Italian filmmaker Elena Rossini is Watch Russian Mom (2016) Korean movieshedding some much-needed light on women and minority creators with her project This Is What a Film Director Looks Like, which just highlighted its 100th filmmaker: Rossini herself.
With This Is What a Film Director Looks Like, Rossini is populating the popular online GIF database Giphy with GIFs of women and minority filmmakers. On Friday she uploaded her 100th GIF; you can check them all out on her Giphy page.
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Rossini started her project in September 2017 with the first GIF, celebrating Haifaa Al-Mansour, a Saudi Arabian director whose film Wadjdabecame the first Saudi Arabian movie submitted for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars.
Via GiphyIn the months since she has created GIFs for such filmmakers as Lana Wachowski, Gina Rodriguez, Greta Gerwig, Ava DuVernay, Sofia Copolla, Daisy Zhou, and Tracee Ellis Ross, to name a few.
While the focus of Rossini's project primarily covers women in filmmaking, she has also highlighted men of color who are directors, including Ryan Coogler (Black Panther) and Jordan Peele (Get Out).
On her website, Rossini explains the reasoning behind her project and why it's been important for her to increase the visibility of directors who are not white men.
Via Giphy"Since graduating from film school, my number one challenge as a working director has been the issue of credibility," she writes. "Whenever I introduce myself and say that I am a filmmaker, the first follow up question is invariably: 'Oh are you a film student?' or 'Ah, what kind of little videosdo you make?' At a professional conference not long ago, a woman actually asked me if I shoot my films on my iPhone. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. I decided to be proactive, to speak up, and to engage in everyday actions that would promote the visibility of women directors."
It's a well-known fact that women and people of color are vastly underrepresented in the film industry both in front of and behind the camera. With This Is What A Film Directors Looks Like, Rossini is hoping that added visibility for minority filmmakers will inspire other minorities to pursue filmmaking as a career and, in turn, help diversify the industry over time.
Via Giphy"Users of platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Slack routinely use GIFs to illustrate their messages," Rossini writes. "Given the scarcity of animated GIFs showing female filmmakers, I thought I would do my part and make some available."
Rossini noted on her website that her project seems to be working.
"Before, when you searched for 'film director,' the first results would all be male directors like David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock and Park Chan-Wook," she writes. "I can proudly report that two months since the launch, now my GIF of Saudi director Haifaa al-Mansour is one of the top results."
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