Company/Organization Profiles | Film Funding
Smashing the Celluloid Ceiling
Written by Susanna Baird | Posted by: Anonymous
Martha Richards, Executive Director of The Fund for Women Artists, notes that women in particular are often anxious about the process. ‘Many women get intimidated by the whole idea of fundraising,’ she explains. ‘That puts them at a terrible disadvantage. [The Fund] is trying to break down that fear factor’ and encourage women to push forward by helping them wade through the paper maze.
Richards, whose 27-year arts administration career has taken her from a tiny theater in a San Francisco basement to a large college performing arts center in Brooklyn, started the Massachusetts-based Fund in 1994 after observing a disturbing trend. ‘The low number of women directors and writers in film is really shocking,’ she explains. ‘They do not get their fair share of better paying and more creative jobs.’
The statistics bear her out. A San Diego State study entitled ‘The Celluloid Ceiling’ found that the cinematographer was male on 99 percent of the top 250 domestic grossing films of 2001, and the director was male for more than 90 percent. Perhaps more troublesome is the fact that the small number of women directors is actually decreasing, from 11 percent in 2000 to six percent in 2001. The trend is mirrored among film writers as well: in 2001, women made up only 10 percent of film writers, a four percent drop from the previous year.
To counter these figures, Richards helps women artists conquer the arena that she’s professionally mastered: arts administration. Leaving the creative process to the artists, Richards and the Fund offer three levels of administrative assistance to women in theatre, film, and video.
The Fund aids the greatest number of women artists by providing useful fundraising information at its Web site, www.womenarts.org. Serving as a clearinghouse, the site breaks down funding opportunities into specific categories, allowing filmmakers to hone in on exactly what they’re seeking. Another resource is the site’s free ‘Film/Video Artists’ newsletter, a bi-monthly publication that highlights upcoming funding and contest deadlines.
While the Web site and related newsletters are its widest-reaching efforts, the Fund also provides in-depth support to several women each year. Focusing on Massachusetts-based artists with budgets under $20,000, the Fund offers ‘fiscal sponsorships.’ The artists receive help identifying potential donors, and often receive assistance in drafting fundraising letters as well.
The third and most intensive form of aid is provided to a very small number of female artists. These women receive one-on-one intensive grant-writing services that sometimes continue throughout the life of a project, from development through budgets, proposals, production, and distribution. Richards hopes that in the future the Fund will be able to offer these services in conjunction with cash grants, though this is not currently the case.
Director Julie Akeret has made two documentaries with the help of the Fund’s intensive grant-writing assistance. Akeret first met Richards when working on a film about animal rights activist Henry Spira. She told Richards about her interest in activist-centric documentaries. At the time, Richards was working with singer, educator and activist Jane Sapp on a proposal for an after-school program. Richards thought Sapp would be a perfect subject for Akeret’s next film. She was right.
Four years later, with five grants received as a direct result of the Fund’s proposal-writing assistance, Akeret finished ‘Someone Sang for Me,’ a documentary portrait of Sapp and her choir. Similarly successful was a fund drive for Akeret’s current directorial project ‘Tomgirls!’ celebrating tomboys of all ages. ‘Tomgirls!’ and ‘Someone Sang for Me’ both fulfill two of the Fund’s goals: ‘increasing the employment of women in the arts’ and presenting ‘non-traditional images of women.’
While Richards states that ‘we enjoy working directly with individual artists’ like Akeret, she cautions that the Fund’s small staff and the current economic climate make it less likely that they will take on full-blown grant-writing projects in the future. ‘I suspect that our Web site and endowment campaign are the areas where we will focus more energy in the coming years,’ she explains. Regardless, they will continue to help women succeed. ‘Artists have an important role to play in finding new ways for our country to move forward,’ notes Richards. ‘We especially need to hear from women who have been silenced in the past.’
To learn more about The Fund for Women Artists, visit www.womenarts.org. To learn more about the films of Julie Akeret, visit www.akeretfilms.com.
