Five challenges women in the SA film industry face

ZAMA Mkosi, CEO of the NVFV shares her views on women in the film industry ahead of Women's Month:

The creative and cultural industries (CCIs) are rife with their own well-known challenges, but an added burden for many women in the film and television industry specifically is the prevalence of a number of barriers to entry – some of which the National Film and Video Foundation is working hard to circumnavigate.

As we see it, the main gaps women in South Africa face in our industry centre around three key factors: funding, mentoring and training.
The NFVF is trying to shift the tide by running a considerable number of women-focused programmes – between 2012 and 2015, 43 film projects by women were funded by the NFVF, all of which pushed out diverse perspectives and beginning to chip away at stereotypes about black women due to one-sided views in films and television. A considerable amount of women-biased effort has been made with regards to film funding, training and mentoring.

Our learnings from this process have shown that what is really needed is prominent, women-focused advocacy to speak to real issues affecting women in the sector. Some of these are controversial – such as corruption, nepotism, and sexual harassment – and are difficult to speak about for women individuals, but these conversations are needed to move forward as a collective.

I envisage this taking the form of a strong advocacy group. Such a group would go a long way in creating a safe space for these discussions to be held and challenged. There is also a need to put real action plans in place that involve not only women but men too, so we can overcome the seemingly insurmountable issues. While we may not eradicate these barriers to women’s empowerment in the short term, we can certainly reduce the occurrence of these obstacles that prevent women from participating in South Africa’s Cultural economy.

The group would help contribute significantly to transformation in the sector, which suffers from an abiding status quo characterised by low gender and racial parity. Overcoming the barriers of entry for women in key industries and striving for gender equality requires a collective effort and a concerted agenda.

The ultimate value-add for such sector groups would therefore be to advocate for women’s participation at all levels of the cultural economy and focus in building capacity.

In this context it’s important to flesh out how the three major industry gaps manifest in five significant challenges:

1. Lack of ownership: Few women own the means of production – whether films or any other cultural products. Since those who own the means often end up benefitting the most from the income generated from the exploitation of the product, particularly over the long period, women are at a distinct disadvantage.
2. Lack of strong women narratives in film roles: It is still common to find films being made where there are no strong women leads, or heads of critical departments that make the decisions about the narrative direction of the story being told – and this has the resultant effect of perpetuating false realities about men and women in the mind of the public.
3. Limited access to financial resources: Filmmaking is resource intensive and securing funds to produce films is highly competitive – especially as there on the marketing and distribution side of the sector which is particularly challenging. There are many women creating and producing cultural content and/or products, but however market development is still an issue.
4. Limited knowledge about the business side of the CCIs: Without critical knowledge of how the sector works from a business perspective is a significant shortfall. Since the industry is male dominated, many women simply don’t get the exposure they need so as to be empowered when negotiating terms and conditions of their transactions.
5. A general lack of opportunities: Fundamentally, the open door is often closed to women – from the edit suites to the elite quarters. It takes the actions of everyone involved in the industry to change things up; to open the door; to create opportunities where none exist and to support women along their career paths – this would go a long way in changing the status quo and create real, visible, tangible parity.

As chief executive of the NFVF my role is to change this up. I have to look for, build and create opportunities for women using our strategies and funding processes. The NFVF provides a supporting and enabling environment including the mentorship and corporate support that many women filmmakers need to succeed.

Furthermore niche projects such as the Women Filmmakers project require 100% female ownership and for women to be heads of departments – this is important in creating leadership roles for women within the industry.

My role is to create more of these programmes that expose women to stretch projects that enable their professional growth and development.

The final important consideration is under the topic of leadership, although all of the above points require good leadership. For women to take up leadership positions across the continent, we need to continually seek out positions of influence particularly in the public space; looking to drive government policy that has a sustained ripple effect onto marginalised groups.

If more women are at the helm of institutions we become stronger advocates for women’s empowerment and equality. It is also important that within our specific industries we share knowledge and best practice as women – what we have done to empower other women from the vantage point of our executive roles.

The African Continent is coming into its own with its contribution to the global economy set to double by 2040. There is a great opportunity for African development to be harnessed for women’s empowerment in the cultural sector, instead of following the same route as other economies where women’s development and gender parity is still lagging and culture is only viewed as a nice-to-have-after-thought instead of as a significant contributor to the socio-economic development.

Our reliance on natural resources is diminishing and knowledge and creative economies are proving to be more sustainable drivers. Africa can therefore show the rest of the world what an inclusive, diverse and forward-thinking regional economy looks like – if we want to!