Oscar winners and Taormina Film Festival jury members Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Sandy Powell joined a panel here dubbed “Women, Not Divas” to speak about the state of the industry and provide insight into their own experiences.
The Holdovers star Randolph, who is jury president, was fairly bullish on the future, noting the emergence of a “sisterhood.” Still, “it requires resilience, it requires standing up for yourself and the power of saying no, and advocacy.”
She noted an “empowering” movement regarding salaries: “Prior, to the idea of how much someone made, they kept that very private. So,” she said turning to her fellow panelists, “let’s say we just got cast in a movie and we’re in the negotiation process; historically, you would go out with your team and negotiate your deal and just hope for the best. Now, what I’m seeing is happening… we will reach out while we’re in the middle of negotiations to say, ‘Hey, this is what they’re asking me for, what is it looking like for you?’… It can be, ‘I’m getting more of this with less of that’, and so it’s about sharing. It breaks that barrier from them trying to manipulate or downsize us, that’s been something that’s been very powerful.”
She added the importance of “being brave enough to stand up for yourself” and on a personal level said that “as a minority” she is “very clear the types of roles that I want to play and what themes they embody, so that they are not stereotypes and they are strong women with a message.”
Randolph further said that to support female directors, she’s on board even if she’s not always entirely convinced. “Sometimes, even if I don’t love (a project), if it is decent and if it is a woman director and I see her vision – I may not 100% agree with it – I’ll do it… I know how hard it is. The first two times it may not be amazing, but also she’s not going to forget that… and next thing you know, five years from now I’m begging to be in her new movie. So, that’s what I mean about a sisterhood.”
Veteran costume designer Powell, for her part, pointed out that the majority of costume designers in the industry are women while the majority of set designers are men. She remarked that on big productions, “Costume designers get a lot less than set designers even though we have exactly the same responsibilities — we’re running huge departments, we’re responsible for millions of budget, we’re heads of department, we contribute in exactly the same way to the end product of a film — yet somehow get considerably less.”
Also touching on the sisterhood theme, she said, “Costume designers, we’re all friends and we’re all transparent… We’re doing our best to sort of raise our voices about parity with production design.”
Sharing anecdotal insight from her prolific career, Powell said, “I’ve designed costumes for over 50 films — and I’ve designed more clothes for men than for women, so what we need is more stories about women.”
Also on the panel was Cannes Film Festival President and former Warner Bros executive, Iris Knobloch, who spoke of the responsibility of film festivals. “We need to shine light on women as we are doing today, we need to encourage women to have the confidence and also to give them the limelight,” as she cited such recent Cannes successes as Justine Triet (Titane) and Coralie Fargeat (The Substance).
Having a wink at her own institution, Knobloch added, “Just think about it: the Cannes Film Festival had to wait 75 years to have the first female president… There’s still a long way to go.”
