From Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood (http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood):

Inspired by the French group La Barbe’s Manifesto, I put together the petition below which I hope you will sign.

Please make your voices heard.

Thank you-

Melissa Silverstein
Women and Hollywood

________________________________________________________________________________

To the Jurors of the Cannes Film Festival:

You will spend the next 11 days watching 22 films that the programmers and leaders of the Cannes Film Festival deemed to be the most worthy of this year’s competition.

The Cannes Film Festival is one of the most prestigious festivals in the world. Films from the Festival have gone on to have long and successful lives including last year’s Oscar winner The Artist, and filmmakers careers have been launched on the Croisette.

The opportunities to have your film seen on a world stage is invaluable. For the 2012 edition, like the 2010 edition, there are NO FEMALE DIRECTED FILMS in competition, and in the 64 prior years of the Festival only one woman — Jane Campion — has been awarded the Palme D’Or.

Festival director Thierry Fremaux responded to the recent manifesto from La Barbe a French feminist action group which decried the lack of women by saying:

“I select work on the basis of it actual qualities. We would never agree to select a film that doesn’t deserve it on the basis it was made by a woman. That would lead to a quota policy that would undermine the cause…There is no doubt that greater space needs to be given to women within cinema. But it’s not at Cannes and in the month of May that this question needs to be raised, but rather all year and everywhere. Women’s rights need be defended beyond Cannes, which is a consequence and illustration of what is going on. It makes sense to highlight the problem during Cannes, but accusing the festival doesn’t serve anybody.”

Mr. Fremaux is right to suggest that women’s rights need to be addressed on a year round basis. This issue must be addressed for the future health and livelihood of the film industry, and people need to recognize that a Festival of this level that does not include women’s voices and women’s perspectives in the competition is not a festival that reflects the current world view.

We call for transparency in how films are selected and a commitment to diversity that includes female filmmakers in the future.

Additionally, we the undersigned call for an industry wide discussion about this problem and we call on the leaders of all the major film festivals and film entities throughout the world to step up and agree to be a part of a dialogue on how we can to quote Mr. Fremaux, “create a greater space for women within cinema.”

Signed-

BRAVA, MELISSA! Add me in as Jan Lisa Huttner WITASWAN

I saw VIRGIN at an IFP/Chgo screening the year it was nominated for a Spirit Award (’04), & I posted an interview with [then unknown] star Elizabeth Moss on the website “Reel Chicago” the very next week. A year later, when the DVD came out, I posted a long interview with Deborah on FF2: http://www.films42.com/chats/deborah_kampmeier.asp. I also wrote a mini-review of VIRGIN in one of the bimonthly features I was writing at that time for Chicago Woman: http://www.films42.com/treasures/mother_daughter.asp.

Because of these activities, I was furious about the brouhaha that accompanied her screening of HOUNDDOG at Sundance in ’07. I even contacted the Public Editor at USA TODAY to complain about their coverage. Deborah sent me a screener & later asked me to write a letter to help her get it released. When HOUNDDOG played in Chicago, I arranged a private reception (http://www.thehotpinkpen.com/?p=676), & paid one of my AWJ colleagues to review it for FF2: http://www.films42.com/guests/hounddog.asp. (Since I had been involved in the effort to have it released, I felt I could not also be an “objective” critic of the final product.)

Suffice it to say I am very eager now to see Deborah’s new film LONELY HUNTER!

This case further proves my point: the films [by women filmmakers] are out there; what’s missing is the audience! In PENNY’S PICKS, I barely scatch the surface