We Do It Together is a nonprofit film production company created to finance and produce films, documentaries, TV and other forms of media, uniquely dedicated to the empowerment of women, by telling their stories. The team believes that the company can create a movement, with women and men, with actions behind words, that will change the outdated paradigm that we see in media, and its marginalization of women worldwide. Advisory Board Members include Queen Latifah, Jodie Foster, Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, and other female filmmakers.
Founder Chiara Tilesa, an Italian film producer, wanted to find an alternative way for all women in filmmaking to be heard. In an interview with Variety, she said that We Do It Together was “for everyone: not just the actresses, directors, producers, but also to the agents and managers.” Advisor Board Member actress and director Patricia Riggen talks about the struggle of being a female director. “Even if you get chosen to be a director, that doesn’t mean the struggle ends there. It means the struggle begins there. Because every single day, you have to fight for respect. You have to fight for people to believe in you and to follow you.”
Studies done by organizations like the Sundance Institute/Women in Film, and Stacy L Smith, the director of the Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, more than back up the theory that times need to change. Both studies bear witness to Hollywood’s long-standing gender gaps at every level of the industry. They concluded in no uncertain terms that women “…face deep-rooted presumptions from the film industry about their creative qualifications, sensibilities, tendencies and ambitions.” One study, Celluloid Ceiling, found that women were vastly underrepresented behind the camera. For example, though women constitute roughly 50 percent of U.S. film-school graduates, they make up only 7 percent of the directors of the top 250-grossing Hollywood and independent films over the last several years.
The struggle is also still there for women on the screen. According to San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, female characters made up just 12 percent of the protagonists in the top 100-grossing domestic films in 2014. This figure is 3 percent less than it was in 2013, and 4 percent less than in 2002. The Sony e-mail hack in 2014 revealed that even at the highest levels of A-list stardom, female leads, like Jennifer Lawerence, were being paid a fraction of their male counterparts.
“We hope in the future we won’t have a need for dedicated niche financing for films by and about women,” said Tilesi. “Film has always possessed the power to defy convention and change hearts and minds, and this power and potential must be harnessed to challenge the current archaic norms related to women within the entertainment industry. We feel that the way to make this a reality is to give women from around the world a concrete way to express themselves and an on-going structure that will ensure that these stories will be financed and distributed.”
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