As The Guardian reported recently, the work of female creatives who are writing, editing, starring in or directing films is now being recognised by the biggest movie website in the world, IMDb, due to an initiative from the organiser of the Bath Film Festival, Holly Tarquini. What’s more, you can help in this mission to help highlight the films which deserve to be so recognised with the ‘F-Rating’.
“Of the top 100 films that came out in 2014 only 2 were directed by women”
The F-Rating classification Holly (pictured left) came up with is designed to support and promote women and redress the imbalance in the film industry. To get an F-Rating, a film has to be either directed by a woman, written by a woman, or feature significant women on screen in their own right. If it hits all three criteria, the film can be awarded a Triple F-Rating.
We caught up with Holly to find out more. Holly was inspired to come up with the F-Rating when curating the Bath Film Festival. As Holly points out, “Of the top 100 films that came out in 2014 only 2 were directed by women. That’s just 2%!” You can see Holly explaining more about the origin of the F-Rating in this video from TedxYouth@Bath:
Holly feels that by highlighting these films with the F-Rating it sends a clear message to distributors, producers and funders that women can and should have more than just a supporting role within the industry. The rating also allows audiences to “vote with their seat” and proactively choose to go and see F-Rated films.
The F-Rating is really catching on. Holly tells us “There are now nearly 22,000 titles with the F-Rated tag on IMDb“. If you would like to help with the project you can add your own F-Ratings to IMDb listings by following these instructions.
F-Rated hackathon
To help with the initiative an F-Rated and IMDb hackathon was held at the British Film Institute (BFI) in London this week. Holly tells us: “The hackathon was great: there were LOADS of interesting conversations about “significant women on screen”! We added around 280 tags to films which fit this third criteria.”
Thanks to Holly for taking time out of her busy schedule to talk to us. If you want to see a triple F-Rated film, you can check out the Triple F-Rated films list on F-Rated.org or the full F-Rated list on IMDb. You can also kepp up to date with the F-Rated movement on Twitter here: @f__rating
