Being a feminist filmmaker with Fiona Curran

“Shall I keep my mask on?” Fiona asks me from behind a black piece of fabric and glasses as she steps into the room, bundled in a thick, turtleneck jumper on this wintery afternoon. We decided that it is probably best to, considering we are lucky enough to even be in the same room after having become accustomed to lagging Zoom calls and nosy pets popping up on screen.

The Chronicles of Lockdown have had us all watching more TV than ever while simultaneously, the film industry has been struggling. One night, as the Pretty Woman credits rolled in, I found myself idly scrolling through Instagram. My feed is predominantly filled with feminist content and it got me thinking: I am a woman trying to make it in the media industry, I’m a self-proclaimed film fanatic (although, few agree that being obsessed with Marvel and Mamma Mia makes you an expert) and now my night-time anxiety is telling me I’m never going to make it.

Which brings me to where I am today, mask on and sitting at a safe distance from Fiona Curran, a filmmaker and subject leader for film, tv and animation at the University of Gloucestershire. Fiona’s 21 years in the film industry has been split between working for the BBC and HBO to creating her own independent films which she describes as “experimental and esoteric.”

While valuing the “hardcore industry” work, she says, “I probably should have been making art film all the time,” and laughs at her comment, “I never liked having to obey the rules.”

Fiona’s previous work has centred around very melancholic themes such as grief and death, her series ‘The Scientist’ was even filmed in Ridley Road Market, close to where she used to live. Despite the mask, I can see her smile and eyes glint when she adds, “it’s all really cheerful stuff isn’t it?”

Her work also often uses the power of sound. “I think most people who come to sound come from music one way or another,” she says, “though I wasn’t a musician, when I was young, I was a singer and I like radio, I like listening, I like voices.”

“I was asked to do a mad festival called Red Sonic – they brought lots of avant-garde, esoteric composers which I’d not been exposed to before,” she shares, “I was doing some sound for them and got a pass for the whole weekend – it really opened my eyes to how extraordinary composers are.”

Women and Hollywood reports that between 2019-2020, ‘festivals selected and/or screened an average of 16 films (narrative features and documentaries) directed by at least one woman versus an average of 22 films directed exclusively by men.’

Gender equality in the film industry is still a major issue which is why Fiona’s current wave of work is travelling down the aisle of feminism. “As a woman approaching 60, some of the things I was probably hearing 30-40 years ago, are still there and they’re still problematic, and it bothers me deeply,” she says.

“Updating the idea of where women are and whether we’ve moved on – I’ve been thinking about it for years,” she says, hand gestures adding to the enthusiasm, “it’s something that I want to make a statement about.”

She then tells me about a conversation she had with a female student of hers that had completed some work experience. “She was more or less saying to me, very politely, ‘everybody that I met in those places was a white, middle-class, male man in his 50s, with glasses,’ well she didn’t say with glasses, I’m saying with glasses.”

Unfortunately, her response to ‘is there more diversity out there?’ had to be a no, and that things are still fairly static. “I think it can only change by women helping other women and pulling them up the ladder with them,” she says.

Luckily, it is not all doom and gloom as Fiona offers advice for aspiring filmmakers saying, “look at each other’s work, that is enormously helpful because you get feedback, and you get chances – network as much as you can.”

The minute she walked into the room; Fiona exuded this self-assured confidence. Perhaps that’s the key to why her glasses never seemed to fog up above her mask. The love for her work shines through in her speech as she says, “I always harboured a desire to make stuff myself.”

Keeping women in film is so important. A study reported that only 16% of directors working on the top 100 grossing films in 2020 were women. Fiona put it best with her ‘women supporting women’ mantra: “If you can pull somebody up with you, pull them up with you.”

You can find Fiona Curran’s films on Vimeo.