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How to improve women’s visibility by Festival de Cans

10 ways to improve women's visibility envisaged by Festival de Cans

The Festival de Cans started in 2005 - not the world famous French festival - but a celebration of films, music and the spirit of creation taking place in the homonymous small Galician village. Sharing almost same dates on the film calendar as its French soundalike, the Spanish festival offers a window on upcoming projects.

In this year's edition of the festival (13!), a declaration on gender equality is being launched. This is a manifesto of 10 measures to be adopted in order to improve women's visibility, starting with the Cans Festival.

In order to generate debate and devise opportunities for reflection, these 10 measures are being shared here:

How to improve women's visibility in film:

1. The main Jury must include a high proportion(40%) of prominent women from the film business.

2. The Local Resident Jury must include an equal number of women and men.

3. The Music Video Jury (4 people) must have equal share of women working in Film or Music.

4. The Festival de Cans is committed to enhancing women's visibility and acknowledging theirachievements through its main prize, the Pedigree award. The commitment is to maximise the visibility of women's work. This year, the multi-awarded producer Emma Lustres (Cell 211, El Niño, Retribution) will receive the award

5. The Festival de Cans is determined to choose for the official competition as many films directed by women as possible, depending on the quality and number of the films submitted.

6. The Festival de Cans is determined to choose for the music video competition as many videosdirected by women as possible, depending on the quality and number of the films submitted.

7. The Festival de Cans will ensure the presence of more women in creative positions in the Festival programme.

8. In the section “A que andas” (What you are up to?),focused on scripts in development or just before production, at least 40% of these projects must have been written/directed by women.

9. In the section“Fill@s de Cans” (Cans' offspring) where first images of forthcoming films from directors who were previously screened at the Festival de Cans, the festival is determined to choose 40% minimum of films directed/produced by women.

10. The Festival de Cans will include as many women as possible in coordination and key positions of the festival organization.

Out of competition, in the section "sen un can", showcasing Galician films which hardly had distribution, they are going to screen 3 out of 5 films directed by women.