Who Tells Our Stories: Gender Progress Behind the Screen is Reflected On It
By Andrea Thompson
“Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher degree; the pen has been in their hands.”
—Jane Austen, Persuasion
Jane Austen’s sentiment may be two centuries old but much of it still holds true, even if the pen is now also increasingly in the hands of women. But who gets to tell their story is more important than ever in shaping how people are seen, and that’s being reflected in independent cinema to an increasing degree. There is a small but growing crop of films that tackle something deeper—that of who gets to write in the first place, and how the stories we tell can warp reality, not only for the writer, but for the world at large.
