Catherine Hardwicke is a successful film director and screenwriter, best known for “Twilight” and “Thirteen,” but she still believes that women aren’t afford enough opportunities in “every single business” across the board — a problem that’s become a hot topic in Hollywood.
“The time is now to really try to change the gender balance and the equations out there,” Hardwicke said in a video to launch a new blog for We Do It Together, a nonprofit that is dedicated to financing and producing female-driven films, TV and other forms of media.
“Everybody is excited about embracing the future, making movies look more like real life, with people of diversity, with more women behind the cameras, telling more female stories from all around the world,” Hardwicke added.
“In every single business, women are underrepresented and they have been historically so I think the more people that are inspired to see another badass painter, another badass mathematician, or a scientist, as filmmakers, we can help tell those stories of all these amazing women,” said Hardwicke, a member of the advisory board of WDIT.
The filmmaker also noted the role that everyone — including men — can play in addressing gender disparity.
“The way everybody can help is supporting films,” Hardwicke said. “Partly with your dollars — go to opening weekend when a film directed by a woman comes out, or a film starring a woman — support it, blog about it, write about it, share it. And then of course whenever you are involved in a project, you can say, ‘I like this script but look at the balance: are 50 percent of the roles women? Are 50 percent of the crew women?’”
We Do It Together plans to us its blog to address the industry on gender empowerment issues.
“The great thing about We Do It Together is that it’s a nonprofit organization and every movie that they make about women, by women, directed by women, they are going to take the money and put it back into making another movie directed by a woman, a woman’s story,” Hardwicke said. “It’s a great new model for supporting female voices.”
Watch the video above.