Encouraging women filmmakers

Thank you Sally

The prevailng atmosphere facing all students who are deciding to devote their lives to filmmaking is indeed one of massive discouragement, even if it doesn't look that way on the surface. There is really only one way out of this morass....to get going. As someone once said to me : 'it takes longer if you don't get started'.
Simple though this may sound, it is in fact the hardest lesson to learn. Even those of us who have been at it for quite a while have to repeat the decision to continue with the habit of just getting on with it, whatever the feelings of the day are. Doubt, insecurity and so on are just feelings we have to live with. They shouldn't determine or shape what we do or how we do it. Then, bit by bit, a body of work emerges.

The huge advantage for any filmmaker starting out now, including and perhaps especially women, is that you can make a film very cheaply. Most women are still poorer than most men in their social class or ethnic group and in the past this created a double disadvantage. But a mobile phone, a borrowed camcorder, in fact any piece of equipment can be used and used and used to develop the necessary fluency with the medium. What counts in the end is practice.

For women the most important decision is often a deep and interior one: to give up being a victim now and forever. Don't wait for 'support'...it may not come in the form you long for. Instead try to remember that as a woman you hold up half the sky and that the world of imagination comes free of charge, is infinite and is yours.