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 The much heralded reboot of the famous 1980s dystopian action
franchise is being screened on Thursday at the Cannes
International Film Festival, where the subject of women's role
in cinema -- not just in front of the camera but behind it --
has been in the spotlight this year.
Theron, who is best known as an actress but also produced and
starred in "Monster" (2003), said too many women "have to sit
around and really wait for the right thing to come around and
there's a lot of wrong things going around and I feel like there
is an injustice".
Men get the better opportunities, she told Reuters, but when
women do get a chance, people connect strongly with the films.
"They're always the movies people talk about the most, they're
the critically acclaimed ones, and I just don't understand why
we can't take that momentum and really put it in gear," she
said.
Thierry Fremaux, the director of the Cannes festival, provoked
the debate by pointing out in interviews that "the number of
female directors in the world is too low".
For the first time in decades, the festival opened with a film
directed by a woman, France's Emmanuelle Bercot, but Fremaux
said films had been selected because they suited the festival,
not because of the director's gender.
"I think the most important fight is the situation of women in
the world, not only in cinema," he said.
Bercot said she didn't think gender had been a factor in her
film being shown, out of competition, at the star-studded gala
on Wednesday night.
"I happen to be a woman, but I am honored by the fact that the
film has been selected not by the fact that I'm being gifted
with something that is usually reserved to men," she said.
NEW AUDIENCES
Just two of the 19 in-competition films are directed by women --
"Marguerite et Julien" by Valerie Donzelli and "Mon Roi" by
Maiwenn. But Oscar winning actress Natalie Portman marks her
directorial debut with an out-of-competition screening of "A
Tale of Love and Darkness".
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According to Isabella Rossellini, who heads the jury of Un Certain
Regard -- a competition that runs parallel to the main Palme d'Or
event at Cannes -- entering the film industry is not the hardest
part of a woman's career.
"One thing that was difficult to me was integrating my family with
my career. Women were able to enter the workforce but ... (it was)
harder for me was to integrate my children with my professional
life," she said on Thursday.
"I tried to have them come with me on the set, but as they grew
older they wanted to stay with their friends, there was school."
Rossellini, who burst into the limelight when she played Dorothy
Vallens in David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" in 1986, believes things will
change faster if the film industry broadens its audience base.
"Especially in American cinema, you foster an audience of young
males," she said.
"If you foster an audience for subjects that are interesting to
women then you also have an audience that is interested in these
subjects. A lot of films where people punch each other... I'm not
interested."
Rossellini believes equality has a better chance in Europe,
especially in France, "where artists are so revered".
"In Hollywood it's more of an industry, here it is more of an art
form."
(Reporting by Michael Davidson, Rollo Ross, Michael Roddy and Julien
Pretot; Writing by Michael Roddy; Editing by Crispian Balmer)
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