Career Panel

Exploring career paths and challenges for female filmmakers.

Camera Department is identical with a male domination since the very beginning. This department involves heavy camera and lighting equipment which are uneasy to carry around – giving impression of ‘ female unfriendly department.’ Besides, there are several women that decided to have a career in this department. They attempted to reexamine the impression which has been constructed by the film society. This essay tries to record the career path of several females in the Camera Department in Indonesian Film Industry. Are there any certain issues that affected their career path?

Keywords: Female Film Workers, Camera Department, Cinematography, Film Industry

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Women in Indonesian film screens have come in quite diverse shapes and characters. A number of film titles also confirm that women have been a source of inspiration for stories, ranging from Tiga Dara (1957) to Athirah (2016) for example. However, most of the number of films with female central characters are produced by male directors. For that reason, it is interesting to ask questions: how is the process behind the scenes of film production that involves women as the main character but processed by male directors? How is the role of women in the production? Does Indonesian film production always side with the male point of view of ‘the male gaze’ and what are the efforts of female actors to compensate for this patriological point of view? Do female actors have space in the creative process or are their scope limited like a puppet that follows the path of the puppetmaster?

This paper is a reflective note of Sekar Sari as an actor who has been involved in a number of productions with both male and female directors, both with Indonesian work teams and joint production teams across countries. This experience helped her gain diverse perspectives and made her aware that there were a number of options that could be applied to support gender inclusiveness. From the approach of an actor who entered the screen, discussion about women in Indonesian films also really needs to pay attention to how the environment and work processes behind the scenes have a lot of stigma and need to be considered together so that they do not always revolve in the same pattern.

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This study analyzes the career trajectory of female filmmaker Gina S Noer, with genetic structuralism approach by Pierre Bourdieu, utilizing his theory of the arena of cultural production. This paper seeks to understand her struggle in the arena of the Indonesian film industry. The study expects to see the social reality of a female film worker when producing their work. The research data were obtained from mass media documentation, film catalogs, interviews, and literature study. The researcher also examined Noer’s works to understand her ideology of gender, and her strategy to gain authority from various groups in Indonesian society. The paper finds that Noer was able to achieve legitimacy and authority through her achievements and practices in the film industry.

Keywords: Gina S. Noer, arena, trajectory, strategy, film making