A recent dip in female-led theatrical releases in the UK - back to 2018 levels of 26% reminds us that our work is far from over; that we cannot be complacent.
Below you can read about the research we conduct into gender representation in film and the wider industry, tracking the release landscape to present an accurate picture of investment in films by filmmakers of marginalised genders.
Here you can also find out about news and opportunities at Reclaim The Frame, along with curated film recommendations, filmmaker interviews, and creative responses.
Updated: May 10, 2023
It is with great pleasure that we present the full Queerious programme and reveal the commissioned artwork for the season by illustrator Javie Huxley.
Queerious invites you to get curious and explore a multitude of desires on screen in ways all too rarely seen in cinema. Through stories of sexual awakenings and re-awakenings, and queer love through a feminist lens, this curated season aims to help us to question, learn and enjoy our sexual selves. Each film is a collaboratively made DIY discovery in its own way, freed from the restrictions of mainstream filmmaking and ‘queerious’ in its making.
We will be touring Queerious to cinemas across the UK including:
Meanwhile, audiences can explore more films online through our Queerious selection available now on BFI Player.
2-8 July 2022:
I’VE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING by Patricia Rozema (Canada 1987, 81’)
Aspiring photographer Polly develops a fascination for her new boss through their shared love of art. A playful comedy offering a humorous and complex look at desire between women.
+ short film WAVELENGTHS by Pratibha Parmar (UK 1997, 15’)
Left with a broken heart and an empty goldfish tank, Mona searches for love and human intimacy via gay bars and cyberspace.
Writer-director Patricia Rozema will be in conversation at the Rio, London screening on 2 July, with support from the High Commission of Canada in the UK.
Screenings:
Rio, London / Sat 2 July, 3.45pm – Followed by in-person conversation with director Patricia Rozema, moderated by Birds’ Eye View’s Melanie Iredale
GFT, Glasgow / Weds 6 July, 8.15pm – Introduced by Glasgow Film Theatre
Showroom, Sheffield / Thurs 7 July, 8.30pm – Introduced by Birds’ Eye View’s Melanie Iredale
QFT, Belfast Fri 8 July, 6.20pm
Komedia, Brighton / Sun 31 July 5.00pm Introduced by Birds’ Eye View’s Rui Jin (TBC)
11-17 July 2022:
THE GOLD DIGGERS by Sally Potter (UK 1983, 89’)
Sally Potter’s ground-breaking debut explores themes of power in relation to capitalism and sexuality. A musical comic adventure featuring Julie Christie and Colette Laffont as two star-crossed lovers on quests that subvert the Hollywood norm.
+ short film ARE YOU STILL WATCHING? by Sissy Screens: Tali Polichtuk & Kitty Chrystal (Australia 2021, 6’)
A short animation about lockdown boredom, cinema, erotic fantasies and the emancipatory power of the queer imagination.
Screenings:
Showroom, Sheffield / Wed 13 July, 6pm – followed by post-screening discussion around collective filmmaking and watching with Club Des Femmes’ So Mayer, feminist film theorist Jackie Stacey, and Birds’ Eye View’s Melanie Iredale + badge making workshop. Presented in partnership with Club Des Femmes.
GFT, Glasgow / Thu 14 July, 8.15pm – Introduced by Club Des Femmes’ Ania Ostrowska & Birds Eye View’s Xuanlin Tham. Presented in partnership with Club Des Femmes.
Komedia, Brighton / Thu 14 July, 7.30pm – Introduced by Birds Eye View’s Rui Jin
QFT, Belfast / Fri 15 July, 8.50pm. Presented in partnership with Club Des Femmes.
Rio, London /Screening on 35mm / Introduced by Club Des Femmes’ So Mayer and Birds’ Eye View’s Melanie Iredale followed by a post-screening conversation, with filmmaker Sally Potter who will join virtually. Presented in partnership with Club Des Femmes.
12-24 July 2022:
FIRE by Deepa Mehta (India/Canada 1996, 108’)
(In)famous for being the first Bollywood film to feature a lesbian relationship, Fire tells the story of Sita and Radha, two young women abandoned by their husbands, who find intimacy and passion in each other.
Screenings:
HOME, Manchester / Tue 12 July, 6pm – Presented in partnership with A City Seen / House of Spice. With a post screening discussion + vogue performances with Lucky Roy Singh, Jazzy Spice/BollyButch, Huss, Bengum Spice and Saffy Saffron Spice.
Chapter, Cardiff / Sat 16 July, 2.30pm
GFT, Glasgow / Wed 20 July, 5.30pm – Introduced by Birds’ Eye View’s Xuanlin Tham and followed by spoken word performance and workshop with Bee Asha.
Showroom, Sheffield / Wed 20 July, 8.30pm – Introduced by Birds’ Eye View’s Toni Lee
Komedia, Brighton / Thu 21 July, 6.00pm – Introduced by Birds’ Eye View’s Cristina Garcia
QFT, Belfast / Fri 22, 8.50pm
Rio, London / Sun 24 July, 3.45pm – Introduced by Birds’ Eye View’s Isra Al Kassi
28-31 July 2022:
PASSION by Maja Borg (Sweden/Spain 2021, 92’)
A film about longing, healing and belonging. Adopting rituals and play from queer BDSM practice, filmmaker Maja Borg seeks to reclaim intimacy and re-establish boundaries in sex and love as a means of reclaiming themself.
+ short film ISHTAR by Mia Georgis (UK 2021, 4’)
Exploring the coloniality of gender, Ishtar, the deity of love, hosts a feast for five gender non-conforming siblings of colour in an English country garden.
Screenings:
GFT, Glasgow / Thu 28 July, 8.30pm – Introduced by Birds’ Eye View’s Xuanlin Tham
Showroom, Sheffield / Thu 28 July, 8.45pm – Introduced by Birds’ Eye View’s Toni Lee
Komedia, Brighton / Tue 26 July, 8:50pm – Introduced by Birds’ Eye View’s Rui Jin
QFT, Belfast / Fri 29 July, 9pm
Rio, London / Sun 31 July, 3.45pm – Introduced by Birds’ Eye View’s Isra Al Kassi
About Javie Huxley:
Commissioned artist Javie Huxley is a British-Chilean illustrator based in London, and the co-chair for Save Latin Village. Following Javie’s MA in Children’s Literature & Illustration, her main focus has been on socially engaged editorial illustration for magazines such as gal-dem and shado mag. Javie strongly believes in the importance of art as advocacy, her work focuses on themes such as identity and current social issues. Javie loves to use her art to celebrate and platform marginalised voices in the UK. @javhux
About Birds Eye View:
Reclaim the Frame brings a broader perspective of the world by championing cinema by women & non-binary filmmakers. Run by Birds’ Eye View, a charity with a mission to advocate for equity, diversity, and inclusion in film by fostering a community for those who make, show, release and watch them.
To learn more, become an Advocate and join the #ReclaimTheFrame mission to receive free cinema tickets and discount codes go to Bit.ly/BEVRTF. Supported by BFI’s Audience Fund.
@birdseyeview_film & @film.feels on Instagram
@BirdEyeViewRTF & @Film_Feels on Twitter
Queerious is part of Film Feels Curious, a UK-wide cinema season, supported by the National Lottery and BFI Film Audience Network. Explore all films and events at FILMFEELS #FilmFeelsCurious
Updated: May 10, 2023
Article published: SCREENDAILY written by MONA TABBARA PUBLISHED 16 JUNE 2022
It’s a long game, undoing what we all expect to watch on the big screen
says Melanie Iredale, director of UK gender equality group Birds’ Eye View (BEV), the organisation that campaigns to support the perspectives of women and non-binary people in all film spaces, and to combat systematic oppression in the industry for marginalised groups.
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The Yorkshire-born and Sheffield-based former deputy director at Sheffield Doc Fest took up the position in September after director-at-large Mia Bays departed to become director of the British Film Institute (BFI) Film Fund.
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Iredale has taken up the mantle during a tense period for the industry, faced with various waves of Covid uncertainty, the looming threat of the cost of living crisis on cinema attendance and some sobering data on the number of films made by women and released in the UK.
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According to data collected by BEV, in 2021, 166 films made by women (director, co-director, and/or writer or co-writer with at least 50% female credit) were released (theatrically and on online platforms in response to pandemic lockdowns) in the UK, accounting for 30% of all UK film releases that year. This was a 1% increase from 2020.
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In the first three months of 2022, the percentage of films made by women and released theatrically in the UK stood at 22% – 8% lower than in 2021. This is possibly owing to the Covid-induced backlog of US studio films released at the start of the year, that tend to be skewed towards being created by men. “Maybe it’s not something to be alarmed by. Let’s wait and see if the figure levels out,” notes Iredale.
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The data is rather more concerning for non-white female filmmakers – 22 non-white female directors out of a total of 118 female directed or co-directed films were released in the UK in 2021, or 19%. This is far lower than 33% in 2020, and is just 2% higher than the 2017 level (17%).
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♥In short, there’s plenty of work for BEV to do. Iredale identifies that it’s “across the board” in the industry that change need to be happen – and she’s started by reflecting on her own organisation.
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“To be best placed to continue to advocate for safe, fair, non-hierarchical, non-patriarchal, non-colonised working practices, all organisations need to start by looking inwards and holding a mirror to itself and undergoing a period of intense reflection,” says Iredale. “That’s not to say the [BEV] house wasn’t in order, but it was important for me to start from the beginning, so I can be part of that process and that way of working.
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“It has been about building on work that has already been done and led by the values we set out as an organisation. We want to create space where everyone is free to raise their hand and say, ‘This doesn’t feel right’ on any one decision. Our values come down to vulnerability, compassion, care, openness and showing up.
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“I’m feeling the effects of an organisation that’s really been developed to challenge patriarchy,” she adds. “There’s something about the way in which we work that is very compassionate.”
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The BEV board of trustees no longer has a chair, with members taking it in turn to facilitate meetings, on a 10-week cycle. A recent new hire is Isra Al Kassi as BEV’s head of programmes and audience development. Al Kassi is co-founder of T A P E Collective, a grassroots movement that works to programme film-based events as a response to a lack of representation on screen. “I’m really interested in what organisations like ours – yes we’re small but we’re also BFI funded, we’re part of the industry – can be learning from collectives. If I’m thinking about how we create safe spaces, I’m looking at what collectives like T A P E are doing. In terms of festivals, I’m looking at SQIFF [Scottish LGBTQ+ festival], rather than the bigger mainstream festivals.”
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Five impact producers have also been hired, based across the UK, to represent BEV’s community-building Reclaim The Frame initiative, and bolster the organisation’s commitment to decentralising. An additional impact producer is currently being sought in Cardiff.
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BEV has branched out internationally, through its Reclaim The Frame x International project, supported by the British Council and launched this year to chime with International Women’s Day.
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A programme of films has been curated with international women’s film festivals, which is being circulated around the partnering festivals: Beirut International Women Film Festival (Lebanon), Flying Broom Foundation (Turkey), Regards de Femmes: Festival International de Film de Femmes (Tunisia) and Women Make Waves International Film Festival (Taiwan). Nazlı Elif Durlu’s Zuhal, Zeina Daccache’s The Blue Inmates, Leyla Bouzid’s A Tale Of Love And Desire and Celeste Bell and Paul Sng’s Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché are the titles currently taking part.
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The Filmonomics business training programme for filmmakers from marginalised genders – in its sixth iteration in the UK – is also now expanding, with a free online programme being made available to filmmakers from or based in Lebanon, Turkey, Tunisia and Taiwan, to launch on August 24 and run until International Women’s Day 2023 (March 8). Iredale notes the projects are about working “reciprocally” with international partners. “I’m interested in importing culture, as much as exporting,” she says.
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Iredale is keen to continue to diversify the BEV slate: “I’m really interested in how we continue to push boundaries in terms of form and geography. I’m committed to showing more work where we can from the Global South and parts of the world we see less on screen, and to explore opportunities to work with films that haven’t got distribution yet.”
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July sees BEV’s freshly curated Queerious programme being taken to cinemas across the UK – a mixture of retrospectives and previews of new work that looks at queer love through a feminist lens, including Sally Potter’s The Gold Diggers and Deepa Mehta’s Fire. In August, Reclaim The Frame will also be supporting the release of Nana Mensah’s Tribeca premiere Queen Of Glory, alongside Bohemia Media, about a Ghanaian-American woman who decides to abandon her Ivy League doctoral programme in New York to follow her married lover to Ohio, only for tragedy to scupper her plans.
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There’s also the question of what the review of the BFI’s National Lottery funding strategy for the next 10 years might mean for the organisation’s future. BEV currently receives less than half of its funding from the BFI, with the rest made up through its own fundraising.
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“We’ve fed into the consultation and in the feedback from the first round of consultations, the number one concern or priority for both public and industry stakeholders who took part in that conversation was about diversity,” says Iredale. “That’s huge. Obviously, how the BFI responds to that, and how we all respond to that, is key. It’s not enough that it’s a concern.”
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Iredale has been director since September 2021.
Updated: May 10, 2023
Birds’ Eye View is seeking to contract a freelance Impact Producer in Cardiff to work with us on our mission to champion films by women & non-binary people.
The appointed individual will creatively input and effectively deliver local outreach activity and events in select cities as part of our Reclaim the Frame project. You will be passionate about community building and about using communications to further the conversations presented by the films we support.
The Role
Contract: Freelance, fixed term
Days: 2-3 days per month, worked flexibly throughout the month
Tenure: 6 month contract, July-December 2022
Fee: £150 per day, up to £450 per month
Deadline to apply: 10am on Thursday 30 June 2022
Supported by Film Hub Wales as part of the BFI Film Audience Network (FAN), made possible by the National Lottery.
