18 March 2019
Women are seeing better representation in film and theatre, Sir David Hare has said, but the change is due to societal pressure rather than the industry.
The acclaimed playwright and director said there were more stories being told about women but the number of women behind the camera was “still tiny”.
The industry was “running along behind” society, he said.
Sir David, known for creating leading roles for women, wrote screenplays for The Hours, The Reader and Collateral.
“I’ve been going on about women’s lives and about the importance of portraying women’s lives for 45 years now and nobody listened for the first 45 years,” he said.
“And at last, people are listening.
“Now I don’t think that’s a change in the industry, I think that’s a change in society.”
The US campaign group, Time’s Up, says only 4% of Hollywood’s biggest earning films from the past decade were directed by women.
Speaking in February, British director Georgia Parris said it was a “pretty depressing figure” and part of the “age-old problem that women are hired on experience and men are hired on potential”.
A movement, known as the #4percentchallenge, is now trying to inspire confidence in future movie-makers and Time’s Up is asking actors to commit to working with a female director in the next 12 months.
In the UK, the percentage of women being cast in UK films (around 25%) has barely changed in more than 100 years, data released by the British Film Institute (BFI) in 2017 showed.
However, the percentage of female crew members went up from 3% to 33% over the same period of time.
Read the full article on BBC News.
Laurent Liotardo/The English National Ballet
