Latest / Industry Insights - The EFM Podcast / Pathways to Equity: the Special Edition Seminar Podcast

Transcript

Pathways to Equity: the Special Edition Seminar Podcast · Industry Insights - The EFM Podcast

• 0:00
  NADIA: Welcome to Industry Insights, the EFM podcast presented by the European Film Market of the Berlinale. My name is Nadia Denton. I'm a curator and public speaker based in London. This season of Industry Insights, the EFM podcast, puts trendsetting industry issues in focus, creating a compass for the forthcoming film season. The year-round podcast is produced in cooperation with Goethe-Institut and co-funded by Creative Europe MEDIA. Today, I am joined by a selection of guests with which I will reflect on the takeaways from a series of EFM Equity and Inclusion Pathways seminars, which took place online and in person during January and February of this year. The seminars brought together European decision makers, advocacy groups, and stakeholders with the aim of shifting the needle regarding equity, inclusion, and accessibility in terms of policy making and actions in the wider European film industries. The Equity and Inclusion Pathways seminars held the vision of a European film sector free of biases, barriers, and exclusion, one which values the unrealized potential of marginalised film professionals to the industry, and one which seeks to redistribute resources and decision-making power more equitably.
• 1:11
  NADIA: Today, I welcome Yolanda Rother and Sailesh Naidu to the podcast to discuss key takeaways from the sessions that were held. Yolanda, Sailesh, and I led the conversations that took place at the seminars. During this segment, we will reflect on the key highlights and takeaways. Yolanda is co-founder of The Impact Company, a diversity, audience, and cultural consultancy. She moderates and speaks on topics related to digital society, politics, diversity, and sustainability. Sailesh also joins us. They describe themselves as a multidisciplinary artist, dreamer, and transmitter. Their work has been featured in the New York Times, Die Zeit, the BFI, and Tribeca Film Festival, amongst others.
• 1:54
  NADIA: Yolanda and Sailesh, welcome. Wonderful to see and speak with you both again. So do we collectively think that the sessions shifted the needle, and if so, how?
• 2:06
  YOLANDA: I'm happy to jump right in with this. Thank you so much for this question, Nadia. First of all, we're talking about the Equity and Inclusion Pathway seminar that took place this year, and I think it's part of an ongoing year-long process. It goes for a total of three years, and I think that one session cannot ever really have a quick result or quick fix to a very long problem. So I think that what we did is it did have an impact, and I do think that we were able to shift the needle. We were able to push forward the conversation, but it's just one part of a larger puzzle to really dismantle discrimination and equity in the film industry. So there's so much more work that needs to be done, but yeah, I do think that it did manage to shift the needle in some way.
• 2:56
  NADIA: That's encouraging.
• 2:58
  SAILESH: Yeah, and Yolanda, to sort of bounce off of that, I think one of the primary pain points of colonization is separation, and being able to gather racialized bodies and bodies who are part of the colonized story is to gather us so we can understand how specifically does this separation impact the work we're doing within the film industry, and I think the major point where the needle has shifted is the relationships that are built, just gathering people into a room and talking about common struggles and talking about common ways that we're approaching these struggles. I think it really builds a relationship to how people can do this work better.
• 3:41
  NADIA: I completely agree. I mean, one of the things that was notable for me as one of the facilitators alongside yourselves is the fact that this is the first time this kind of forum with such a sort of broad collective has taken place with such a broad range of organizations and specialities, and I think for me on a personal level, as a industry professional working in the field, it kind of boosted my own faith in terms of the fact that change can be made and that we can continue to push, and I think it was really significant to locate this within the specifics of Europe and examples of things within various European societies, because at times there can be this deflection that these conversations about equity and inclusion are maybe more to do with North America or the UK or other parts of the world where there might appear to be more of a sort of visual communities of colour. So I felt that just as Sailesh had said, and even yourself, Yolanda, the kind of bringing together, the sharing of those experiences and that sense of being a collective is what is one of the key takeaways, and it was notable with a number of the online seminars that people stayed late and were kind of hanging on to the speaker's every word. So personally, what were your key highlights and takeaways from the various sessions?
• 5:07
  SAILESH: I in general love the flow of the day, even with your opening, Nadia, about talking about the history of the black image within visual culture, within Europe, really brings home the idea that Europe is sort of the original site of how racial constructions have been made through the moving image, and I think you did that so eloquently in your presentation. And I think that helped carry us through the day as we talked about what does representation mean at its different segments, not only in front of the camera, but also behind the camera from everything to producers, to writers from production companies, to who's actually profiting from these images. The various speakers really told a strong story about the importance of not only just fighting for representation, but also fighting for the authenticity of the stories being told, and that not only do we get to be represented in the stories being told, but we get to own these stories through and through, from how it's made to how our images are presented to who's profiting from them.
• 6:17
  YOLANDA: Yeah, piggybacking off of what you just said, Sailesh, I would 100% agree. It was really great to start with this understanding of how stories and narratives are being structured and how that has led to essentially where we are today with the discrimination, the racism, the sexism that we see today in the stories of modern day in the films. So that was one huge takeaway. And I still think about some of those images that you shared with us, Nadia. Furthermore, I thought that the online sessions that were leading up to the in-person meeting were also full of nuggets and takeaways, if you will. I mean, I remember, I think it was Victoria Thomas who was speaking about mapping black institutions and organizations and just learning about their work was really impactful to me, but also learning about how a lot of these structures that we're trying to dismantle are coming up in similar patterns in different regional contexts and seeing that there's a big, big potential there to really learn from one another and just to have these forums where we can exchange practices that work, but also those that aren't working and just to feel like this isn't an isolated fight, but rather we're in this on a global scale. And specifically, as you mentioned, that this shift also definitely has to happen in Europe, but Europe needs to understand that and then look across the pond sometimes for support. But yeah, essentially those were some of the takeaways that I had and they were quite powerful to me.
• 8:04
  NADIA: Oh, thank you. I mean, it's funny because of course for me, that highlight, having that slot as the keynote, and it's rare that my interests in art history and film collide, but the opportunity to extend the public talks that I do at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London about the representations of the black body in European 17th and 18th century art was really instructive and just to be able to show people how these images have really come to inform notions of blackness and stereotypes that we have in the present day. And I suppose as a reminder that this work that we do is not just about giving these presentations and one-offs, but it's a lived experience and those images, you know, that I shared of the various artists and the pieces of work are so personal to me as I hope that they can be for people who see them and understand their origins. So one of the things that was quite fundamental in terms of organizing the seminars and their kind of framework was the SEGS or in other words, Sustainable Equitable Goals, which is what the SEGS stand for. Sailesh, can you explain what this is in layman's terms and why they were so important as the building blocks for the conversations that were held over the sessions?
• 9:20
  SAILESH: Yeah, they were really born out of this idea from the 2023 summit that the resolutions that were adopted, over 30 of them didn't necessarily have the full buy-in from the entire community of practitioners and filmmakers and artists who are part of this work that we're doing. Instead of having this binding language of resolutions, there was a decision to sort of move towards a more goal-oriented framework. With goals, instead of having resolutions that are fixed, there's more of a flexibility about which goals that you feel are manageable and achievable within your region, within your city, within the space that you're working in, but also that it gives us a way to sort of measure against it so that we're moving towards something, towards a process rather than trying to achieve something that's fixed and concrete. And goals can always change depending on the circumstance and the context and as this conversation evolves, so will the goals. So moving towards this language of sustainable equity goals really helps. I think people buy into a framework that feels more manageable for them. So they have a decision and flexibility about the types of goals that they want to work towards in terms of creating a more equitable film industry.
• 10:46
  NADIA: Yeah, and I think you're quite right in that idea that goals help people to maybe have a quite tangible way to approach the themes at hand, because I think when we look at the sum total of all of what confronts us with regards to bringing about more equity in our society and indeed our film industry, it can be so overwhelming that you might almost want to give up before you start. So that framing I thought was really quite key. One of the other things that came up was the role of ambassadors and not just ambassadors in terms of those of us behind the scenes, the team at the EFM and obviously us as facilitators, et cetera, who were leading this sessions, but really how colleagues in the field who are not diversity specialists per se, but who believe in this idea of bringing about more equity, wanting to lead and wanting to be voices for change. How do you think that ambassadors can be more effective voices to bring about the changes that we seek, Yolanda?
• 11:52
  YOLANDA: Yeah, I mean, I feel like you've already mentioned a few of those things that make out an ambassador. It's essentially not someone who by default already has diversity, equity and inclusion as part of their role, but rather who really much aligns with these goals and with the overall direction of the industry. Therefore, this call for ambassadors, which was a part of this year's EIPS, the Equity and Inclusion Pathways Seminar, was really a possibility for institutions as well as individuals from these different institutions to have a bit more accountability and connect more with a goal. So that it basically puts a human or can connect to human or a group of people to what we're really trying to do. It's an exciting opportunity to make this goal as alive as possible and to really make sure that we're trying to move towards that goal in all ways possible.
• 12:55
  NADIA: And certainly one of the calls that many key ambassadors in the industry have made is really around data. And data collation, data usage, et cetera, was a theme that came up on a number of occasions, particularly this idea of the interplay between data and policy and how we can effectively use data to inform institutions and organizations, et cetera, about the usefulness and the importance and urgency even of engaging around an equity remit. And indeed Deborah Williams of the Creative Diversity Network is quoted, to have said something along the lines that data is a missing link between creativity and action. And she went on to add that there's a lack of trust around data collecting, which obviously limits us as an industry in terms of getting the information we need. What are your thoughts about that? Do we agree on what she said, Sailesh?
• 13:49
  SAILESH: Yeah, I think this was a very big conversation that happened both in the 2022 seminar and the 2024 seminar. What is an effective use of data and how do we collect that data, particularly within Europe, and I can speak from the German context where there's a lot of legal hurdles in terms of the data you can collect around disabilities, around race, around gender, around sexuality, and how is that data stored and used? And because of these hurdles, oftentimes organizations eliminate the idea of gathering data at all. But if you don't understand the scope of the problem, it's also easy for you to claim that there is no problem at all. And I think what a lot of rights groups are advocating for, particularly disability rights advocates and advocates for greater diversity around gender, sexuality, and inclusion of racialized people, is that it's important to have this data to understand the scope of the problem, but then also understand how do we tailor solution using the data points that we have. Because a solution that might work in the UK, for example, might not necessarily work in Germany, even though on the surface level, it looks like we're facing the same problem, the data could tell a different story about what's the best possible solution for approaching that problem. And this is just good program design in general. I mean, I think if you're looking at any model for problem solving, it's all data oriented. We look at the evidence in front of us, and we try to make evaluations based on that evidence. But if you remove any ability together, that evidence, you remove an ability to come up with a comprehensive solution.
• 15:27
  NADIA: So true, and particularly in light of the kind of data-driven societies that we live in now, Yolanda?
• 15:33
  YOLANDA: Yeah, I'd love to just add on a little bit to that, because I think that this aspect of data collection is so big of a topic, and it's also such an important and relevant sphere to really dig into. And if we're thinking about data collection, it can really happen at so many different points of any given process. It could be that there's data collection in a company setting, in an organization setting. It could also be data collection, if we're speaking of the film industry, that's taking place to ensure that there's a documentation of discrimination or harassment on set, for instance. I totally understand where this lack of trust comes from, though, because if you're collecting data from marginalized voices, there's a huge risk there of what's gonna happen with that data then. Like, is that data going to the right hands? What are the power dynamics at play? And also the question is, of course, if we're staying with that example of collecting data around harassment on a set, the question is also, what are the repercussions for the reporting party, but also for the reported party? Can the data that's being collected be nuanced enough to ensure that the person who's reporting it isn't the cause for the entire production to end, essentially, or is that really what is supposed to happen? So I think there's just like a lot of intransparency around what happens after the data collection. There's, of course, also the questions of how are questions being framed in order to collect data? Are they accessible enough to everyone? And I think there's so many questions in regards to data collection that it is a really big conversation, and the question of the potential of it. I think it's clear for everyone if it's done in good faith, if it's done the right way, but that “if” is a big one.
• 17:38
  NADIA: You're very right. The whole sort of deep dive into data is an important conversation and one which I will be continuing with guests as part of another segment of this podcast. So unfortunately we're out of time, but it's really encouraging to reflect and understand the impact that was made through the conversations over the series and the ones that we facilitated. Often in the moment it's kind of hard to get a gauge of how the information has landed and how people have received it and gone out, or intend to go out into the world with it, but it's really instructive, I think, as facilitators for us to be able to have these deep dives and to look at what's been important. So thank you so much for those shares and those thoughts and opinions. And yeah, the conversation continues.
• 18:23
  SAILESH: Great, thank you, Nadia.
• 18:25
  YOLANDA: Thank you so much.
• 18:26
  NADIA: During this part of the podcast, we have sound bites from three industry figures who were present at the Inclusion Workshop. In these short recordings, they'll share their thoughts about the proceedings. First, we have Lissa Deonarain of Brown Girls Doc Mafia.
• 18:40
  LISSA: This was Brown Girls Doc Mafia's second year of the EFM Equity Inclusion Seminar. We've already learned so much for these two years as a US-based advocacy organization who has been invited into these conversations on the European film landscape. The energy this year was different. We got to see a lot of familiar faces. Many of them are friends who we met the year prior. And we were also able to get to know so many new, like-minded people with shared goals from around the world. We were also very honored to share about our work by presenting in person at the seminar as well as in the pre-seminar sessions. And it has us excited to see what the next year holds for our collective work and who else we're able to learn from.
• 19:22
  NADIA: Now we hear from Regina Mosh of ARTEF.
• 19:25
  REGINA: What's outstanding for me at the Equity and Inclusion Pathway Seminar is that this change that we all work for becomes so tangible. Because you're in the room with so many fantastic speakers who do this work, who have implemented policies or projects or a culture within their space, within their part of the film industry. And that opportunity to learn from each other in this very focused and very generous, but also very fierce way is just invaluable.
• 20:00
  NADIA: Finally, Valerie Creighton from Canada Media Fund shares their thoughts.
• 20:04
  VALERIE: Hi, I participated in the pre-seminar and the seminar during the Berlinale. This work is increasingly important as the commitments to ED&I are in retraction in many places around the world. Decision makers need to be in the room to hear first-hand the lived experience and realities of these communities. The stories of these creators build bridges and understanding to tolerance. This work is amazing in that regard and I hope it can continue.
• 20:40
  NADIA: During this part of the episode, I introduced Tina Trapp and Helge Albers. Tina is CEO of the European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs, IAVE, a professional training, project development and networking organization for audiovisual producers. She is also a member of the European Film Academy and ARTEF, the Anti-Racism Task Force for European Film. Helge also joins us. He has been managing director of MOIN Film Fund Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein since 2019. In his position, he has played an important role in putting the organization back on the film policy map. On the inclusion data, an initiative of MOIN Film Fund Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein were official partners of the Equity and Inclusion Pathways seminars. Tina and Helge, thank you for joining me for the conversation today. Of the many sustainable equity goals that were discussed over the seminar series, which have you advocated for in the industry and what reception have you received or even outcomes observed? So Tina, I wonder if you could kick off your response to that question first.
• 21:46
  TINA: Yes, thank you, Nadia. Actually, IAVE doesn't really have a particular geographic or regional focus, so what we try to do is to implement as many of the SEG as possible in our daily work on all levels. So basically to include an anti-racist and intersectional lens to all of our work. Our DNA is inclusion and bringing together professionals from very, very different backgrounds and countries together with the idea to facilitate consultation change and growth. We always say we see our producers as agents of change and we want to be part of that change. So we started within the scope of our own small organization, of course, so and that's the scope of training. So a scope that we can directly influence and then trying with that example to sort of inspire others, but also to reach out to others to have a bigger impact than in the end on the whole industry.
• 22:44
  NADIA: And what reception have you received or have you even noted any particular outcomes in the space of time that you have been working to progress the Sustainable Equitable Goals?
• 22:56
  TINA: We have. The reaction is overall positive and also we discovered quite a lot of partners that we can reach out to, a lot of allies that we're working with. But in general, there's also some resistance and backlash in the industry that we have encountered.
• 23:12
  NADIA: Yeah, I could well imagine. I want us to come back to that point about the backlash, but before we do so, Helge, I wanted to bring you in to find out about which of the Sustainable Equity Goals you have advocated for and the reception received.
• 23:25
  HELGE: Just as Tina said, the agent of change is also a role that we as a film fund would like to take on from our perspective. So we have looked into, let's say we're introspect, first of all, and looked who are we and how can we as a fund act in a way that is working towards the Sustainable Equity Goals, which means looking into organizational development, into how do we hire, what are our higher policies, how can we incentivize people from various backgrounds to apply for jobs that we're giving, job openings that we're having. The question of how do we communicate internally and externally is a big and important question. We have a lot of seminars and education within the fund. For a fund, of course, the question, how do we distribute money is a very vital one. So the way we compose our juries has been a crucial question for us and we've changed the composition of our juries quite a bit in the past years with quite some success, I would say, in terms of looking at the discussions. We introduced the diversity checklist, which is the most visible element, I think, in terms of looking how we communicate our aim to have a more diverse landscape applying to us and giving a lot of, well, food for thought to whoever applies for us as a fund. So these are all measures that we took as a fund. On top of that, we did a lot of events and are still doing a lot of events, addressing targeting communities that are underrepresented. We've held a bigger series together with other film funds in the past year, aiming at the BIPOC people called Money Reels that is supporting the BIPOC community in applying for public funding. We've supported a workshop for Muslim women in film just recently that's gonna be repeated next year. And there's a couple of other events in the same realm that also allows underrepresented groups to be more present and have a better chance in applying for public money.
• 25:30
  NADIA: That's fantastic. I was particularly interested in the seminars on education. You mentioned a recent seminar at Sounds of Muslim Women in Film. Have these seminars been targeted mainly at the industry and filmmakers, or are they also being targeted at audiences? Tell us a bit more.
• 25:46
  HELGE: Yeah, they're specifically looking at women who are trying to branch into filmmaking. So they're looking into the crossover and they're looking into inspiration and very hands-on best practice examples to connect, in this case, specifically Muslim women, like any group of underrepresented people who are facing their specific challenges in entering the industry, in understanding each other, and to facilitate a community and to lower the bar of entering into the industry is something that was on top of the mission of this event.
• 26:26
  NADIA: And you also mentioned the development and implementation of a checklist, diversity standards checklist, I think you had said. Tell us about that, what it includes and the experience so far of rolling it out.
• 26:39
  HELGE: Well, technically the checklist is a very simple instrument, which looks in front of the camera and behind the camera, as we say. So on-screen, off-screen diversity of a project, plus a more general part that's looking into the circumstances of the production at large and is asking our applicants to give us an understanding of the structural circumstances of a project. That's relating to cast and crew, that's relating to certain elements of the story, that's relating to the socioeconomic background of the project, the settings of the project, et cetera. It’s something that we have made mandatory element of our application process. But looking at it during the application process, we noticed that the actual shift is not so much towards the decision-making process because that's facilitated by our juries and they are coming from very diverse backgrounds, but we're using the checklist as an instrument for dialogue with our applicants. Specifically, if we have questions, if you read a script or an application and you have questions towards the specific project, it allows us to get into a discussion or to just ask questions that previously would have been not very well informed. So that's the practical basis for the checklist.
• 28:03
  NADIA: Okay, I suppose it's gonna be interesting to kind of measure the progress of the application of the checklist and the outcomes in the period to come.
• 28:12
  HELGE: Yeah, we're currently thinking of evaluating. It's an ongoing process of trying to understand the exact outcome of where we're being asked about the actual effect it has very often. And it's actually quite difficult to measure, to be honest, because much of it is qualitative and is not quantitative. We had a master thesis written about it and there's another one, I think, in the works. It's obviously an interesting topic for social scientists, for instance, to look into. Yeah, but that's sort of where we are at the moment. It's definitely a moving target and we are still learning how to work with it and how to make it better and also how to improve. But it has proved quite useful for us as a fun to work with.
• 28:58
  NADIA: That's brilliant, thank you so much. So Tina, you mentioned challenge and resistance. And this is something that I certainly have been very conscious of across the conversations we've been having as part of the seminars. I suppose not only in the context of maybe individuals who may find it difficult to come to terms with some of the elements as part of these equity and inclusion conversations, but also this idea where people feel that they might be at a loss or that culturally they're losing something if they open things up. So please share with us what your particular experience has been around resistance and how you think that we might be able to work with some of these difficulties.
• 29:39
  TINA: In the beginning, I must say, when we started all that work, I quite naively thought that everybody would be on board because our industry always claims to be very open-minded, very liberal and very diverse, inclusive, and you name it. We introduced quite a number of measures like codes of conduct, racial equity board, training for staff, for trainers and everything. But there is also a kind of resistance when people feel sort of controlled or policed as if we would force them into some kind of political correctness, which is not at all what we are trying to do. And also the fear of being cancelled that comes up very often. And what we try to promote in all that is the idea that to see diversity as a richness, something we can all benefit from. And the idea also when we bring together our participants is very much that the more diverse the group is that comes together at our workshops, the more inspiring it will be for everybody because we don't want to bring only together people from the same background, that's something everybody knows and that will in the end not lead to new ideas, new business models and so on. So that's what we try to convey. And also to bring across the idea that it's not about cancelling people, it's the idea of creating a bigger table where those who have been so far excluded can also have a seat. And not like so creating a bigger table and including and not removing or replacing.
• 31:09
  NADIA: I agree, I mean, it’s certainly one of the things that I've picked up in the nuances of the conversation is just this idea that it's being imposed from outside. So almost that maybe it's a value system that's coming from North America or from even the UK or other parts of the world. And that's not necessarily so applicable to the continental European experience. I certainly would firmly agree that a lot of the diversity that we're really talking about already exists in the European communities that we're looking at and is there and has historically been there. And I think the more that we can certainly encourage people to see it as an add on rather than them losing out will certainly be beneficial. But what is your experience been Helge? I mean, I was sort of interested when you said that the checklist for the fund is mandatory. And I could well imagine that you probably had a few angry emails when that was issued to the industry. But what is your own experience been of resistance and how as a film fund have you and your colleagues managed that?
• 32:11
  HELGE: We had very, very mixed reactions to it in the sense that we had a lot of positive reactions coming specifically from underrepresented groups, surprisingly also from young and emerging filmmakers. We had bigger backlash from the more established end of the industry, but also not in a polarized way, I would say. There's outliers and there's voices who are clearly bewildered by it. And then also I have to say that I saw a lot of development and movement over the past few years. I mean, we have introduced the checklist around about four years ago now. And by now there's much less conversation about it or there's much less bewilderment about it than there used to be when we introduced it. So you kind of need to accept that not everybody is embracing everything you do and changes immediately. And in that sense, yes, I can report from backlash, but it's also part of what you do every time you change something no matter in the field. Of course, it's a field that is charged and that is emotional from time to time. And we need to accept that it's also part of what we have to see. Ultimately I think change becomes normal at some point and then life goes on.
• 33:41
  NADIA: It does. From your own observation, what do you feel is driving some of the resistance to change? Do you think it's people feel that there's a cultural loss or that they might lose their jobs or that maybe they have to share something that they've perceived was their own. And suddenly, you know, there's this group of people who they didn't think should be sat at the table.
• 33:58
  HELGE: I don't know, I don't wanna guess too much and put words into people's mouths because there's very different backgrounds. I think of those who are not immediately thrilled by change – what we're introducing in terms of diversity inclusion is something that requires a lot of shift of mindset. That's an effort and making an effort is not always great if you don't see an immediate upside for yourself. And that's a very human pattern of behaviour. Then our task is to communicate. I think it's our job to communicate what the benefits are for us as an industry at large and to communicate why even if you don't see an immediate upside for yourself in the long run, there's a greater good for the industry that we need to achieve.
• 35:00
  NADIA: Yeah, I agree with you entirely. I think you're probably quite right in not wanting to put words into people's mouths and make assumptions. It is a quite complex and multi-layered area and people have different motivations or even resistances and it's not something that can be judged or just compartmentalized. So looking forward, I wondered if either of you had any events planned between now and the next EFM Equity Pathway Seminar in February 2025 that will encourage your members or spheres of influence to take on board some of the values of the various sustainable equitable goals that have been discussed.
• 35:38
  HELGE: Well, I can go first. I'd like to point out two things, maybe not so much on the events level, but we've introduced a new development scheme recently that is replacing our development funding, which has been revamped entirely and has sort of the ground principles that we have a very, very low bar entry process that is very inclusive, basically looking into a three minute video and short synopsis. And so that's gonna change the way we look at development and how we can be inclusive in terms of development funding. That's an ongoing thing and we've launched it recently. And if you ask about events, we'll do some events about that in the future, certainly at Film Fest Hamburg, maybe at other festivals to share the learnings that we made with that and to look into how this goes. It's a larger shift in the logic of how we operate as a fund because we also step back from the decision making process and open that field to empower the industry in our region and let them go into the decision making process. That's the second aspect of the NEST, that's the name of the program. And the other part is of course that during Film Fest Hamburg we will report on this study we just conducted about Omni, our platform looking into diversity data in the German market. And that's gonna be then officially launched with a hopeful start in 2025. And we'll present the outcome of the study from this year.
• 37:20
  NADIA: Well, that's brilliant. So that's definitely something to look forward to and hopefully will feature as part of some of the conversations at the forthcoming 2025 events at the EFM. Tina, how about yourself with the organizations that you're affiliated with?
• 37:36
  TINA: Yeah, in the next month we have planned several actions on several levels for us. Some of them are closed doors, some are more open and public. So we've been organizing in the last two years a think tank that's closed doors at When East Meets West, which is a market in Trieste. The first, two years ago, was on creating safe spaces in training and also setting positive inclusion standards. And last year it was about equitable approaches to co-production. And we just presented the findings in a public session in Cannes. We also did a closed door session for decision makers. So the idea is always to work on creating a better industry, but also to share our findings and also our shortcomings, because of course there are many points, and it's a long work anyway, but we are planning to share it at other festivals as well, for example, in Durban and also at TIFF. And we're in discussion with other markets. And in next January we plan the next edition of the think tank. During our third workshop in October, we will do a session on narrative positioning with Tamara Dawit. We'll continue our workshop for BIPOC Canadian Producers Access in Canada. And we're planning something for Sami Indigenous producers also, so specific access workshops for equity seeking communities. And we'll do further training for staff and trainers in July.
• 39:04
  NADIA: That's fantastic. And what a wonderful high note to end on. Sadly, we are out of time, but I'm very grateful for the thoughts and the information that you've both shared with me today. Thank you.
• 39:14
  HELGE: Great.
• 39:15
  TINA: Thank you, Nadia.
• 0:16
  HELGE: Let me give you a quick shout out to the colleagues at Hessen Film und Medien, who are co-working with Muslim Women in Film Workshop. They are great allies on working in this field.
• 39:28
  NADIA: This part of the podcast sees me joined by Julian Carrington, Managing Director of the Racial Equity Media Collective, a non-profit organization committed to equity for black, indigenous, and people of colour creators in Canada's film, television, and digital media industries. Hello, Julian. I appreciate you joining me today. So Julian, you were at both the online and in-person seminars and you were obviously able to kind of get quite a broad view of the conversations and indeed you contributed yourself in terms of some of the talks around data and accountability. It's the issue of accountability that I specifically wanted to unpick with you today and more specifically advocacy. And as part of the conversation, we're gonna obviously share or get some examples from you of how you've been able to use advocacy in your work to push for change in Canada. But just reflecting overall on the series of seminars, in your opinion, what were the top three Sustainable Equity Goals that were discussed?
• 40:41
  JULIAN: So I suppose the equity goals that most resonated with me, maybe unsurprisingly, are those that most closely reflect my own career experience and activities. So in my current role, data collection really is a key pillar of our advocacy work. For many members of our industry who come from equity-seeking communities, we've faced barriers as a matter of lived experience. But when we seek structural reform from institutions or policy makers, data can be all important. Anecdotal accounts can still serve as powerful illustrations, but when you're seeking to influence policy makers, it's so helpful to be able to point to quantifiable patterns. So obviously to identify those patterns, we need to collect data. And I work primarily in the Canadian context where we've undertaken efforts to encourage comprehensive data collection between national and regional bodies and aspects of that work very much mirror the first sustainable equity goal, which is the creation of a pan-European data collection mechanism. So that certainly resonated with me and my work. Beyond that, I also have experience working in the realm of the second sustainable equity goal, which is the creation of specific funding streams for members of equity seeking groups. And so in my prior role at Hot Docs, I saw an international film fund that was specifically for people from historically underrepresented communities. And that then meant that the bulk of our applicants tended to come from the global south and from racialized communities. The particular mandate of our fund, the fund that I managed, was to support projects by filmmakers who were telling stories from within the perspective of an underrepresented community. So authenticity of authorship was an important component. That positionality, I can tell you, makes such a difference in terms of access, in terms of cultural sensibility, in terms of the richness of the stories being told. So that component of the second sustainable equity goal, again, very much resonated with me. And I can say, in addition to the authenticity of storytellers who have lived experience, also when you're sitting on a jury for a funding stream, having members of that jury or that selection committee who are also culturally competent can make an enormous difference to which pitches resonate and are deemed worthy of support. So certainly number two resonated with me. And then I think the third goal that, again, sort of most chimed with my own experience is the fifth one. I've had experience as a member of working groups that provide input to institutions like Telefilm Canada, the Canada Media Fund, and essentially, the fifth sustainable equity goal is calling for the creation of similar groups, advisory groups, who can promote accountability around equity. I feel like particularly in this moment, where we are four years removed from 2020, when perhaps we're seeing some internal DE&I commitments within organizations starting to lose a bit of momentum, having that external accountability is hugely important. Advisory groups can, I think, also help to alleviate some of the burden of minoritized employees within an organization. So when you're within an organization, especially if you are one of a few, you may face challenges in pushing too hard or being seen to be too concerned with a particular issue. Whereas being able to then supplement your efforts with the support of external folks can really make that a much less lonely effort. So personally, I think that fifth goal, setting up those sorts of accountability groups is one that very much resonates with me also.
• 44:55
  NADIA: Well, as they say, teamwork is the dream work. And it's striking that this idea really of being amongst community and having that support and having that sense of being able to progress with the big push with others continues to be such a motivator. And even all of what you said about data, the speakers that I had in the prior segment also talked about the significance of data. You had quite a prominent advocacy organization in Canada. What tips would you give to colleagues about how advocacy can be used to progress wider equity in our industry? And what are some of the practical ways that you have used advocacy to push against resistance in the wider industry?
• 45:52
  JULIAN: So I've been quite fortunate in some ways to step into this work at a moment when in Canada, a legislative process was already underway, which was an effort by government to bring streaming platforms into a regulatory framework that was last updated in the early '90s and really had been built on a broadcasting model that practically speaking no longer exists. That effort gave us a context within which we could push for structural change as part of that larger process. So at RMC, along with some other advocacy orgs, we made presentations before parliament that ultimately succeeded in getting racial equity mandates actually built into the language of the legislation. And our argument was essentially, so long as you are re-imagining the Canadian broadcasting system, let's make the new system much more inclusive. And the government listened. So now we're in a position where we have this equity mandate actually built into law. And what that means is that we can approach various entities and cite that law and say, you as a player within this system are mandated to adhere to these equity principles. And so as representatives of equity seeking communities, here's how you can make sure our communities are served and included. So getting that language into the law has had all of these downstream benefits. And another significant benefit of getting that mandate into law is that you are in some ways protected against what might be, you know, what is trendy at a given moment, but when something is in law, if what is fashionable shifts, there's a more durable basis to build your advocacy upon. So in the private sector, we've seen the ED&I push perhaps lose some momentum. It's not the flavour of the moment anymore as it was in 2020, but again, having those mandates in law, you can now hold even private entities to account and they can't just move on when diversity is no longer the latest trend. So while it may seem obvious and it might be easier said than done, if there are opportunities to engage in advocacy at the policy level, not just at the level of approaching individual institutions, shaping policy can have a huge amplifying effect and resiliency effect on the outcomes that you're seeking to achieve.
• 48:33
  NADIA: That's really impressive. The fact that you and your colleagues were able to make that change through government and to have it in the statute books and also to ensure that there's something a bit more permanent than the passing trends and flavours that we tend to have to be subjected to really as a result of the way the industry works and the churn of always wanting to have a different flavour of the month. So in conclusion, if we're sort of reflecting on the broad conversations within the context of the seminars that were held and across data advocacy, the idea of accountability and so on, thinking ahead to next year, which will be the final and last year of the initiative, what do you think the outlook should be and what do you think could be the pertinent topics and issues to take forward?
• 49:24
  JULIAN: So I think that word that we've used earlier, “resilience”, is what really comes to mind for me because again, I feel like we are seeing a bit of a loss of momentum around DE&I or even in some cases, an outright backlash. And so I'm beginning to think how do we adapt our tactics? There was a Guardian piece that I read recently by Nesrine Malik about the end of the BLM era and it was sort of primarily looking at that in the sense of an end to the performative gestures, you know, politicians taking the knee and wearing kente cloth and so on. But that piece also ended on a hopeful note, looking at some of the substantive organizing again, around policy that can meaningfully improve the conditions for marginalized people. So perhaps in 2025, we can specifically think about how to continue this work most meaningfully when it's no longer fashionable and even when it's under attack. We can think about what are the strategic approaches that will best position us to make lasting change.
• 50:29
  NADIA: Wonderful, that's been really informative. Thank you for your time.
• 50:33
  NADIA: Thank you again so much for having me.
• 50:36
  NADIA: As part of this podcast, we have had the opportunity to revisit a number of the themes that are explored during the EFM's Equity and Inclusion Pathways Seminar series. The vision of the sessions was for a future, self-confident European film and media industry that has overcome its structural discriminatory and exclusionary mechanisms and which recognizes the presence of its socio-cultural ethnic diversity in every respect as a matter of course and cultural enrichment. The various speakers featured on this episode have shown that whilst there is still some way to go towards achieving this vision, its attainment is certainly in sight. This season of Industry Insights has been produced in cooperation with Goethe-Institut and co-funded by Creative Europe MEDIA. Please do tune into future episodes of Industry Insights. Find us where you get your podcasts or on the website of the European Film Market, www.efm-berlinale.de. Thank you for listening. Ciao.