing, DoP, sound etc. The share of women among acting beginners is higher than that among all acting professionals. To back this up let‘s not have a look at acting schools, because tend to assemble their classes in a 2:1 ratio similar to that at German theatres – not only classical but also many modern plays have a vast majority of male roles. On top of this a lot of actresses and actors start with different backgrounds, some went to acting school (run by the state or privately), some had no training at all, others come from music TV, others were discovered in the streets. So it makes more sense to look at certain age groups to define the acting starters. In the Filmmakers database I took those between 24 and 27, and in the ZAV file – which is grouped in 5 year slots – I took the 22- to 25-year-olds and the 22- to 30-year-olds. This table paints a very different picture:
The share of women in the beginning years is much higher than the total average, the difference between 7,3 to 11,5 percentage points. And when we compare individual years we get the actual state of things. For those who are 30 the share of women is 58,5 %, but for the 55 year olds it‘s only 36,8 %. The next figures show the absolute figures for actresses (light blue) and actors (pink) according to their years of birth (left, source Filmmakers) and in sum for 5 year groups (right figure, source ZAV). What is quite remarkable are the male age groups from 1990 (who were 26 years old on Jan 1, 17) to 1963 (53 yrs) stay on a similar plateau of roughly 250 actors per year. The female age groups have their first decline for 1977 (39 yrs), this is were the colums fall below 300 actresses for the first time, and from 1971 (45 yrs) the drop below 250, and for 1968 (48 yrs) below 200 for the first time. When we look at the 5-year groups the decline at 40 is even more distinct:
In 2017, the average age of actresses was 35,5 years and of actors it was 40,8 years, in 2013 the figures wee 38,9 and 43,4 (own calculations from Filmmakers data. We can‘t call this a trend though as it is only comparing two years).
The next gallery pictures this in greater detail, we see the Filmakers data für 2017 and 2013 in 5-year-groups for women and men, together and separately. Again we see the drop at 40 years for actresses and the wide plateau for the actors (click to enlarge the images).
Parenthesis The other night, at the monthly meeting of the Berlin BFFS members (that‘s the acting union) a well-known casting director said that there were far more actresses than actors, stating that whenever she was searching for the right one in an age group there would be more women than men in the data base. One of the BFFS representatives contested this saying that the gender situation in acting was perfectly balanced.
To a certain extent and in their own worlds both of them were right. The BFFS roughly has the same number of female and male members, because apparently so far the union is not quite as attractive for actresses. And we can assume that the casting director probably had to mostly cast roles under 40, as that is where a female majority can be found.
We can assume that more women than men take up acting as a profession and that many of those women leave it halfway through their working life, around 40. Why? Because there is not enough work for them? For private / family reasons? Do actresses who are mothers have their children in their late 30s and then quit acting for good? This certainly is not normal among working women in Germany as we can see when we take a look at some other statistics.
Germany’s (Working) Population
The German population consists of 41.4 M women and 39.8 M men (source Statistisches Bundesamt / Federal Office for Statistics), the average age is 44 years and 3 months. The next figure shows a sort of balance, both gender curves run more or less parallel. Up to the 56 to 60-year-olds with a slight male, after that with a female majority. We can also distinguish the Baby Boomer Generation, in this case the 46 to 55-year-olds.
If we group the population by age and gender we see in 2015, that the 40 to 50 and the 50 to 60 year olds are the most dominant groups quantitatively. These are the Baby Boomer Generations from post-war years and the boom time of the “Wirtschaftswunderzeit“ (economic miracle), who have reached the higher end of their working year and who are going to transition to retirement in a few years.
We also see the aging of the Baby Boomers when we look at the average age of employees: currently it is roughly 43 years (43.4 for men, 43.3 for women). This is much higher than the average 25 years ago, when it was 39.4 for men and 37.9 for women (source 27.6.17).
Back to the “40 year abyss“ for actresses. Does employment of women outside the film industry also decrease or even cease quite as drastically? Would that be for structural reasons, connected to the division of responsibilities among couples as recards children or elderly dependents? No, quite the contrary! Even though less women than men go to work, the curves for female and male employees are nearly parallel, both have a slight decline in the group of the 36 to 40-year-olds which is constantly reversed in the following ten years. – this is the opposite of the working situation for actresses.
Final Thought
Of course we need to talk about the compatibility of work and family in the film industry and to improve the conditions for working parents. But we cannot assume that it is for personal, family biographies if female directors, DoP‘s, authors and actresses are hired less and leave the industry. Women in film are at a disadvantage, and the situation won‘t get better by itself.
3. September 2017
by SchspIN Comments Off on Brown People Matter
South Asia and a German Film – Brown People Matter
Today‘s text is about the media coverage of the floods in USA and South Asia, the German film MONSOON BABY, fake news and two projects – one dance and one documentary – that are being crowdfunded at the moment.
Floods
2. Sept. 17
It is Saturday morning, I turn on the radio and listen to a feature on Texas / USA, the effects of tropical hurricane „Harvey“, floodings, destroyed houses, nearly 60 dead, evacuated people, individual fates in short interviews.
At the full hour there‘s the news, again featuring Texas, and twenty minutes later the next report on it, this time announcing that US president Donald Trump will visit the disaster area again.
The media in Germany started reporting on the disaster even bevor the hurricane reached Texas and have been doing so since then, daily, sometimes every hour and more.
It took much longer for the media to pick up on the floodings in South Asia. In India, but also in Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan this year‘s monsoon caused extreme floodings, more than 1,500 people did in the last three weeks (different sources mention figures between 1,300 and 2,100 dead), it ruined harvests, and is leading to hunger and diseases.
But news are sparse, in Germany and also in other countries, daily extensive background information, donation appeals (e.g. in public TV and radio) are missing.
It is evident that I don‘t want to play down the sufferings of the people in Texas. But just listening to the figures of those who died there and there makes me catch my breath. From Texas we more or less heard daily updates concerning the numbers, 30, 32, 35, 41, 47, 50, 55, 57 dead; the figures for South Asia are estimations, rounded numbers. But not 30, 50 or 100 persons, but more than 1,000, maybe 1,500 or 1,700 people, who drowned or were buried in landslides or killed by electric shocks. 45 M people, 16 M of these being children, are directly affected by this disaster.
Fill the Gaps!
A lot of people keep saying „yes, but the USA are closer to us“ – maybe, yes. When I look Continue Reading →
26. July 2017
by SchspIN Comments Off on 2 Interviews
Letzte Woche wurde ich gleich zweimal interviewt: / Last week I was interviewed twice:
Cecilia Johnson-Ferguson vom EWAWOMEN Netzwerk befragte mich (auf Englisch) zu meinem Besetzungstool NEROPA, und Yvonne de Andrés vom Aviva Berlin Online Magazin sprach mit mir (auf Deutsch) anlässlich der Vorstellung der von Maria Furtwänglerin initiierten Studie «Audiovisuelle Diversität?» der Universität Rostock. Cecilia Johnson-Ferguson of EWAWOMEN Netzwerk interviewed me (in English) on my casting-tool NEROPA, and Yvonne de Andrés of Aviva Berlin Online Magazine spoke to me (in German) after the presentation of a summary of the study «Audiovisual Diversity?» of the University of Rostock, which had been initiated by German actress Maria Furtwängler.
Cecilia Johnson-Ferguson: Neropa, an innovative tool to counterbalance the unequal gender distribution of film characters
One of our active members, Belinde Ruth Stieve, has developed an innovative tool to counterbalance the unequal gender distribution of film characters in the audiovisual industry. Belinde is a German actress from Hamburg, who started researching the situation of women behind and in front of the camera four years ago. We have asked [Weiterlesen – Read On]
Heute geht es um die Besetzung des Social Spots A MESSAGE FROM THE FUTURE, den Molle&KornMoving Images for Social Change für die im Jahr 2000 gegründete Stiftung EVZErinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft produziert haben. Und um neutrale Rollen.
Wer weiß, was die Zukunft bringt
Vor kurzem wurde die NEROPA-Seite einem Relaunch unterzogen, auf der entsprechenden Unterseite heißt es nun zum vierten Fallbeispiel:
Noch gibt es diese Drehbücher vermutlich nicht, aber wer weiß, was die Zukunft bringt, und einen Versuch ist es allemale wert. Die Figuren werden zunächst als Charaktere mit bestimmten Eigenschaften definiert. Für jede Rolle dann nach der passenden Besetzung gesucht, Geschlecht ist zweitrangig. (…) Gerade das Science Fiction Genre könnte diese Freiheit bieten, eine Zukunft jenseits der binären Geschlechterrollen oder Männerdominanz in entscheidenden Funktionen ist auch ohne viel Fantasie vorstellbar.
Als ich diesen Mai das Besetzungstool NEROPA auf der internationalen WFTV UK Making a Difference Conference vorstellte ahnte ich noch nicht, wie schnell diese Zukunftsvision Realität werden könnte.
Casting für einen Social Spot
Jedoch, wie das Leben so spielt, kaum war ich aus London zurück, wurde ich von Molle&Korn (Berlin) zu einem Casting für den eingangs genannten Social Spot eingeladen – und zwar für die Hauptrolle Dr. Rellüm. Im Skript war das Geschlecht von Dr. Rellüm undefiniert, es hieß ein/e Archäologe/Archäologin, bzw. sie/er.
Ich bin der Einladung sehr gerne gefolgt, zum einen natürlich aus inhaltlichen Gründen (siehe DIE LEITGEDANKEN DER STIFTUNG EVZ), aber auch, weil mir die Arbeit von Molle&Korn sehr gut gefällt, und [Weiterlesen – Read On]
22. May 2017
by SchspIN Comments Off on I did it! – Geschafft!
In the air. May 14, 2017 Today‘s text is about achieved and not achieved targets, it‘s about Riga, an international conference of female filmmakers in London and NEROPA.
Pursue your Goals – We’re Running Up That Hill
Three years ago next month I started running, and if you‘ve been following my blog for a while you might have read the occasional text on this topic (Write a Blog and Ride a Porsche, Running – Twelve Weeks Later…., Blimey, this is so German…). Today you will get an update. I‘ve continued running, I‘ve continued participating in running events, mostly over my favourite long distance, the 5.000 metres, but occasionally also over 10 k. Last September I heard of the marathon weekend in Riga, a runners‘ meeting with not only the marathon distance but also half marathon, 10 and 6 k plus a race for kids. Riga, former cultural capital of Europe is a beautiful town, I was there last year for a commercial shoot and was very happy about spending a couple of days there. I had also thrown a coin into the Daugava, which is the local river, and that will ensure that you are coming back one day. ^So I registered for a run in Riga in December, and indredibly enough I chose the half marathon (!) – with the option of downgrading to 10 k until a month before the race if my preparations don‘t go as planned. However, a bit carelessly I mentioned my registration in a half-public interview in January that was filmed, so now quite a few people knew of my plans, so obviously it was sort of mandatory to actually have a go at the distance. Because it would be a bit weird to react to questions like .“How did your half marathon go?“ by saying “Alright, I even managed to finish it in 10.000 m.“.
So I started on a 9 week preparatory training programme (a bit late though, with only six weeks remaining), and I set myself the following goals, in this order:Continue Reading →
