MAFF Women Screen Industry is born as an impulse towards equity

The directors Paloma Zapata, Mariona Guiu, Toñi Martín and Rocío Martín presented their projects as part of this alliance between the Festival and the women’s associations AMMA, CIMA and Mujeres en VO

Yesterday the Thyssen Museum was the venue for the first edition of MAFF Women Screen Industry, the result of the collaboration agreement between the Festival and the Andalusian Association of Women in Audiovisual Media (AAMMA), the Association of Women Filmmakers and of Audiovisual Media (CIMA) and Mujeres en V.O. [Women in Original Version]. The agreement’s objective is to advance towards equity and diversity in the audiovisual sector, to transform the culture of cinema and promote the careers of women filmmakers.

Francisco Pomares, Councillor for Equality of the Malaga City Council, opened this encounter at which the ongoing projects of four women filmmakers were presented. Pomares highlighted the need to “open up new spaces to women” so that “the gender perspective stops being taboo”. Standing next to him, María Peña, CEO of ICEX España Exportaciones e Inversiones, stressed the importance of his words and declared that when we speak of gender in the field of internationalisation “reality is very dissimilar; it is erroneously asymmetrical”.

Figures corroborate this inequality and “probably many of the reasons that explain its masculinisation are common to the audiovisual sphere”, concluded Peña, going on to note that said reality is constituted by three factors: “lack of conciliation because the sector demands an in-person presence, lack of time to create formal and informal networks, which is necessary for women to be valued and grow professionally, and the invisibility of projects led by women, in spite of having the same possibilities of success”.

Following the interventions of Francisco Pomares and María Peña, Annabelle Aramburu, coordinator of MAFIZ, presented the four projects together with Montse Ogalla, Vice President of AAMMA and representative of the three associations of the alliance with MAFIZ. The filmmakers of the four projects selected were present at the event: La hora de las tortugas / Turtle Time, by Mariona Guiu, Juliette y Camille / Juliette & Camille, by Paloma Zapata, Antonia by Toñi Martín and Seis / Six, by Rocío Martín.

La hora de las tortugas / Turtle Time is the documentary project of Mariona Guiu Pont, director and co-founder, together with Ariadna Relea, of Suricata Stories, a production company specialised in documentaries. Paloma Zapata, experienced director of international video clips and musical documentaries, presented her new project Juliette y Camille / Juliette & Camille, of her production company La Fábrica Naranja. Toñi Martín is a scriptwriter and the director of the fiction project Antonia. Her last award-winning short film, Una mujer feliz (2019), obtained a Grant for Audiovisual Production from the Festival in 2018 and participated in the following edition in the section Reaffirming Women’s Rights. Lastly, Rocío Martín, who presented her project Seis / Six, participated in the production of the documentary Omega, nominated to the Goya in 2017, and in 2020 founded La Filmahora.