At last weekend’s Big Screen Symposium held in Auckland, Dave Gibson gave his final address to the industry as NZFC CEO. In his speech, he announced the organisation’s gender policy would add new objectives to help progress the careers of women.
Announced in April 2015, the NZFC’s gender policy sits under the Diverse Voices umbrella which focuses on encouraging underrepresented voices to participate in the screen industry. With the gender policy’s initial five objectives proving both successful and measurable, especially in the talent development area, three new objectives have been added.
They are:
- To encourage recipients of devolved funding to fund half of their projects with women writers and directors and publish their success rates.
- The NZFC itself will set an annual goal of 50% female recipients for Early Development Funding (EDF) - counted across attached writers, directors and producers - to be achieved by 2020.
- The NZFC will measure female director participation in feature film investment offers on both an annual and a three-year rolling average. By the end of 2021/2022 the aim is to have 50% participation. This will mean achieving an average of 50 percent from 2019/2020.
These new objectives will be added to the existing framework which includes:
- An annual award for women in the industry.
- The NZFC being open to specific proposals from Guilds and industry organisations to support and enhance their work in up-skilling women in the screen industry.
- The talent development area of the NZFC spending more time identifying and engaging with female filmmakers.
- Regular publication of gender statistics based on funding information.
- In the professional development area, a 50% participation rate for women filmmakers.
The voices and perspectives of women are integral to telling New Zealand’s stories and the NZFC remains committed to encouraging women to participate and remain in the screen industry.