The topic of diversity and inclusion is at the heart of the European Film Market’s online industry sessions this year, which run under the umbrella banner of ‘Shaping Change’.
Themba Bhebhe, who heads up diversity and inclusion for the EFM, has pulled together a series of in-depth discussions, podcasts and special initiatives tackling issues such as the inequalities between the global north and south countries in filmmaking as well as the exclusion of underrepresented groups in the film business.
Bhebhe, who is from the UK, took up his EFM role four years ago after a decade of working in international film sales at companies including Pathé International. He is also co-founder of Programmers of Colour Collective (POC2).
Under his watch, the EFM has spearheaded initiatives including the Doc and Fiction Toolbox programmes and the Online Market Badge Inclusion Initiative aimed at creatives from marginalised and underrepresented groups.
He talks with Screen about holding gatekeepers to account, the lack of people of colour in the sales sector and the urgent need for structural change.
You worked in international sales for almost a decade, what prompted you to take on this role and openly campaign for more inclusion and diversity?
I was privileged to enter sales at a time when an emphasis was being placed on international films. I quickly learned that the composition of personnel in that sector wasn’t ethnically diverse. Even though there was a geographical spread most of the people working in those companies were white. Very few people representing the films looked like the people in those films.
For me, that was very much an eye-opener. I was very lucky that I was able to break into that particular ecosystem because I did not fit that profile at all.
Do you think you are making headway now you are four years into your EFM role?
In the beginning, my work consisted of spotlighting inclusion in terms of profitability, but it’s now moved to holding gatekeepers to account. My work involves reminding decision-makers that diverse teams perform better than homogenous teams. The fact that films with diverse casts above a certain budget category outperform films with less diverse casts at the box office. These are statistically-proven facts.
I’ve made headway through EFM initiatives like the Doc and Fiction Toolbox programmes and the Online Market Badge Inclusion Initiative because they genuinely created access for marginalised groups.
What are the key challenges?
We’ve all come to the realisation there will be no substantive change without a shift in the working culture of the industry. That means structural change: redistribution of decision-making power to make it more inclusive and collaborative.
If an organisation is on the surface “diverse” but doesn’t provide any form of access to disabled film professionals or employs many women or non-binary staff but they experience pay gaps and seldom hold decision-making positions. Or if Black, indigenous and other people of colour are only brought into that organisation with advisory or temporary positions or else face institutional marginalisation every day when they are in full-time employment, then, for all these reasons, the diversity is only superficial, and it amounts to little more than virtue-signalling and co-opting the language of inclusion at the expense of true equity.
What are the initiatives and the talks you have set up for this online EFM?
We’re focused on trying to make a level playing field for film professionals and give underrepresented groups a passageway in. The theme this year is “Shaping Change”. There are excellent talks looking at the relationship between the Global North, marginalised groups and the South in terms of filmmaking.
We have the EFM Online Market Badge Inclusion Initiative which gives access to individuals and organisations that advocate for marginalised and Global South film professionals. The Doc and Fiction Toolbox Programmes comprise a toolkit of business connections and know-how for documentary and narrative film creatives belonging to marginalised groups and/or from the Global South.
I’m also excited about two podcasts we will air. One episode is on accessibility for disabled film professionals in partnership with the BFI. The other episode is in partnership with imagineNATIVE, the world’s largest Indigenous film festival, and is about Indigenous film criticism, and the effect the dearth of Indigenous film critics has on the way Indigenous-led films are released.
How much do you believe the international film industry is engaging with the issue of diversity and inclusion or just paying lip service?
I actually think we need to rethink who we imagine belongs to the international film industry first and foremost as this in itself is a major stumbling block. What we think of as minorities are collectively global majorities.
Are we talking about the huge circuit of queer film festivals, distributors, platforms and channels globally? Or the networks of disabled film creatives working in all fields? Are we talking about Nollywood and the mammoth Nigerian, African and Black diasporas consuming it? Bollywood and South Asian and crossover audiences globally? The scores of organisations ensuring that the industry remains accessible, sustainable and safe for women and non-binary people?
In the same way that it’s invalid and quite frankly often offensive to talk of “niche” audiences in an ecosystem comprising a multiplicity of audiences with different viewing patterns, we can no longer talk of “the industry” as a monolith.
You’re also the co-founder of the Programmers of Colour Collective (POC2) – can you talk a bit about that?
I co-founded POC2 alongside Lucy Mukerjee, Hussain Currimbhoy and Paul Struthers. The collective sprang up around 2018 and was inspired by the work of Black Girl Doc Mafia Collective founder, Iyabo Boyd.
Many film professionals of colour have been locked out of the mainstream industry. That’s why we’ve started creating their own groups and networks to reframe the discussion. When there are many, talented BIPOC programmers in our industry, there’s simply no excuse for all-white programming teams.
We wanted to bring them together as a community and advocate for them. Even though we’re still growing, with more than 300 members, we’ve made lots of progress. We’ve become a resource for festivals that want to diversify their teams who share job offers with our members, and we’ve started creating pathways for emerging programmers through fellowships with festivals.
Why is it so important to have a diverse and representative cinema industry?
A seminal image is that of George Floyd’s murder, the air being pushed out of his lungs for eight minutes and 46 seconds. But Floyd wasn’t a singular instance, he was one in a centuries-long tradition of dehumanising Black bodies. A tradition that cinema has participated in.
The film industry is only reflective of the wider society and movies inform society but also reflect prevailing views of dominant groups. We – as a cinema industry – are responsible for negative portrayals, past and present, of marginalised peoples on screen. Those images have real-world consequences.
In many ways, the classic Western genre often presented Indigenous genocide in America as symmetrical warfare between two equal opposing forces. The film industry needs to wake up and take accountability. But it’s not enough. We also need restorative justice around these images, and films and series like Raoul Peck’s magnum opus Exterminate All the Brutes and Sam Feder’s Disclosure try to redress that balance, by restituting our image and dignity.
No comments yet