Game Changers

The Curve, Video’s Super 8, 2014 – In our search for the biggest, the best, and the brightest people in the world of video, we kept coming back to one glaring question: Where are all the ladies? So, we did what any good researcher would do: Google search for “women in film.” Serendipitously, this was our introduction to Gamechanger Films, the first for-profit film fund dedicated exclusively to financing narrative features directed by women. It corroborated our superficial observation with some powerful stats: While 50 percent of film school grads are women, they account for only 7 percent of directors of the 250 top-grossing films from 2009 to 2012. This led to a provocative discussion with Gamechanger execs about gender disparity in the field of entertainment and what a “game-changed” Hollywood could look like. If you’re guessing Lilith Fair for film, think again—Gamechanger Films says they’re staging an intervention in an industry that could, let’s face it, use some balancing out. After all, women have always been the great storytellers. As Jeff Wachtel, the president and chief content officer of NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment, reminds us, “The first storytellers were medicine men and honestly more medicine women, who were the other empowered people in the tribe.” As an organization that has put its own stake in the ground with Women at NBCUniversal, we’re eager to see what would happen with more women behind the camera. Here’s what Gamechanger Films had to say.