Recap IDFA - The Female Gaze
It’s now been a couple of weeks since this years edition of IDFA – International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The festival brought us a lot of great experiences and new inspiration, not only from the films we saw but also from several seminars and discussions we attended.
One of the most heated sessions was the Female Gaze debate, investigating under-representation of women in the documentary world. The session served as a part of a larger focus on women in documentary on IDFA this year.
In this focus, IDFA also conducted its own study into how women fared at the festival – not surprisingly revealing the male domination in submissions, selections, awards and jury participation. Find all the results from the study here.
During the discussion we heard IDFA director Ally Derks, acclaimed filmmaker Kim Longinotto, Debra Zimmerman from Women Make Movies and Anna Serner, director of Swedish Film Institute among others, discussing their perspectives on the problem as well as solutions for the future, such as quotas, gender equal juries and a new Bechdel-style test.
All in all, a very much engageing 2 hours, encouraging us at Doc Lounge to work even harder on gender equality in the future.