Feature: Birds Eye View Film Festival 2010 - Various venues

Published: 11 February 2010
by DAN CARRIER

IN one corner of the Best Director ring at this year’s Oscars is James Cameron with Avatar, his mega-bucks up-in-space war movie, chock full of bangs and crashes. In the other is his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow, with The Hurt Locker, her mini-budget down-to-earth war movie which, despite being about bomb disposal teams, has remarkably few bangs and crashes.

Islington-based film-maker Rachel Millward runs the annual Birds Eye Film Festival, a celebration of women working in the industry – and she believes the fact that for only the fourth time in Oscar history a woman finds herself up for Best Director is a clear example as to why her festival, a forum for celebrating and promoting the role women play in film production, is vital even in 2010.

Rachel was moved to set up the festival five years ago when she realised that in such a creative industry, just 7 per cent of films featured female directors. This gender divide, Rachel states, affects how films are made, the creative process behind them, and the views they put forward – and it goes across the board when it comes to key roles. The 7 per cent figure for directors is mimicked in the number working as screen writers. “Films are made with a predominantly male perspective,” she says.

Perhaps, at last, the tide is beginning to turn: this year has seen a bumper number of films directed by women, although only 15 per cent were released in the UK, including Jane Campion’s Bright Star, Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank and Lone Scherfig’s An Education, as well as The Hurt Locker. “It is only one year that has happened – it is not a trend as yet, more of a blip,” says Rachel, but one she hopes her festival will help make a more regular occurrence, buoyed by the success of Bigelow in Hollywood. 

“It is just absurd that it is only the fourth time a woman has been nominated for best director,” she states. “If Bigelow wins, it will definitely make a difference. Let’s be honest – this would be utterly ground-breaking. 

“Bigelow has form on her side. She is well known,” adds Rachel.

“And she is always making surprising films for women. They are never what is expected: so often studios and audiences expect women to make emotional movies, soppy movies, all the time. The range of expectation is different – but of course there is no reason women cannot make action films, and that is why Bigelow is important.”

Rachel became involved in film making through time working in South Africa for a non-government organisation.

“I realised I did not have the skills to work in international development,” she says. “But I did feel I could help raise awareness of development by making documentaries about it.”

She had returned to the UK and picked up jobs at independent production companies producing lightweight  TV documentaries. While working on these she realised there were very few female film directors or writers.

“I lacked role models,” she admits. “There were just so few out there to aspire to.” 

The upshot was a short film festival which was so successful, Rachel realised she had hit on an idea that filled a gap.

“There was nothing around to showcase work,” said Rachel. “So I decided I’d do it myself. People responded, now it is established . We have higher and higher profile each year,” she says.

Rachel won’t lay money on whether it will be Bigelow or Cameron as Best Director. “There are just so many factors,” she says, one of which is the idea that there may well be a case of positive discrimination going on.

“The fact this would be the first woman may well swing it, as it did when Sidney Poitier was nominated and became the first black actor to win an Oscar. Yet it will be completely deserved.”

• Birds Eye View Film Festival 2010 runs from March 4-12 at various venues including BFI Southbank and the ICA. www.birds-eye-view.co.uk