The fifth Women’s conference at the Dhaka International Film Festival 2019 ended on Saturday at the Alliance Française with a session on “What American women are doing to alleviate gender discrimination in cinema.”American educator Sydney Levine presented the keynote paper on the subject. The discussants of the closing session included Alexis Krasilovsky, professor at California State University and the Dhaka Tribune’s Showtime editor Sadia Khalid.
The conference aims to bring the problems women face in the film industry to the fore. It also offers creative solutions to the problems through research and open discussion. Top industry professionals and academicians from all over the world attended the conference and shared their valuable insights.
This year, the topics included gender equality, female audience in urban Bangladesh, sexuality and violence in Indian cinema, cinematic gaze, and emergence of women filmmakers. The speakers were from Norway, Croatia, India, USA, Bangladesh, Kosovo and Kyrgyzstan.
Sydney Levine presented some grim figures depicting how low the percentage of female participation is in many sectors of filmmaking in the USA. For instance, of the top 100 highest grossing films of 2017, 10% of the writers, 2% of cinematographers, 24% of producers and 14% of directors were female. She also presented some positive figures that givehope that the working conditions will be better for women in cinema in the near future. For instance, she elaborated how the Times Up movement set some quantifiable targets to bring gender equality in the American film industry by 2020.
The Dhaka International Film festival started on January 10 and will continue till January 18.
