Well, the Bird’s Eye View Film Festival is over for another year. In the seven years it has been running, little has changed in the UK for female filmmakers. In 2006, a survey carried out by the UK Film Council showed that just 12 per cent of British films were written by women.
In response, in 2010 Bird’s Eye View and the Script Factory started She Writes, a year-long programme aimed specifically at women screenwriters. I went along to a showcase at Bafta where the selected writers were presented to an audience.
One project, Saint Joan by Grace Banks and Kate Bingham, was selected for a performed reading. I wish I could say I was impressed. Despite an impressive cast that included Celia Imrie and Paula Dixon and a promising subject matter, the project didn’t work and here’s why: it wasn’t a movie. Saint Joan would make a lovely play for BBC Radio 4, but as a film, it failed. As someone who has lived and studied in America, I see British filmmakers make the same mistakes time and time again. It may seem like a Hollywood cliché but when William Goldman famously said that “screenplay is structure”, he was right on the money.
Too many British filmmakers don’t seem to understand the language of cinema and that a script is actually a blueprint for a movie.
Now the Film Council is no more. If the council was guilty of one thing, it was this: too much attention was given to the writer-director. There didn’t seem to be the understanding that there just isn’t the training or opportunities any more for these hyphenates. Danny Boyle served many years as a jobbing writer on Inspector Morse before even picking up a camera. These days few if any get the kind of opportunities afforded to the likes of Stephen Frears and Anthony Minghella when they were starting out.
In filmmaking, everything begins and ends with the writer. As the old Hollywood adage goes, “if it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the screen”. It’s time to restore the writer to her rightful place.
