The screening portion of Flicks by Chicks is Saturday at Alamo Drafthouse Cedars at 6 p.m.
In the film industry, women are drastically underrepresented behind the camera. Only 7 percent of last year’s 250 highest grossing films were directed by women, according to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State. The same study showed only 17 percent of other significant roles including producer, writer, cinematographer and editor — a 2 percent drop from the year before — were held by women. For sixteen years Women in Film Dallas has ventured to balance the scales with Flicks by Chicks, a workshop series complete with a festival of short films to show and encourage work by women.
Founded in 1984, Women In Film Dallas mentors and empowers women working in film and entertainment through awards, festivals, and scholarships.
Paula Goldberg, senior programmer and a pillar of the Dallas film community, expresses pride in the broad-spectrum focus of the festival.
“There’s a really terrific variety of films. I like them all for different reasons and I love how there’s different people with different tastes and different talents,” Goldberg says.
According to Goldberg, all the films are “female-forward in different ways.” Ophelia’s End shifts focus to the women of Shakespeare’s normally male dominated Hamlet, depicting a partnership between Ophelia and Gertrude, Ctrl Alt Delete is an abortion comedy, while Kaleidoscope Days is about a forced family road trip.
Flicks by Chicks is a unique educational summit as it seeks to have a positive influence on young women aspiring to careers in film by exhibiting the work of emerging women filmmakers, a quality reflected by its administrators. Niloo Jalilvand, former curator and current director of Flicks by Chicks, is the chair of both mathematics and video arts at Booker T. Washington HSVPA and an established member of the Dallas film community.
“I’m a proud educator. There are a lot of educators on the WIFD board as well as the Flicks by Chicks committee,” she says. “We want to influence our society as a whole so we put in extra work and extra hours to do something we think is important. Educators are some of the most important mentors in some of my students lives.”
Born in Iran to a family of actors, Jalilvand attended boarding school in London, undergraduate at Texas A&M, and grad school at UTD.
“My graduate level math classes were dominated by men. Sometimes it can be intimidating when you are the only female or maybe you’re two out of ten. I try to be resilient, strong emotionally, and not feel out of place. I try to feel comfortable in those circles. That lesson I learned I try to share with the students in my classroom both in mathematics and in film and video classes.”
Goldberg and Jalilvand are just as passionately vocal about the Dallas element of the festival as the women’s element.
“I hope it will make a lot of money for the grants and scholarships,” Goldberg tells me. “Film cannot be done cheaply, so women need to be supported emotionally and fiscally. We have to support ourselves because our politicians are turning their backs on us and trying to take away funding because they’re misguided. People who make a significant living and love Texas and don’t want to leave Texas. That would love to be an artist in Texas. That don’t want to move to New York or LA or Atlanta.”
Goldberg was referring to a recent movement by state legislators to cut incentives for filmmakers in Texas, which drove the FX production The Gifted to leave Dallas in favor of friendlier locations. However, both women remain largely optimistic about the future for women in the Dallas film community.
“Independent filmmakers are coming up that I’m excited about Our motivation is to create a platform for filmmakers to take hold of leadership positions in an industry that has a huge influence on our society, on young women. We need to take control of the narrative,” Jalilvand says.
Film cannot adequately represent humanity so long as half of human beings are largely excluded from the industry. The flicks are “by chicks,” but they’re for everyone. Film is for everyone, but it can only really be for everyone once everyone is making it.
As Goldberg puts it: “We love the shared experience. You’re in a comfy seat with your friends. You’ve got your popcorn and your candy. You’re feeling. Film is life.”
