Women in Film & TV

Yes it does seem like this blog is quite inconsistent and rather neglected.

If you feel that way, I completely agree with you. But, here’s why…

While the blog suffers, I am tenaciously crafting my career as a director/producer in film and TV whilst attentively raising two children.

My life is one of constant deadlines – client deadlines, funding grant application deadlines, and film industry brief deadlines. And as a shape-shifter in an indie production company with skeleton staff my lot is huge. And then there are the responsibilities of motherhood of two children at completely different junctures in life – a one year old whom I am still breast-feeding and a ten-year-old tween girl undergoing pre-pubescent hormonal changes. These two require two completely different skills palettes from me as their Mother. So despite my inundated life, I felt it necessary to write a post in honour of woman’s month, being a woman in film and TV. The industry climate in my city is incredibly male dominated. My trajectory as a woman in film has been slowed down by two years, a ten-month precarious pregnancy, in which I was advised by my doctors not to work. I handed over many responsibilities to my partner/husband, and then followed by the actuality and responsibility, which came with my beautiful son. Not to mention the porridge brain alongside pregnancy and breast-feeding.

Having said that, I have had an amazing positive report on all of my writing application endeavours over the past 12 months, this includes applications for film grants and broadcast commissioning briefs. So I craft my writing at night, during gaps of client work and baby sleeping time. I push myself to meet these deadlines whilst partially running our indie company, breast-feeding a baby leading to minimal sleep and remaining attentive to my ten year old.

Somedays, I really feel like a slave to my passion/livelihood

Despite the popular notion that my husband should take care of our family – I persist as my ambitions as a filmmaker is not only bound to money but rather visualising an ideal and seeing that come to fruition.

I spent the first seven months of this year writing and developing a documentary film titled “District Six – Rising from the Dust”. The National Film and Video Foundation of South Africa funded this process.

I clearly remember the day I submitted my application. My boy was three months old and very attached, my printer had jammed and I could not print out the five copies of the many documents requested for this submission. Which is customary with government funded institutions in South Africa.

On that day, my nanny was not at work. I had nobody to leave my son with so that I could go off to an internet café to print the documents. I called the freight company who was meant to courier my documents, and spoke to the accounts lady to cancel my booking. At this point, I was close to tears realising that I had done all of this writing and hard work and may not have reached my deadline. The woman on the other side sensing my emotional distress asked me what’s wrong. I relayed my dilemma. She then suggested I email my documents to her and she would print them. Saviour! Guardian Angel!

So I submitted my application and it was in-fact successful. I spent 5 to 6 months researching and writing various necessary elements until I completed the script.

This film explores the narrative of my family. The forced removals of my mother and grandparents from District Six, a once cosmopolitan neighbourhood in the city centre. Their story always intrigued me as it also speaks of dispossession of wealth and breaking-up of nucleic community

structures on the part of the apartheid state.

Hence, I spent the earlier part of this year working on the films research report, concept outline and eventually the script.

And so as I’m settling into a fake lull of mundaneness and enjoying my Khoe Story documentary broadcasts on the SABC during woman’s month, I get a call from our national broadcaster inviting me to come and pitch in Johannesburg for a series I wrote, and had made it to the short list.

As soon as I am off the phone I am overwhelmed with mixed feelings, it’s great that I got to the short list! But, what about my son? I can’t leave him behind; I’m still breast-feeding him. How am I going to do this?

So after a long hearty conversation with girlfriend Shabnam, I decide it’s best to take an early morning flight to Jozi, do my pitch at mid-day and return the same evening.

That nerve-wrecking morning I rise at 4am after a sleepless night with a teething baby. I pack a utility day bag armed with a breast pump, extra breast pads and an extra shirt in case I leak. At 10 am, I am having breakfast in Melville, reading my notes with partner Nafia when suddenly a surge rushes through my body. I make my way to the restaurant toilet facility, where luckily there was nobody else and start to express over the bathroom sink.

Thereafter, I am calm and feel like a normal person again.

The pitch went OK, given my sleep deprivation and lactating circumstances. A bonus factor was that five out of the eight panellists at the pitch session were women, this was incredibly comforting.

I am back at the airport, eating pizza at 5pm when the surge comes back and I start feeling a little hot. I rush to the bathroom, realizing that I wont have the kind of privacy I did earlier in the restaurant toilet and quickly run into the mom’s and kids changing room where I find the privacy required.

I breathe a sigh of relief.

These are but two accounts of my daily life as a woman filmmaker. In an industry, which is incredibly competitive, where only a certain number of individuals are selected for grants, short-lists, festivals, broadcast acquisitions etc. We are all judged on the same criteria, however, the playing fields are not equal and they never will be.

So in this post I salute all my sister creators in the film and TV industry who have endured despite the obstacles behind and ahead. Aluta Continua Women in Film & TV!

Blog by Weaam Williams - weaam@shamanic.co.za

Blog designed and edited by Shabnam Williams - pr@shamanic.co.za

Photographs by Nafia Kocks - nafia@shamanic.co.za