What an incredible evening of film and conversation at our screening of Half The Picture with director Amy Adrion and local filmmaker Diana Whitten in attendance for a post-film conversation moderated by our Executive Director Elisabeth Nebeker. Premiering at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, Half The Picture features an impressive collection of interviews with successful women directors who tell the stories of their art, lives, and careers and address ways to change the long history of systemic discrimination in this male-dominated industry.
It was an honor to screen this film to our audience as it comes at a pivotal time when gender equality is becoming more and more part the conversation in Hollywood today. Director Amy Adrion brought up a great point in last night’s discussion mentioning that female directors make up only 4% of the top 100 grossing film with 96% of the films we see on the big screens led by male directors. Amy continued by saying, “When you only have a tiny sliver of the population telling everyone’s stories, it’s skewed and you lose a little bit of the understanding of the full humanity of all of us.” Filmmaker Diana Whitten added to that, “The inaccurate reflection on screen of our world perpetuates itself. You cannot be what you cannot see, so it’s great to see the women in [Half the Picture] recount stories of seeing other female directors up there and realizing it’s actually a possibility to do the same work.”
Utah Film Center strives to support and represent women stories equally throughout our curated film exhibition and artist support programs. As our Executive Director Elisabeth Nebeker indicated in yesterday’s discussion, 51% of the active films supported through our Fiscal Sponsorship program are directed by women. We are so proud of that statistic and will continue to prioritize telling all stories equally.
If you were unable to make it to this screening, we encourage you to follow along with the film on their website for updates on upcoming screenings. We also had some audience members approach us after the screening requesting the names of the filmmakers featured in the film, and we found the best way to locate that information is by referring to Half The Picture‘s Facebook Page, which include individual interview clips of the featured filmmakers.
