European Coordination of Film Festivals E.E.I.G.

News and Events Mai 2006: Fusion of German Women Film Festivals femme totale and Feminale has been completed International Women’s Film Festival Dortmund | Cologne: This new festival was relaunched in 2006, the result of a merger between the separate women's film festivals of femme totale in Dortmund and Feminale in Cologne (both originally set up in the 1980s). The merger of the two festivals has seen a remarkable pooling of energies so that the only women's film festival in Germany – with over twenty years of experience – has now come into being. It will be held every year, alternating between the two cities of Cologne and Dortmund. The aim of the new Dortmund | Cologne Women's Film Festival is to promote the work of women in all branches of international film production. As such, the festival acts as a platform for (younger) women film-makers, composers and camera technicians, and provides a unique opportunity to exchange information, share experience and reflect on one's work. The range of subjects addressed by workshops and seminars is being expanded, and work is pushing ahead with the networking of national and international women's film associations and activities. Yet in addition to being forum for international experts, the festival is also a showcase and cinema for the general public. The first Cologne edition of the revamped festival will take place from 11 to 15 October 2006 The first Dortmund edition of the joint festival will take place from 17 – 22 April 2007 November 2005: Foundation of the Women’s Film Comission Argentina Dozens of Women Film Directors started working in Argentina Film Industry during the last years. But till now, they had not managed to have any representation in the guilds and unions that take part in the design of film policies in their country. In November 2005, a landmark was established by the directors guild of Argentina (DAC), creating its Women’s Film Commission. Contact: Silvana Jarmoluk Publication: History and Situation of Women’s Film Festivals Today Lecture by Silvia Hallensleben, (2004) NEW: German Woman Directors Guide Online Biografies, films, training and addresses of 140 female directors working in Germany: fiction, documentary, experimental, soap-operas, docu-soap, crime: Also available: Print version: 296 pages, german, 5 Euro Contact: femme totale - International Women's Film Festival Dortmund, Germany ***************************************************** History and Situation of Women’s Film Festivals Today The following lecture was given by Silvia Hallensleben, a german film journalist, at the meeting of the Working Group “Women and Film in Europe” during the 26th edition of Festival de Films des Femmes at Créteil/France in March 2004. I was invited here to talk about the „history and situation of women’s film festivals today“. This sounds very general and it seems also, as if most of you involved in many years of continual festival work would be much more familiar with it and know a lot more about it than me. Of course, as you know, sometimes it makes sense to get an outsiders point of view. This doesn’t mean I consider myself an outsider. As I told you yesterday, I work as a film journalist and a „some time“ film programmer with a feminist group of film programmers called “Blickpilotin” in Berlin. In 1997 we organised an meeting and a film show of five European women film festivals in Berlin, where we tried to confront the present situation of the festivals with the issues of the First International Frauen Film Seminar 1973 in Berlin and the beginnings of feminist film theory. So, my approach to women film festivals is that of an festival visitor and engaged observer. To be more specific, my practical insight in the situation of women film festivals in Europe feeds itself mainly from many years attending the two German women film festivals in Cologne and Dortmund as a reviewer. It is obvious that it would be very short-sighted to generalise this experience - or any other - as each festival is very different in history, concept and orientation. Some have a lifetime of history behind them, some have not even been founded. Some are separatist, others have a all-male jury like the festival in Minsk which unfortunately is not represented here. Some are in big trouble or have disappeared during the last years, like Nordic Glory in Jyväskylä in Finland. So, rather than try to establish a kind of overview, I want to focus on several issues that seem to be crucial for feminist film festivals today to me. Also concerning history, I think it is very important to keep in mind where feminist film festivals have come from and how they have started and also to mark some crucial points of change and crisis. But I won’t give you a journey through thirty years of women’s film festival history. Let’s look at the start of it all: It’s now more than thirty years since in different places first in the United States and then in Europe feminist activists started to research films made by women and to create venues for their presentation. Edinburgh, London, Berlin and Paris are to name. In the next years, other European women’s film showcases and festivals followed. The aims were clear: to research and show – very often for the first time - the work of women film makers from around the world, to forward knowledge about this films and to bring together women film makers and their audiences to encourage both sides. Films should be platforms to raise female consciousness and establish a different film language that worked against the male cinematic mainstream and also against the cinema d‘auteur. How this aesthetics should look was soon subject of many animated debates and also of beginning disintegration. In the following years most of the pioneers institutionalised themselves as regular festivals and developed into vibrating meeting places for feminists from all over the country and outside. New ones followed. And as size grew, professionalisation grew, too. And with it grew the danger to become more and more a female labelled copy of other festivals around. That became a real problem, when with the crumbling of the feminist movement in Europe the audience masses started to stay away and left behind many half empty cinemas - and a committed rest of visitors, that felt a bit lost within too large variety of films offered. I have experienced screenings almost empty both at Feminale and femme totale in the Nineties, the most embarrassing situation perhaps an ambitious program of Japanese women directors with illustrious guests from overseas but almost no audience. I don’t think this is just a problem of publicity and marketing, but rather a sign of both a structural loss of reality sense resulting from own wishes and of outside pressure. For since some time this pressure for permanent growth came and comes also from outside. Sponsors want to see higher audience numbers every year. In Germany one point in the argument to put together the two women film festivals Feminale and femme totale was to create a new and even more visible and powerful so-called „Leuchtturm (Lighthouse)-Event“. I like the phallic htmlect of this image. It is important to say there is no contradiction between this developments and the financial cuts made at the same time. Practically, the up-sizing of the mega-event of course means necessarily always down-sizing somewhere else, which of course also increases competition between festivals. As you all know, many festivals have financial problems, that threaten their existence. Many can only work with reduced power, as the economical situation is unclear, while preparations for the next edition should long have begun. Fewer film makers can be invited. Also more and more energy goes into the acquisition of funding. I think this is especially dangerous as over the fights on the financial front we might forget to care about the content. In this context I think it was interesting yesterday to see how differently low- and higher-budgeted festivals relate to this point. Already at the meeting in Dortmund 1997 it was claimed that women film festivals have to resituate themselves in a changed political landscape, where for many women‘s rights seem to be accomplished and the feminist movement has dissolved into many single and more or less disparate activities. Of course this is very different for different countries, as we have heard yesterday. But the effects seem to be rather similar at least for some countries. In Turkey and in Germany for example especially many young women don’t want to be connected to feminism at all, which seems to them to be a boring loser’s category in a world where they want to be winners. I’m sure, each of us knows some young female filmmakers who don’t want to show their films in „the ghetto“, as they say, of a women‘s festival. Their missing interest is not that astonishing: many young woman directors get heavy support for their first film projects. It is understandable that at that early point of their career they don’t want to realise the difficulties they might meet later on. But of course this is also a sign of growing individualisation of personal careers. It’s a time, where – see “Whale Rider” or “Rosenstrasse” - in many countries films made by women seem not to be anything special anymore and women film festivals therefore obsolete. We know, they are not and patriarchy still exists and shows it’s ugly teeth. I don’t think it is necessary to debate this. But I thought it was very interesting what Moira Sullivan told yesterday about the difficulties of women politics in a culture – Sweden - where gender equality has been officially declared as achieved. We know, that it is a difference that women’s films make also if not every film made by a woman makes a difference. And we need women’s film festivals more than ever if just for the reason that so many think of them as obsolete. But there is a more general htmlect to the example of Sweden. I think one of the major inner problems women film festivals had to face in the nineties is the dissolving of feminist identity politics in gender and queer theory. I don’t want to talk here about the question how much sense this may theoretically make. But for practical feminist politics that development left behind an open space, that is not easy to fill. One solution to this can be to create new identification. This is what many lesbian film festivals do very successfully until today, even if sometimes their programmers try to avoid it. At Feminale in Cologne for example, in times where the rest of the festival suffered from audience losses and disinterest, the separate lesbian program was always packed. But an open space can also be a chance. And another possibility to react to the new situation could be to create new and different audience approaches. In this context I think we have to realise that the times of ever-growing audiences are definitely over and that this is perhaps not the worst thing to happen. And sometimes going on into the future may also mean to downsize in the present, not in professionalism and quality but in extension of films and times. Being small is not always a sign of weakness. Instead of sheer size we should focus more on intensity, on possibilities of visual, historical and social learning and on communication. As we have heard yesterday, most festivals work in that direction already in many ways. I don’t want to repeat that here, but just add some additional points: Women film festival should put even more impact in the technical sector of the film making trades like cinematography and composing, where female film workers themselves still feel a huge deficit in the awareness of their work. It is still very important to create and establish places, where women working in different sectors of film can show their work and establish networks and mutual support. Much has been said about and against awards and competition at women’s film festivals. I think in this context, it is a good start to reward female accomplishments on a professional level. Besides, what might be a better place to start a real dialogue between the generations than in that realm of professional acknowledgement. We need more young women at the festivals as visitors and participants: So we have to convince them practically that a women’s film festival is a place where new experiences and interesting contacts can be made. One very important of them might be professional exchange and learning. On the other hand, many young women lose their fear from feminism when it comes to social and political issues that don’t concern their personal careers and are very interested and eager to engage when it comes to understand and support the precarious situation from women around the world. I think, not only for that reason, women’s film festivals should sharpen their political and intercultural approach and should push forward co-operation with other activists and grassroots organisations, who work on similar and sympathetic issues. Of course this would be an outspoken political statement and not all of the sponsors might appreciate such engagement. Not only in Germany, non-commercial filmmaking from women and men has to confront ever new obstacles, as public film funding is more and more reduced to the co-founding of commercial success. This goes together with the commercialisation of the cultural sector as a whole. In such times it seems more important than ever to create an living counter-culture and enable active participation, even if that activity is reduced to that of the thinking mind. But as we live in consumerist times, this activities has to be enforced and enabled by intelligent festival concepts, so that visitors curiosity is not inhibited but incited. It is not enough to present a showcase of good films, interesting as each of them may be for itself. It is not enough to offer a film talk after the screening to create debate. It also is not enough to organise a panel discussion and wait for the audience to participate. I know that none of the festivals present here relies on concepts reduced like this and that most of them engage much thinking on how to engage the audience in a more active way- sometimes very successfully. But I want to emphasise the huge importance of good festival programming in the sense of - as I like to say – making films start to talk to each other. And when I say films here, I don’t mean only films, but also all other kinds of cultural and social activities that can and should be integrated in a festival program. Also in this sense, festivals should become even more a place for aesthetic and social learning. Of course every festival is different. But I think we should take even more seriously what Jackie Buet called once „a laboratory of images and communications“ and what the Firenze Festival has integrated in its name: To be a focus of social questioning and a laboratory on images produced of and by women. In this process it is inevitable to integrate more the different arts and media, as many festivals already do. My own personal favourite concept of a women film festival would be that of a film-based interdisciplinary conference on issues concerned with questions of gender, culture and imagination, where different forms of artistic and intellectual expression like lectures, exhibitions, performances and workshops enable to sharpen the senses and make astonishing experiences in a shared social room. As I said, this would be my own personal favourite. I am sure, there is a stimulating and colourful diversity of very different ideas for the future to come in this room, and even more outside. But I hope that my remarks on women film festivals can feed the discussions on the subject of this future with some ideas. Top

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