This Changes Everything at TIFF 2018
Written By: Margaux Fortier
This Changes Everything, a documentary by Tom Donahue, made its world premiere at the 2018 Toronto Film Festival. Not only was it the first time that the film had been shown in front of an audience, but Director Tom Donahue and Executive Producer Geena Davis were on site to hold a Q&A following the screening at Roy Thomson Hall.
This Changes Everything discusses the splintered and discouraged progress of women in the world of Hollywood’s silver screen throughout history. Political, social, legal, and financial agendas have led to discrimination in female achievement in front of the camera as well as behind it. This documentary brought together some of the biggest advocates for women’s rights in the film and television industry, including Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman, Sandra Oh, Cate Blanchett, Jessica Chastain, and many others to shed light on the struggles of the past and the trajectory of change for the future.
One organization at the forefront of change in Hollywood is The Geena Davis Institute on Gender In Media, whose main goals are to study media trends and eliminate bias and stereotypes. The first major study that the institute conducted was an analysis of children’s media and the gender imbalance within it. Geena Davis believes that children’s media is where the first change will probably happen, since the results of her studies were so undeniably conclusive on gender bias. Since children are so influenced by the media that they consume on a daily basis, it is important to empower and encourage young women within that media.
One very important concept that Geena Davis has brought forward is the idea of the CSI Effect. Though modern justice departments have their own version of The CSI Effect, Geena Davis is referring to the effect that media has on the world that we live in. In the mid-2000s, there was a strong influx of young women entering educational and job training programs related to forensic science and investigation. This has been directly linked to television beginning to introduce female forensic scientists and forensic investigators on CSI, CSI Miami, Bones, and others. A similar change happened in the field of archery after the films The Hunger Games and Brave depicted strong young women with a bow and arrow, causing more young women to be learning archery than adult men.
If this is the effect that women in media can have, it makes exposure to all fields and interests of greater importance to build a diverse and capable workforce and society. Women of all races, religions, and backgrounds throughout film, television, and other media are in need of complex, realistic characters that can stand on their own and make a difference. Many strides have come recently, with the strength of the Me Too and Time’s Up movements and the Women’s Marches all over the globe, but Geena Davis and Tom Donahue remind us that there is so much more work to be done.
The headline, This Changes Everything, has been written in the past about films like Thelma & Louise and A League of Their Own, to say that it will start a wave of female driven films that never seem to happen. With the momentum that is charging through our society now, women are due to rise and continue rising at last. This Changes Everything matters to the world of women in media and sheds light on the change we can achieve.
This Changes Everything is screening at Hamptons International Film Festival on October 6 and Chicago International Film Festival on October 14.
https://www.tiff.net/tiff/this-changes-everything/
Margaux of Media Women Worldwide at the #shareherjourney wall outside Roy Thomson Hall.
