Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, a global initiative by the United Nations. Although this is a yearly occurrence taking place every November 25th, it really should be a year-round initiative, an effort in our everyday life to avoid the pitfalls of violence but also help eradicate the behavior around it.
So this year’s Cairo International Film Festival did a wonderful job of prefacing their 41st edition by announcing in a press release, in early October, that they would sign the pledge for “50/50 by 2020” — an initiative started during the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. The Collectif 50/50 spearheaded by Delphyne Besse actively campaigns for equality at film festivals by the year 2020, meaning they strive to see as many women filmmakers in the Competition and sidebar lineups as there will be men. OK, nice effort, though for me a piece of paper is just that until I see it put into effect — thus will await 2020 with bated breath. And granted, while Cannes definitely needs work when it comes to the idea of gender equality — male journalists are always given better credentials than women at the festival — Cairo instead is part of that fortunate part of the world where women filmmakers are more plentiful and better at their job than their male counterparts.
That is probably due to the fact that there is little money in filmmaking in the Arab world. So, while men bring home the halal bacon, so to speak, this more creative yet less lucrative job of filmmaker can be given to the women. It still doesn’t affect women journalists of course, we are always considered the last on the totem pole, unless we write for the trade. They are VIPs. It is a proven fact that women in American movies are given projects to direct where less money is involved even if their project make back more money. See the study here.
There have been amazing films by women at this year’s CIFF including the lovely, wondrous Shahad Ameen’s ‘Scales’, the touching poetic ‘Let’s Talk’ by Marianne Khoury and a film I long to see, yet won’t have a chance to view this time around at CIFF, Najwa Najjar’s ‘Between Heaven and Earth’. I’ve written about them all in a piece on Harper’s BAZAAR Arabia, a publication I’ve always loved whenever I traveled to the Region, and am now proud to contribute to whenever possible.
However, among all this greatness, I saw this video below, which is a collaboration between CIFF and Vogue Arabia. Now don’t get me started about the international Vogue editions these days. Edward Enninful’s Vogue UK gets by mainly because Enniful’s bag of tricks includes a collection of celebrities who are willing, at a moment’s notice, to write and curate the magazine for him. And of course, there is always Anna Wintour’s Vogue, which is the standard by which all other fashion publications are judged.
But when it comes to something like Vogue Italia, where fashion and celebrity reporting is done by writers with dubious personal style, or Vogue Arabia — gasp! — where editors don’t even know how to spell the name of the publication in emails (I’m in possession of proof for that statement if you want a copy) well then, Vogue may as well be dead.
So back to the video. You’ve seen it by now, I posted it above. Wonderful, talented, strong, intelligent women from the Arab film industry thrashing about on the floor, running through brocade-decorated rooms like they are being hunted down in some second rate horror flick, too much make-up, too little dignity — along with spoken words that put Baby in a corner, to paraphrase ‘Dirty Dancing’. THAT’s supposed to make for equality between the genders? How come I’m not seeing Hany Abu-Assad and Elia Suleiman doing the same?
OK, sorry for putting that image into your head, hope you can get past it quickly enough. But it had to be done! When are we as women going to stand up for ourselves, really? I mean really! And when are those so-called “enlightened men” going to stop promoting, and making videos like these, and start encouraging the strong, unapologetic, talented women among them, those of us who may not need helping but would certainly love not being antagonized every step of the way — from our fellow women as well as insecure men?!
That’s the thought. CIFF and Vogue Arabia on this day when all attention is being given to women worldwide. If we are to be better, we want to do better. And this video makes it worse.