With alumni working on large scale projects such as Game of Thrones and Avengers, the bright lights and big names tied to the University of Iowa’s Cinematic Arts program overshadowed the 18% drop in female enrollment in the department during the 2018-19 school year.
The UI Office of the Registrar’s Profile of Students Enrolled reported 84 women and 112 men declared the Cinema major in fall 2018. Come spring 2019, the enrollment of women in the major dropped to 69 while the number of men rose to 125. Among the 13 women who dropped the major, junior and former Cinematic Arts major Olivia Williams grew tired of professors disregarding her opinions about misrepresentation in film.
“There was just kind of a weird dynamic between men and women in that aspect,” Williams said. “It felt like there was no room for conversation about the dynamics between males and females in cinema. There was that male awkward silence if we wanted to talk about the male gaze which is heavily sexist and had a very toxic intent behind it.”
During her year and a half in the cinema department, Williams said professors implied discussions about sexism in film were a waste of time.
“[The girls in the class] wanted to create a discussion about the camera angles and how they apply to the objectification of women,” Williams said. “There’s this glass ceiling where you’re allowed to speak your opinions about things, but only so much until we feel like you’re making things uncomfortable.”
While thankful for her time in the department, UI Cinematic Arts Alum and FilmScene Programming Director Rebecca Fons said she also felt frustrated with the lack of conversations in her cinema courses. During her time as a student in the early 2000s, Fons said she was one of two girls in the Cinema major.
“We were sort of like exotic birds because we were the only two girls,” Fons said. “There were very few conversations about the women in film. We really didn’t talk about the femininity or the lack of female characters or the objectification of female characters. There is much more dialogue that kind of thing now.”
Fons said the lack of minority representation in her film classes allowed her to seek out these voices on her own time. Following the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, Fons said she noticed more of an effort to represent and showcase female voices in the industry. More filmmakers hire female or non-binary producers or editors to ensure fair representation in the industry, she said.
To increase representation in the local arena, Fons began a FilmScene program called Women’s March which exclusively featured women and non-binary filmmakers during March in 2018 and 2019. However, this past spring Fons decided FilmScene should celebrate underrepresented filmmakers all year round and began a new series called Reel Representation.
“Once a quarter, there will be some sort of presentation: a special guest or a five-part film series or maybe a panel that focuses on women and gender non-binary artists,” Fons said. “You can’t just say ‘Oh it’s Earth Day, so I’m going to recycle today and that’s it and the other 364 days of the year I’m not going to do it.’ It’s important to practice what you preach, and it’s important to put that effort into what you do all year round.”
Both Williams and Fons said they felt a lack of conversation about social equality in their cinema courses. Assistant professor of Cinematic Arts and internationally recognized independent filmmaker Anahita Ghazvinizadeh said she does not initiate political conversations in her classes to keep her students focused on developing their craft. Ghazvinizadeh also strives to prevent pushing her world views on her students.
“Unless you know how to make an effective film, all these views and beliefs will not be memorable and impactful in your work,” Ghazvinizadeh said. “I have really limited time to help my students get better at the craft. I think the way we communicate our world views through our stories.”
Due to the controversies behind several successful contemporary filmmakers, discussions about sexism, racism and feminism still find their way into Ghazvinizadeh’s class, she said. However, Ghazvinizadeh encourages her students to focus on the work rather than the filmmaker, she said.
Originally from Iran, Ghazvinizadeh finds herself grateful for the career opportunities and safety she has received in America, she said. Iranian culture and heritage labels women as inferior to men, and public spaces are often not safe places for women, she said.
“Gratefulness is something I talk to my students about,” Ghazvinizadeh. “It’s good to be critical, but we shouldn’t become complainers and nag. Like people under the harshest circumstances can survive and find the things they are grateful for.”
In the audio clip above, Cinematic Arts assistant professor Anahita Ghazvinizadeh discusses her experiences in Iran and how it’s impacted her teaching style and cinematic work.
Junior Cinematic Arts major Molly Bagnall said she believes fellow students with differing opinions and closed-minds are the main issue in the department. Students tend to disregard older films, thinking the issues do not apply to today’s culture, she said. While watching a screening of Bagnall’s favorite film “Vertigo,” directed by Alfred Hitchcock, her fellow students deemed the gender dynamics in the film as an outdated issue.
“It sucks more when you’re in a classroom and you’re not sure how to respond,” Bagnall said. “A lot of time someone will say something that I find really upsetting, but it’s in an academic environment.”
Bagnall serves as the Executive Director of Bijou Film Board, a student organization co-sponsored by the University of Iowa and FilmScene. Bijou works to expose students to films from a variety of genres, eras, filmmakers and more. The limited exposure students receive to diverse films is harming their film education and their understanding of the world around them, Bagnall said.
“I want them to walk into a class screening about a weird documentary or an experimental film about feminism or about the gay-rights movement or about the black power movement and watch it and let the film say something to them,” Bagnall said.
While Ghazvinizadeh believes it is important to focus on the film rather than its creators, Bagnall said she prefers to dive into the true intentions behind the films that are made by large corporations like Disney.
“You can’t say that you’re getting a full film education if the only films played at theatres are directed by white people,” Bagnall said. “Right now, there’s a lot of conventional films coming out like Black Panther. I don’t think that is the perfect or necessarily the best example of representation on screen because it’s still feeding into a corporation, a multi-million dollar corporation. That’s great, but what are Marvel and Disney doing that challenges any other black filmmaker to actually get work out?”