The Doris Manifesto

A Film Project Debating Equality between Gender in the Film Industry and on the White Screen.

• All scripts will be written by women
• All films will have at least one female
  leading part
• All primary functions concerning artistry and decision making will be occupied by women
• All original music will be composed by women

The Doris Manifesto aim to explore how the film narratives develop in films made by women. The last ten years 79% of our full length film production has been directed by men. We want to change that!

The percentage concerns full length films supported by SFI. Sourse: Swedish Directors 2003. The stately financing of the Swedish Film Institute (SFI) has through the Culture Department an aim to work for increased equality within Swedish film production.

Through the Doris Manifesto, the Doris Film Network wants to investigate whether the portrayal of women and men, on the white screen, will change with female narrators.

The first script competition has been concluded; three winners have been selected. Let’s begin the productions!
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Background to the research of women’s narratives within filmmedia

Women have never before been allowed to make film on their proper terms. No art form has permitted women to perform independently before the end of the 20th Century. The film, being a newborn art form, has been dominated by men. It’s the most unequal of all industries. The film as an art form has developed, but equality has stagnated; both behind the camera with creative authors and in front of the camera as relations and portrayals of women and that is why the Doris Manifesto exists.

To research female story telling in the best way, we want to give the same conditions to women as men have had in their film making for more than 100 years. Because film is a mass medium, and reaches millions of people of all ages, it is important that women as well as men create these stories. The purpose of these films is to provoke a discussion amongst the public, in media teaching in O-levels and A-levels, at university and in the film industry, as well as giving a visual contribution to the public debate.

To investigate the visual narratives of women we want to produce tree short films a year, during three years, according to the Doris Manifesto. The purpose of these nine films is to explore female portrayals from a gender perspective and to gather and bring forward the female competence within the film industry. The nine short films will be shown separately and will also be cut together to a full length film for TV, festival and cinema distribution all over the world.