A Cinematic Archive for the Future: Women's films in Italy 1965-2015

ended

Despite rising institutional concern for the gender gap in the European job market in general (EU Gender Action Plan 2016-2020) and the film industry in particular, the Italian market share of films directed by women in the period 2006-2013 was 2.7%, while that by male directors was 97.3%. The Italian film industry is sealed shut even tighter for creators whose identities intersect womanhood with a non-white or migrant background. This action redresses the persistence of this staggering imbalance by addressing the near-absenting of women’s and accented voices, both in the discourse around and practice of Italian filmmaking. The aim is to provide a critical record of the contribution of women, and especially women of colour, in the period 1965-2015, as a tool for launching the rebirth of Italian cinema. Research by the European Women’s Audiovisual network has found access to funding to be the most problematic aspect hindering gender equality in the Italian cinema sector. This 50-year period is marked by two crucial moments in the regulation of funding for audiovisual production in Italy (the 1965 “Legge Corona” and the most recent reform, voted into parliament in 2016). The project will accomplish two objectives at once: the obviation of encrusted film historiography canons, and the creation of an alternative archive of cinematic creativity with the capacity to reinvent the category of Italian cinema. Through the creation of an open-access collaborative online database, CineAF will provide a set of tools to create visibility and awareness of the gender inequality in the film industry; a change of script for the way we narrate Italian cinema to ourselves and to the world; and a roadmap for the innovation of the sector. CineAF will showcase the persistence of women's creativity despite the deficits and biases of the industry, and therefore shift the onus onto industry actors to explain why they have left such a vast fount of material on the margins.