The gender balance in Australian filmmaking is shifting but still has a long way to go, according to new figures released by Screen Australia.
The number of female-led films receiving production funding from the agency has increased by 77 per cent in just two years, up from 22 per cent of all projects in 2014-15 to 39 per cent in 2016-17.
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Gender Matters funding recipients announced
The fifty-eight recipients of Screen Australiaâs Gender Matters initiative will share in a combined funding pool of over $3 million to address gender imbalance in the industry.
That is still short, however, of the 50 per cent split set by Screen Australia as a target (but not as a quota) when it announced its Gender Matters strategy in December 2015.
"This data stands as a reminder that just because gender equality in the screen industry has been a point of discussion doesn't mean that it's translating into action industry-wide, particularly in feature film," said Fiona Cameron, the agency's chief operating officer. "Whilst we are getting close to gender parity across the titles that receive our production funding, the results are uneven, with the television and online sectors continuing to do the heavy lifting."
![Aisling Franciosi, who appeared as Katie Benedetto in The Fall, stars in Jennifer Kent's movie The Nightingale.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170810024958im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/q/u/p/m/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxql40.png/1502115567969.jpg)
A female-led team is defined as having women in at least 50 per cent of the key creative roles: writer, director, producer and protagonist (lead character). Thus, while The Dressmaker (2015) – which had a female writer-director (Jocelyn Moorhouse), producer (Sue Maslin) and protagonist (Kate Winslet's Tilly Dunnage) – might represent an ideal, a project written by a man and directed by a man could still qualify if it were about a woman and produced by a woman.
The agency launched the Gender Matters program in late 2015, with research highlighting the issue and a suite of initiatives and funding designed to elicit more female-led projects.
One of the first films to attract support through the new program was The Nightingale, a convict-era thriller set in Tasmania from writer-director Jennifer Kent, whose 2014 feature The Babadook was a hit internationally.
The Nightingale stars Irish-Italian actress Aisling Franciosi – who was briefly seen in Game of Thrones as Lyanna Stark – as a young female convict who hires a male Aboriginal tracker to hunt down the soldiers responsible for the brutal murder of her family.
![A rare breed: Film director Jocelyn Moorhouse.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170810024958im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/r/c/s/f/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxql40.png/1502115567969.jpg)
The new analysis, released by Screen Australia at the Melbourne International Film Festival on Sunday, covers film, television, documentary and multi-platform (predominantly web series) production, and shows that across the board 48 per cent of projects that received production investment met the criteria last financial year.
TV fared best, with 67 per cent of productions that received SA funding meeting the 50 per cent female target. Documentary was at 43 per cent and multi-platform at 52 per cent.
In announcing Gender Matters in 2015, Screen Australia revealed analysis covering the years 1970 to 2015 that showed only 30 per cent of producers working in film, 16 per cent of directors and 21 per cent of writers were female.
The figures weren't merely historic, either. Identifying as currently active – which meant they had had at least one credit in the preceding five years – the numbers were remarkably similar: 32 per cent of producers, 16 per cent of directors and 23 per cent of writers were female.
This is despite the fact that close to half of graduates from the country's film schools in each of those areas are female.
Tackling this gender imbalance isn't merely being driven by a desire to do the right thing. It also makes good business sense. Women make up close to half the cinema audience, and more than half in the 50+ age range.
This is why Screen Australia claims it has wide-ranging support for its push to get more women telling stories.
"We know feature film as an art form needs attention," said Joanna Werner, chair of the Gender Matters taskforce. "We know not enough female writers and directors are working. These are lost opportunities, culturally and commercially.
Added Cameron: "The whole industry is along for the ride in recognition of the overriding commercial imperative."
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