Pectina

The PhD Report established for me—and, I hoped, for readers— that as in other areas of the arts, and as in other parts of the world, women who want to write and direct feature films in New Zealand are likely to meet

gender-related problems. These may arise because of the context they work in. Some of the problems exist on state-funded pathways and may affect content. I started sending out the report in January 2008 and made the last changes in April 2008.

The response to the report varied. Individuals read it and commented and I incorporated some of their comments. The Screen Directors Guild of New Zealand—eventually, after a friend‘s prompting—asked me to write an article for their magazine.⁴⁵⁷ After the article appeared, Dara McNaught at the New Zealand Writers Guild (NZWG) followed the link to the IIML website, read the PhD Report there and sent me a lovely email.⁴⁵⁸ And then, at the head of the next Writers Guild e-bulletin—more than a year after I finished the report—there were a couple of paragraphs about it, a link, a brief extract and an endorsement:

These comments…are part of a comprehensive and thought provoking examination of the attitudes and stereotypes that dominate the feature film industry both here and internationally. Marian‘s observations are applicable not only to women and Maori—Barry Barclay once said, ―We shall get to know what a Maori film is when we get a chance to make more films,‖ and other minority voices—but to men wishing to make a career in the New Zealand film industry.⁴⁵⁹

So, the industry‘s directors and writers have access to the information. What about women in the industry who don‘t belong to these guilds, but are WIFT members? I had spoken with Auckland WIFT‘s lobbying and research sub-committee in June 2007 and sent the WIFT office a link to the report. But, as when I later sent a link to my blog,⁴⁶⁰ the link did not appear in either the

457 Evans 2009[b].

458 I am an NZWG member, an Australian Writers Guild member, and a WIFT student member.

459 McNaught and Mamea 2009.

460 16 April 2009.

WIFT Auckland or Wellington newsletters. Other links, to statistical

information and other member-generated information, appear regularly. Do they not want their members to have access to the information? The lack of interest mystifies me.⁴⁶¹

In contrast, in November 2007, when Cushla and I were in Sydney researching Lost Boy, the WIFT New South Wales president, then Lindy Monson, organised meetings with two very diverse groups of women filmmakers—not all WIFT members—to discuss the issues. Their welcome warmed me; the range of strategies use to advance their interests impressed me. After that, Lindy asked me to write something for their website, with help from Rosemary Curtis, Research and Information Manager at the Australian Film Commission and then, until recently, at Screen Australia;⁴⁶² and later added a link to the report.⁴⁶³ And what about OnFilm, the monthly industry magazine, as a general catch all? When I emailed Nick Grant OnFilm offering to write an article based on my research, in November 2008, he did not respond. I was not surprised, because he did not respond when I sent him an article about the celluloid ceiling for consideration back in 2006.

It is impossible to know more than this about whether the activist I, as a native subject, an academic providing information, or a writer, in any way disrupted ideas about the industry, made the report accessible enough or made change. But I realised that if I was going to expose myself as I wrote and then receive a mixed response, and was diffident about my own scripts,⁴⁶⁴ I needed to become clearer about my own responses to real or perceived rejection. About the time I transferred from the VMS to IIML in April 2008, I started counselling at the Student Health Services, to sort out a little more about the I doing this research.

461 30 July 2009: I email WIFT to ask for clarification. We were going to talk after their awards ceremony the next month, but never did.

462 Evans 2008[a].

463 Evans 2008[c].

464 See above 125.

The I of Chapter 5 draws on my thesis diary to speak within an academic context about my interactions within unfamiliar cultures, as I attempted to establish reasons why I and other women feature film scriptwriters are or may be unsuccessful in accessing public funding.

This chapter attempts to deepen the discussion of content and context issues referred to in the last chapter, with continuing reference to stories women filmmakers told me, noted in my diary. The chapter is also based on my interactions with individuals within state funding bodies, primarily at the NZFC but also at NZOA, once it became involved in its own telemovies. It responds too to the replacement of the NZFC/CNZ SIPF programme with the Independent Film Fund (IFF), which excludes emerging filmmakers like me.

It notes changes in NZFC Board decision-making, in favour of women.

The inclusion of an awards list about commonalities in the content of films women wrote, shown at the International Film Festival in 2008 gestures back to similar exercises undertaken within the women‘s art movement. It

highlights the I at work, like B Ruby Rich engaged with ‗Journals and journeys, conferences and conversations, partying and politicking, going to movies and going to bed‘. It speaks directly to those who shared my earlier history, and to whom I feel accountable in every chapter.

Unlike Chapters 3 and 4 this chapter is only about my fieldwork and is based only on documents—the thesis diary and emails copied into it—that recorded activity as it happened. It summarises what I know about the pathways that I might have explored with Lost Boy; or that Cushla and I might have taken with Red Dinghy.

It surprised me that this is a relatively unemotional record until I understood that the enquiring, academic, activist and scriptwriting I had nothing to lose by the activities it records. And I see now that I set it up that way as the I who wants to make feature films, warned that criticism of public funders would be

‗suicide‘. While I worked on the NZFC statistics, to avoid the complications of my own emotional investment in NZFC decision-making, I—with Cushla—

chose not to find a producer and apply for development funding for Red Dinghy, nor to apply for the FWI.

And, at the back of my mind, I think I knew that I was most interested in making a ‗shadow‘ film. My background predisposed me as an artist to engage with a human rights-oriented strategic option,⁴⁶⁵ rather than to journey along the public funding pathway.⁴⁶⁶ So I felt little fear or anger, or joy, though in one place I have included the second part of an email that, when I looked at it, reminded me that I was often very stressed during this period; and sometimes cranky.

By now, I preferred to write scripts rather than to engage with activist or academic activity, and perhaps my stress resulted from the marginalisation of my script writing. I realised how much the activist and academic had taken over from the writer when a woman who asked me, at the NZFC Smashing the Window distribution seminar⁴⁶⁷ ―How‘s your project going?‖ I responded

―Great.‖ Then, ―What about you?‖ After she told me about her problems developing projects while earning a living I realised that her picture of ‗[my]

project‘ was different than mine. She thought I was engaged primarily in script development. I was not.

At the end of this period, I re-read Virginia Woolf‘s A Room Of One‟s Own and this gave me another idea about my lack of strong emotion as I engaged with the NZFC statistics. I had two rooms of my own, one at the university and one at home, and $20,000 a year; I had only to ensure that this thesis—

eventually—met academic requirements. With money, according to Woolf, hatred, bitterness and the need to flatter go. There were no ―pressures towards self-censorship‖⁴⁶⁸, or to ―tell it slant‖⁴⁶⁹. So it was unsurprising that

465 See above 47ff and 100.

466 I did however apply for and attend an NZFC workshop, taken by Wendall Thomas, on dialogue, which I found very rewarding (11 June 2008); and eventually did apply to SIPF for funds for my thesis script, Development, see below 220, 240.

467 3 October 2008.

468 Olsen: 49.

469 Ibid: 44.

anger and fear were largely missing from my diary and emails. I explained their lack of joy on the stress of managing multiple roles and knowing that the $20,000 a year was finite.

It was only much later that reading Virginia Woolf also alerted me to my subliminal anger about the academic requirements, when I realised that this thesis was ‗slightly pulled from the straight‘⁴⁷⁰, by my experience of the behaviours of some institutionally-based women and by the exigencies of the work‘s academic context.⁴⁷¹

This chapter and the transition that follows it are for my peers, especially fellow women apprentice scriptwriters, fellow activists, fellow

autoethnographers. The I is me telling them, ―This is what happened. What might it mean?‖ It is also the scriptwriter, preparing to use the hard data, as she invents.

470 Woolf 1929; 1998: 96.

471 See above 44ff.