Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CineAF (A Cinematic Archive for the Future: Women's films in Italy 1965-2015)
Période du rapport: 2020-07-01 au 2022-06-30
SUMMARY
This project demonstrated that the redressing of gender inequality in the Italian film industry is moving at a very slow pace, and in fact has remained relatively unchanged in the 21st century, despite the recent shift in popular discourse that implies the opposite. It also revealed the complex role of policy in excluding or including historically minoritised groups such as women and people without access to Italian nationality, both historically (with the Fascist-era “nationality” clauses) and in the present (the gender incentives and fiscal residence clauses of the 2016 Franceschini law). Additionally, the project contributed to the crucial debate around the use of feminist principles when dealing with large amounts of data, including the ethics of collecting information on gender, and the methodological challenges of an inherited system of data collection that relies on the gender binary. CineAF has already become a precious resource for those who are interested in promoting gender equality in the Italian film industry, such as film festival programmers, lobbying associations, lecturers and students, and policy-makers.
DATABASE
The project has generated a participatory database, CENTRICWebi, that includes information on more than 11,000 film titles. CineAF went far beyond its stated ambitions by collecting information not only on film directors as initially envisioned, but on 9 further creative roles and department heads, including producer, screenwriter, editor, director of photography, composer, production designer, costume designer, makeup supervisor, and special effects supervisor. It was decided that such a move beyond the director-centred model for gender equality data was direly needed and very much in line with the project’s feminist and labour-centred principles. The database, which is currently in Beta, was launched in Spring 2022 through a Pilot project including around 200 students of the host institution, who, with the help of Dr. Barotsi and Prof. Fanchi, used it to reflect on gender and other forms of exclusion in the industry, as well as on the use of data itself. Dr. Barotsi and Prof. Fanchi will continue to work with Dr. Matteo Tarantino on the database and its interface beyond the completion of the Action, in order to launch the database publicly.
OBJECTIVES
1. To provide a set of tools that can contribute to reducing the gender gap in Italian film production by creating visibility, awareness, and a change of script that can impact policy and discourse
2. To create a tangible and accessible record of women professionals in Italian film production as a first step towards fostering and multiplying their voices
3. To contribute to complicating and destabilising the mainstream narratives of gender in Italian film production from an intersectional perspective, historically and in the present
4. To create a participatory database that offers an unprecedented understanding of gender inequality in the Italian film industry over the span of over half a century, by collecting information on the production of all feature-length Italian films that received permission for distribution between 1964-2020.
This project demonstrated that the redressing of gender inequality in the Italian film industry is moving at a very slow pace, and in fact has remained relatively unchanged in the 21st century, despite the recent shift in popular discourse that implies the opposite. It also revealed the complex role of policy in excluding or including historically minoritised groups such as women and people without access to Italian nationality, both historically (with the Fascist-era “nationality” clauses) and in the present (the gender incentives and fiscal residence clauses of the 2016 Franceschini law). Additionally, the project contributed to the crucial debate around the use of feminist principles when dealing with large amounts of data, including the ethics of collecting information on gender, and the methodological challenges of an inherited system of data collection that relies on the gender binary. CineAF has already become a precious resource for those who are interested in promoting gender equality in the Italian film industry, such as film festival programmers, lobbying associations, lecturers and students, and policy-makers.
DATABASE
The project has generated a participatory database, CENTRICWebi, that includes information on more than 11,000 film titles. CineAF went far beyond its stated ambitions by collecting information not only on film directors as initially envisioned, but on 9 further creative roles and department heads, including producer, screenwriter, editor, director of photography, composer, production designer, costume designer, makeup supervisor, and special effects supervisor. It was decided that such a move beyond the director-centred model for gender equality data was direly needed and very much in line with the project’s feminist and labour-centred principles. The database, which is currently in Beta, was launched in Spring 2022 through a Pilot project including around 200 students of the host institution, who, with the help of Dr. Barotsi and Prof. Fanchi, used it to reflect on gender and other forms of exclusion in the industry, as well as on the use of data itself. Dr. Barotsi and Prof. Fanchi will continue to work with Dr. Matteo Tarantino on the database and its interface beyond the completion of the Action, in order to launch the database publicly.
OBJECTIVES
1. To provide a set of tools that can contribute to reducing the gender gap in Italian film production by creating visibility, awareness, and a change of script that can impact policy and discourse
2. To create a tangible and accessible record of women professionals in Italian film production as a first step towards fostering and multiplying their voices
3. To contribute to complicating and destabilising the mainstream narratives of gender in Italian film production from an intersectional perspective, historically and in the present
4. To create a participatory database that offers an unprecedented understanding of gender inequality in the Italian film industry over the span of over half a century, by collecting information on the production of all feature-length Italian films that received permission for distribution between 1964-2020.
Dr. Rosa Barotsi conducted research on the CineAF project for 24 months under the supervision of Prof. Mariagrazia Fanchi at the Department of Communication and Performing Arts and the Advanced School in Media and Communications of UCSC, from July 2020 to June 2022.
During the Action, data was collected on Italian feature films that received permission for distribution (“nulla osta”) for the period 1964-2015, including data on 10 professional roles: director, producer, screewriter, editor, director of photography, composer, and heads of department in production design, costume, makeup and special effects. The database was created thanks to the use of Centric, a software developed by the host institution to aggregate and perform advanced data searches. A methodology was developed for assigning gender to the names of the professionals in line with data feminist principles, including a meticulous description of the methodology’s limits, and the indicator Gender Balance Score was used to measure the level of binary gender equality in the film production teams, and within each profession. The database allows for visualizations based on these calculations that demonstrate gender equality data across time, film genre, and profession. During the second stage of data collection, the timeframe was expanded to 2020 following the same methodology, and with the intention of continuing to update the data into the future. This gave the team the opportunity to assess the initial effects of the gender incentives introduced by the Franceschini law (2016). The Beta version of the database interface was launched in Spring 2022 during a large-scale Pilot project involving 200 students of the host institution, who tested its functions and used it to write team-based final projects on issues of inclusion/exclusion, diversity and equality in the Italian film industry.
The researcher also engaged in a series of activities with the aim of bringing visibility to women film professionals with different and complex relationships to the industry and traditional funding system, including a long-term collaboration with the EU-funded project The Purple Meridians (Eurimages Gender Equality Sponsorship 2021 and 2022), and two seminar series held at the host institution (the film programme and lecture series “Women’s films and Italian Audiovisual Policy, 1964-2016", and “Inclusive Storytelling”). Finally, the team held meetings with external stakeholders from the Equal Opportunities Commission, Ministry of Culture, civil society groups, specialised film festivals, broadcasting, and other experts, many of which are on the project’s advisory board, to ensure the sustainability of the CineAF database and guarantee its future impact.
During the Action, data was collected on Italian feature films that received permission for distribution (“nulla osta”) for the period 1964-2015, including data on 10 professional roles: director, producer, screewriter, editor, director of photography, composer, and heads of department in production design, costume, makeup and special effects. The database was created thanks to the use of Centric, a software developed by the host institution to aggregate and perform advanced data searches. A methodology was developed for assigning gender to the names of the professionals in line with data feminist principles, including a meticulous description of the methodology’s limits, and the indicator Gender Balance Score was used to measure the level of binary gender equality in the film production teams, and within each profession. The database allows for visualizations based on these calculations that demonstrate gender equality data across time, film genre, and profession. During the second stage of data collection, the timeframe was expanded to 2020 following the same methodology, and with the intention of continuing to update the data into the future. This gave the team the opportunity to assess the initial effects of the gender incentives introduced by the Franceschini law (2016). The Beta version of the database interface was launched in Spring 2022 during a large-scale Pilot project involving 200 students of the host institution, who tested its functions and used it to write team-based final projects on issues of inclusion/exclusion, diversity and equality in the Italian film industry.
The researcher also engaged in a series of activities with the aim of bringing visibility to women film professionals with different and complex relationships to the industry and traditional funding system, including a long-term collaboration with the EU-funded project The Purple Meridians (Eurimages Gender Equality Sponsorship 2021 and 2022), and two seminar series held at the host institution (the film programme and lecture series “Women’s films and Italian Audiovisual Policy, 1964-2016", and “Inclusive Storytelling”). Finally, the team held meetings with external stakeholders from the Equal Opportunities Commission, Ministry of Culture, civil society groups, specialised film festivals, broadcasting, and other experts, many of which are on the project’s advisory board, to ensure the sustainability of the CineAF database and guarantee its future impact.
CineAF is at the cutting-edge of data-based projects in the audiovisual sector, emphasising the importance of methodological self-critique, a re-thinking of the director-centred model, and a commitment to producing real impact.
The researcher and project supervisor are in conversation with policy experts, lobbying associations (Women in Film, Media and Television Italy) and policy-makers (Ministry of Culture) in order to decide on the best way forward for the use of the database in the effort to redress the persistent gender gap in the Italian film industry at the policy level.
The project database was succesfully used by film programmers, lecturers, researchers, and students during the Action’s timeframe. The data led us, for example, to realise that one of the most underconsidered decades of Italian cinema, the ‘90s, were also the decade that saw the numbers of women’s films momentarily peak over the 10% mark. On the basis of this observation, and with the film information readily available thanks to the database, we were able to rehabilitate some forgotten gems from that decade for an international audience. A number of students at the host institution are using the database as a research tool for their thesis projects. Once the database concludes its Beta phase and goes public, such impacts will undoubtedly spill out to industry actors and the general public.
The researcher and project supervisor are in conversation with policy experts, lobbying associations (Women in Film, Media and Television Italy) and policy-makers (Ministry of Culture) in order to decide on the best way forward for the use of the database in the effort to redress the persistent gender gap in the Italian film industry at the policy level.
The project database was succesfully used by film programmers, lecturers, researchers, and students during the Action’s timeframe. The data led us, for example, to realise that one of the most underconsidered decades of Italian cinema, the ‘90s, were also the decade that saw the numbers of women’s films momentarily peak over the 10% mark. On the basis of this observation, and with the film information readily available thanks to the database, we were able to rehabilitate some forgotten gems from that decade for an international audience. A number of students at the host institution are using the database as a research tool for their thesis projects. Once the database concludes its Beta phase and goes public, such impacts will undoubtedly spill out to industry actors and the general public.