The Reel World
As a popular women’s film festival folds, other fests that are unwilling to succumb to corporate demands strive to overcome economic adversity
By Keidra Chaney
Published: February 12th, 2007 | 1:30pm
March 2007 would have been the 26th anniversary of Chicago-based Women in the Director’s Chair (WIDC), a feminist media arts organization that coordinated one of the oldest and largest women’s film festivals in the United States.
However, in early 2006, the non-profit organization quietly closed its doors after two and a half decades of screening the work of women filmmakers. A brief statement on the organization’s Web site WIDC was the most public acknowledgement of the organization’s demise: “Much to our lament, Women in the Director's Chair is in the process of shutting down, due to insurmountable financial challenges.”
It’s a situation that has become all too common for many U.S. arts organizations in the past few years — many of them struggling to ride out the economic recession post 9-11, with some organizations scaling down staff or shutting down completely. At risk are trailblazing independent film festivals and organizations with a history of supporting female and other underrepresented independent media artists. For those involved with non-profit arts organizations, finding and maintaining money for survival can be a tenuous situation, which is exacerbated when a focus on mission indirectly leads to a lack of financial savvy.
“What’s common in arts non-profits is that the board and staff are not money-centric. It‘s not a priority, so it leads to a negligence that isn‘t intentional,“ says Jennifer Hsu, a former WIDC board member. She joined shortly after the board and executive director learned that the organization had incurred massive debt over several years.
Just one year later, WIDC was financially hobbled due to low festival attendance when the annual event, normally held in mid-March, coincided with the start of the Iraq war. “[The festival] started on the same day. I was really torn. I would come straight from protests to the festival,” recalls KJ Mohr, film programmer at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, who served as a WIDC board member and later, programming director from 2002 until the organization‘s closing. Wanting to acknowledge the importance of the war, board and staff members struggled with whether they should keep the festival going that year at all.
By this time, WIDC board members, including Mohr, had already taken over the role of festival programming and organization after letting go of its full-time staff in 2002. While deciding the future of the organization, the board held town hall–style meetings and invited the public to give their thoughts on what WIDC’s next steps should be. Few people showed up. “It was surprising after 25 years,” Mohr says. The board decided to dissolve the organization in 2006, “a very difficult decision to make,“ she says. “It was 25 years, which is something to celebrate; it’s just frustrating that we couldn’t hang on longer.”
As WIDC closed its doors, the MadCat Women’s International Film Festival celebrated its 10th anniversary. In the past decade, MadCat has expanded from a showcase of Bay Area filmmakers to an acclaimed international festival that introduces a diverse selection of avant-garde and experimental media produced by women. Yet Ariella Ben-Dov, MadCat’s founder and curator, notes that the anniversary was a hard-won achievement. “The funding situation is bleak. [2006] was one of our hardest years,” she says. This year, MadCat did not receive funding from a local government arts agency, a major source of financial support. “The irony is that we’re getting funding from NEA, which was led by a Republican-[controlled] Congress [at the time]. We’re getting funding from the Bush administration but not by local government,” she says.
Receiving long-term, sustainable funding is a challenge for most media arts organizations in the U.S., whether women-oriented or not. “[Most] festivals don’t have endowments to keep them alive. They’re kept alive by individual energy, and the energy of the community,” Mohr says.
For Marianne Lampke, co-founder of the Boston International Festival of Women’s Cinema, maintaining such energy after a decade proved to be challenging. After a successful 11-year run, Lampke and co-founder Connie White decided to end the festival in 2003. Throughout the 1990s, the festival attracted a number of film luminaries and future indie darlings, including Alison Anders, Christine Vachon, Mary Harron, Cheryl Dunye, and Sofia Coppola.
“It’s kind of like Seinfeld or the Beatles — we had a great run,“ jokes Lampke. “It was such an honor to take the festival through such an important time in women’s cinema. I’m not going to say [the festival] was flourishing financially — it was always a struggle — but we were always able to pay our bills.” However, Lampke says it became more expensive to produce and promote the festival each year. “We were finding that the stakes were getting higher,” she says. “But we went out on a high note, rather than fumbling year to year.”
The larger issue of rapidly dwindling financial support for the arts in the U.S. — both from foundations and from local and national government — is a major threat to many small independent film festivals. Ben-Dov notes that European countries have more support for the arts than in the U.S. “It’s important [for government officials] to know that it’s essential to have support for the arts. MadCat, where we are fiercely independent and committed to showing avant-garde cinema by women, have a harder time [getting funding],” says Ben-Dov.
But relying primarily on corporate sources for money can bring its own share of conflicts, particularly for festivals that focus on avant-garde, activist, or controversial content. Ben-Dov admits that she does not pursue corporate money for MadCat as aggressively as she could. “It’s very important to me to have organizations that I respect on the MadCat program. I don’t want to have the ‘Exxon MadCat Festival’ or the ‘Starbucks MadCat Festival.’ I don‘t know, maybe if one of them gave me $10 million, I’d change my tune.”
Ben-Dov wishes to retain the festival’s latitude to feature programming that mainstream organizations might avoid due to corporate pressure. “I don’t want to change programming because some corporate Joe has a problem with it,” she says. She recounts an example of a short that was featured in the festival in 2006 that contained a scene of full-frontal male nudity. “I’m not sure if a big corporation would fund [a festival that shows] work like that.”
“The greatest strength and weakness [of WIDC] was that it was never dependent on any corporate sponsorship,” Hsu says. “It gave us an edge in programming, but it put us in a crazy fundraising position where it gets harder and harder every year.” In comparison, as the director of the San Diego Women’s Film Festival, she notes that the “lion’s share“ of that staff’s energy is dedicated to cultivating corporate relationships. While she does not feel pressure to select programming based on corporate whims, she says, “I am always worried that one day I will. It’s of utmost importance to me.”
The inconsistencies of corporate funding also mean that organizations cannot count on such funding from year to year. Ben-Dov recalls an instance a couple of years ago when MadCat received funding from a prominent online DVD rental company. “The person I was dealing with loves MadCat and comes every year, but he couldn’t convince higher-ups to keep funding us after that one year,” Ben-Dov says.
Mohr believes that the changing nature of the independent media community and increased options for exhibition and distribution of film have also changed the way that people look at film festivals. “People have more opportunities [to see independent film] because of the Internet and cable.” Does this mean that smaller independent film festivals are becoming obsolete? Mohr doesn’t think so. “The big difference for me is the community,“ she says. “Film festivals allow people to personally engage with work being screened, to watch films with other people and discuss it.”
While there are fewer independent women’s film festivals in general, in the past decade or so, national festivals such as WIDC have given rise to more diverse, specialized film festivals: women of color festivals, trans festivals, queer festivals. This growing, diverse film community is what Mohr calls the driving force of the independent women‘s film community. “I’ve been to so many festivals this past year: the Women of Color Film Festival in Atlanta in March — it was a real community, not like Sundance, [it was] held in a library.”
Lampke says film festivals are becoming more specialized because the field is so saturated. “When we started the Boston International Women’s Festival, multiplexes were starting to take over; [smaller] movie theaters and funding for [arts] non-profits was becoming scarcer,” she says. “Film festivals have now become an industry in itself, which was not the case at the time.”
Feminist film festivals trace their roots back to the ‘60s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s with the rise of feminist film theory and culture, a movement that thrived and established alternatives for screening and distribution at a time when such outlets and resources for women filmmakers was scarce. But with women directors still grievously underrepresented in Hollywood (only three women have ever been nominated for the Best Director Oscar), festivals that prioritize films by female filmmakers are still desperately needed. “It’s so easy to say, ‘Things are different for women now’ when they so aren’t,” Mohr says.
“I think the challenges have changed [for women filmmakers],” offers Lampke, stating that issues of distribution and funding have become a challenge for all independent filmmakers, but that in the minds of some, the “glass ceiling” has been broken. “We’ve had women who have come [to the film festival] who say that they don’t really see the need for women filmmakers anymore,” she says. “It’s been interesting for us to see.”
Ben-Dov says the onus is on festival organizers to get funders to understand. “Sundance, Tribeca, and other big festivals get the majority of the media exposure, but smaller fests do give exposure to other venues, whether it be other festivals or film curators,” she says. Like Mohr, Ben-Dov sees the real attraction as “getting people out of their living rooms and enjoying this group experience. It’s an incredible communal experience.”
As long as there are filmmakers who want to show their work — and audiences that want to see it — there will be room for independent film exhibitions of all types. What form these screenings will take remains to be seen. Mohr sees more one-shot festivals like Ladyfest playing a role while Ben-Dov cites the renewed growth of DIY exhibitions and microcinemas. “Perhaps it is the future. It creates opportunities for filmmakers to curate their own festivals. It gives you back the power. [Organizers] don’t have to think about operations month by month or grant by grant,” she says. “The bigger question is can you get a diverse audience to those microcinemas? It‘s a question for festival programmers to ask as well.”
Because maintaining financial support through the year remains a struggle for MadCat and other film festivals, Ben-Dov says the best thing that people can do to keep such festivals alive is to support them financially, no matter what size the donation may be. “If you go to a film festival, if you appreciate an arts institution, think about [supporting] them at the end of the year,“ she says. “It’s so true when they say ‘every bit counts.’”
FILM FESTIVALS OF NOTE
Atlanta Women of Color Film Festival Atlanta Women of Color Film Festival
MadCat Women’s International Film Festival MadCat Women’s International Film Festival
Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festivals
Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festivals
San Diego Women Film Festival
San Diego Women Film Festival
Women of Color Film and Video Festival (San Diego)
Women of Color and Video Festival (San Diego)
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Lead photo courtesy of the Boston International Festival of Women’s Cinema; first photo courtesy of the San Diego Asian Film Festival; second photo courtesy of Image Shack, third photo courtesy of Pender Creatives; fourth photo courtesy of the Maine Women and Girls Film Festival, fifth photo courtesy of Women in the Director's Chair
Issue #35
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