Film Culture: Beyond the Male Gaze

Free and open to the public!

When dramatic feature films are about to be released, who decides whether they are good? Who decides whether they will be shown at major film festivals? Who tells audiences which new films they should go to see? The reality is that the majority of gatekeepers and taste makers are white men.

This panel will address how we as the film community can create change and how can we open film culture up to include all genders and cultures. Co-presented with New York Women in Film & Television.

Marian Masone, Senior Programming Advisor for the Film Society of Lincoln Center, will moderate this interactive problem-solving session.

Panelists:

Anne Hubbell is one of the founders of Tangerine Entertainment, a production company and community builder for films by women directors. She has produced films, television and web content, managed and programmed film festivals and covered the industry for various publications. She works with hundreds of studio and independent projects as a feature film account manager for Kodak. Anne serves on the boards of the NY Production Alliance, NY Women in Film & Television and Rooftop Films.

Moikgantsi Kgama is the founder of ImageNation. A former audience development specialist for independent films targeting communities of color, Moikgantsi built a reputation for excellence in her field. She has been credited with the successful launch of Raoul Peck’s independent epic “LUMUMBA” that appeared on HBO and was accepted for Academy Award nomination. Moikgantsi served as publicist for the groundbreaking documentary “LIFE & DEBT,” which appeared on PBS in August 2001, and was the New York City promotions coordinator for the independent film “FOLLOW ME HOME” starring Alfre Woodard and Benjamin Bratt. Moikgantsi also served as a filmmaker coordinator for 1998 The Sundance Film Festival.

Carrie Rickey was film critic of The Philadelphia Inquirer for 25 years where she reviewed everything from Room With a View to Shame, interviewed celebrities from Lillian Gish to Will Smith, and reported on technological breakthroughs from the rise of video to the introduction of movies on-demand. She has taught at various institutions including School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania, is a popular speaker and has appeared frequently on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, MSNBC and CNN. She also wrote art criticism for Artforum and Art in America, film criticism for the Village Voice and Film Comment and was a columnist for Mademoiselle.

Nancy Schafer is a producer who works in independent film. She is the Executive Producer of The Battered Bastards of Baseball (Sundance 2014) and Producer of 7 Chinese Brothers (in post production). She is the Executive Producer of the forthcoming documentaries American (ESP)ionage and Science Fiction Land. Schafer worked at and ran the Tribeca Film Festival from inception until July 2012, a period of 11 years. She was the Executive Director of Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) and the Executive Vice President of Tribeca Enterprises (TE). As a consultant Schafer continues to work with Tribeca as well as other established and start-up film businesses and filmmakers. Prior to joining Tribeca, she created and ran the South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW Film) in Austin, Texas. lives in Manhattan.