Beeban Kidron - Film Director HARDtalk

fighting extradition to Sweden to face charges of sexual assault. He

denies the allegations. It is time for HARDtalk now.

Why are there so few women film- makers? Does it matter? The Cannes

Film Festival was criticised this year when all 22 films and the

competition were directed by men. Hollywood is not much better. A

recent study found that less than 10 % of its directors were women.

Beeban Kidron is my guest today. She has made the big time. She

directed the Bridget Jones May Day, The Edge of Reason. Most of four

other films concern more radical material. She made a documentary

about anti- nuclear women protesters at Greenham Common and

an adaptation of the lesbian novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Her

latest documentary is about India's sacred prostitutes. Do women and

the choices they make interest to most? Beeban Kidron, welcome to

HARDtalk. It does seem odd that we are in the 21st century and there

are not more women who have voted through to the big-time. Why do you

think that is? I think it is the same everywhere. They are having

the same debate in business, politics, the front bench. Look at

one thing, Women are primary carers of the young, the old and the

domestic. If that is the case, they will not be in difficult places.

Men fight to get there, for women it is harder. It does seem that

their film making is worse than other areas. Film-making is often

about women. You might think women might be more interested in it. 9%

of Hollywood directors in 2008 were women. That is the same as 1998. It

has not changed. I got an e-mail saying he was solve this problem.

The question is, why are there no women over the age of 35? You have

to ask yourself, what happens to women beyond that age? The start to

have children. Film-making is a 247 occupation. You fight to make your

film. Once you have won that fight, it takes months and months and

months. It is not so double work for people with others to look

after. -- the double. Those of us who started when we were young, we

were able to work it out by the time we had children. Then, there

are ours with significant partners who can help us. It is a problem.

You wrote about the experience of having children and trying to work.

You said that with all the marching and agitating that it was difficult

to find someone to bring up the children. Who did we think it would

be? That is the question that has not been answered. In public life,

that needs to be answered. It is impossible for women to get ahead

in the business where the hours are monstrous. Absolutely monstrous. It

is not unusual if you are making a big feature film to get up at 4am

and not get home until midnight six or seven days a week. That is

difficult to pull off. That is a side from creativity or any other

issues. Then we come to the question of whether it matters.

Women are choosing to look after children. We do not have an answer

to the question of who would do it instead. Does it matter that women

are not making films? Of course it matters. There are women everywhere.

To be frank, we are half of the world. We are half of the stories.

We are half of the consumers. Unless you recognise that, you will

not have the full gamut of shimmied experience. -- human experience. We

hold the story of contemporary life and history. Unless you have that

new ones to look at it, you will miss out. -- that particular look

at it. Are men not telling stories? Of course they are. They are

brilliant. That does not mean you should not have the full gaze on a

number of sussed -- subject. It is not a choice. It is not something

that will be addressed for a long time, if ever, given the nature of

the problem at its heart. I think it is something that we must

continually address. If you do not do it for us, we must do it for our

daughters. If not our daughters, are granddaughters. I think if you

want people to be fairly human, they must feel that they can

participate in the full spectrum of human experience. For you, that

meant, I mean look at your portfolio, Bridget Jones, let's go

to your first film, you made it very young and you were entrusted

by the women at Greenham Common protest in against nuclear weapons.

You went along with a friend and made a documentary about a story

you felt was not being told. I went along with Amanda Richardson. We

both felt a bit like a fish out of water at film school. Many people

were so certain about why they were there and they'd seemed so

technically proficient. We were relatively young and had not been

tutored. We got practice over here. When we got to Greenham Common, two

extraordinary things happened. One was that we were in a community of

people who were not there, were not connected in a grid for reasons of

their birth or accident or getting on with their lives. It was not an

educational thing. They had faith and belief in something. It was an

extraordinary experience for that reason. Also, they were under

attack. They were under considerable attack from the media.

We were very young film-makers. We thought "hang on a minute, this is

what we see on the news, this is what we read in the papers..." They

should say that the image being put across was one off Heery lesbians.

-- we should. Isn't it amazing that we have absorbed the fact that at

one period the entire British ruling class had white wigs and red

marks on their face but these women were being crucified for the colour

of their hair, not their politics. There was an intrinsic problem

about how the media was approaching this. Also, I think, this was 30

years ago are now, I think there was the birth of something in me as

a film-maker and an observer. Someone went "and hang on a minute,

let us look at ambivalence. Let us look at the bit that is not binary.

Let's start looking at the world as we experience it as human beings,

not as a cycle of news and good and bad." I thought that was being done.

From the sounds of it, that has fed subsequent programmes continually.

Your breakthrough film was a television adaptation of Oranges

Are Not the Only Fruit. That is by Jeanette Winterson. You got a BAFTA

for that. You were still very young. That was the 1990. It shocked

British audiences. It was the first time that there had been an

intimate same-sex seen on British television. It was extraordinary.

We made it quite quietly in the BBC. We weren't one of the Premier

programmes. We were doing nothing. I remember one of the guys some

editorial coming in and seeing "it did not look very BBC." and I said

"what does BBC look like then?" Somehow the BBC has always had a

fantastic tradition about respecting literature and the book

had done so well that they respected its quality what those

reasons. And they did not look that carefully at what it contained.

What happened was, as word got out that there was going to be a love

scene between two young girls, there was a louder banging of the

drum. There was one of these terrible surveys. 60 % of British

people were against the showing of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.

After it went out, 60 % a British people were absolutely for the show.

I think that it is about the role of drama. It is about the role of

stories. It is about how people actually recognise the struggle of

that young women to grow up. It was not about, sexuality. It was about

her right as a human being. -- not about her sexuality. I think that

is important. A here you are, in a sense, it was radical for its time.

You had done this series of radical programming. Then there is a

certain point in your career, Bridget Jones, you were accused of

selling out but you have described it as a radical film, rather

strangely for the secret of Bridget Jones to be a radical film. It is a

departure from the artist L. -- sequel. Was a deliberate? -- art

house style. Was it deliberate? I had made films with Patrick Swayze,

Shirley McLaine, I had been out there and done the Hollywood thing.

I think there is that. I think going back to your first question,

people have to be really careful about how tough they are on women

who do make films. If we are not allowed to make all kinds of films,

then the glass ceiling is completely intact. I think it is

worth saying that Bridget remains in the top ten off all-time best

grossing British films. You have to remember that gives you a lot of

power as a film director. 4 Bridget itself, before you... Where you

saying that you should have been able to do that sooner? What are

you saying? Why vilify me for doing it? I was vilified. I was more

amused than angry at that. Why do you think that was? Because they

thought that we had sold out. was not to do with you being a

woman. Or was it? It is about being in a group that is not well

represented. I think it is because I am a woman film-maker. That is

the mantle that I cold. Any one of those... What people expect from

you is that you carry the dreams and aspirations. We don't only

carry the dreams and aspirations what we are paid to do, we carry

all that is not happening. I think that is where people must be

careful, not to pull people down. Don't pull the ones who get a

little bit ahead of the game down. It is important that women make big

box-office films. You were aware of that. That must be important. I

know when you did you first feature film in the UK, a journalist called

you up and said "Do you know you are only the third woman ever to

make a feature film in the UK?" High fantastic that is. I try to

check how many women there were on the Internet and I could not get

any because there were so many. So many. You pick the phone down on

that journalist because you did not want to be a representative. You

wanted to be Beeban Kidron doing a job. If a woman film director makes

everybody in this audience think "all well, that will be better than

a male film director because she will have an added value through

her gender." Then terrific. I want to be a woman film director. If it

isn't really a qualification of the role of director of them why would

I want that attach to me? I think it is a difficult thing to carry. -

- then why. I am hugely proud of being a woman. I am absolutely,

politically behind women's emancipation of all kind. Do not

You said you were vilified for the lead. The most recent project,

Storyville, is about the sacred prostitutes of India. A completely

different programme that in a way certainly reminded me of some of

the earlier stuff you had done, documentaries about women and women

in a particular role. For these women it is extraordinary.

Scandalous. That was what was so interesting. I went to India and I

could not believe it. I had quite famously made a film about New York

prostitutes that was very, very popular on the airwaves. It made a

lot of ways, let's say. I thought I had done every possible angle on

prostitution. I had dealt with that subject from my personal film-

making perspective. And then I heard this thing on Radio 4 which

was actually about young girls being dedicated to the goddess in

childhood and at puberty being sold for sex. Prostitution in the name

of God? You have to be joking! You have to be joking. I was so enraged

that I was virtually in India before I had even decided to make a

film. I can't really explain what happened to me but I felt like it

was a calling. I did not wait for someone to finance the film. I

didn't wait to find a camera person. I went to see if it was true. I

started making the film. Because they say it does not exist anymore,

it was a long-winded thing is find the exact community. -- to find. I

proved that it indeed it does happen. As I got closer and closer

to the women and girls, for whom it was happening, I understood

something else. In this part of the world, in this particular community,

where margins are so small, for them the choice was between being

Devadasi, and somewhat elevated by their relationship with the goddess,

or being trafficked. Arts and actually, in their world, it was

better to be a Devadasi. -- and actually. You understand why a

mother might sell their daughter as a prostitute? In these

circumstances. We don't have time, because it took me 75 minutes to

prove the point. I can't prove it here. But I think that there is a

huge history to the Devadasi which has been everybody, British, India,

the NGOs, the current government's everybody has marginalise this

group. All of the good things about it are at a minimum and the bad

things are maximum. But what I have to say to you, if any one of those

girls could be a film-maker sitting here talking to you, or a Devadasi,

they would choose to be me. But before I were sitting in their

shoes, I might choose to be a Devadasi. We have to really take

account of that when we judge people. The reason, one of the

reasons you are here, and being a film-maker, is partly the enforce

of your father. He died very recently. He was many things. One

of his life's project was to understand and replace -- the place

of capitalism. For his 50th birthday he did a remarkable thing

for his time. He arranged a private screening of a film for you and

your friends. Yes. It was a film called miracle in the land, made in

1951. I remember standing next to my dad. He said, I haven't seen

this for years. I hope it is what Arona. He said it was a film that

had meant so much to him. -- remember. He said that if what --

if we saw it we would understand his Abbott -- aspiration for the

world. But we should leave now, as if it was a better place than it --

that it would become. That was his idea. He saw that idea embodied in

the film. There were 30 of us. It was an awe-inspiring experience

watching that film. All of those people that I am still in touch

with, which is about a quarter of them, remember that day as being a

very special day, when they understood that you could transcend

your own experience. Later on in life when I was rather distressed

about what I felt was going on in the education system, I took the

idea of that and with another friend we started the film club.

It's a film club exists to bring stories to young kids. We run them

up and down the country in state schools. We have 250,000 members.

It was set up only a few years ago in 25 schools. Now there are 7,000

clubs. The idea is that all children, these 250,000 children,

every week, get a chance to watch a film, films like the one you

watched when you're young, and to talk about it. What is you belief

about what they will get from it? Is it just and escapism? What do

you think that it allows them to do something more? It is something

much bigger than that. We have 100 years of films, great artists. But

what have they have done is they have told stories and parables.

What it gives to our membership is the most incredibly broad

understanding of the world. They see films that a very old, black

and white. But they also see films from all over the world. And so on

the one hand, when it was election time in 2010, we ran films about

democracy. So they seek cry Freedom. AC Gandhi. And they see Mr Smith

Goes to Washington. And some months later, it was Alf keeps -- our

children who were able to explain to their parents. It is a broader

world. You cannot expect young people to have an imagination about

a world that they do not experience for themselves. They know about the

House of Lords. You are about to learn an awful lot about the House

of Lords. Partly as a result of that film club, a new are about to

be a baroness. That means that you have a role in reviving legislation

in Britain. I wonder that when your father showed you that film, he

said I want to hand you, the next generation, the baton of concern

and hope. Do you feel as a result of becoming a baroness, a lady,

that you have taken the baton and run with it and doing something he

would be proud of? I think he would be immensely proud. I think it is

absolutely his instruction of living in the world as if it was

slightly better. I think he would be happier if it was an elected

House. That would have been his position. But it does mean you will

be ousted. I will be very happy, proud that I was appointed. Ironman

people's peer and a cross Bencher, as they call it. If it comes to the

fact it is rearranged or I have to be re-elected, I would take that on

the chin. But in the meantime, I have gone on a path of really

understanding Media and new media. I have been involved in the UK Film

Council. I am very concerned about where we put creativity at the

centre of our public life. And I think that we need that. I am very,

very excited to be part of it. know how you will use it. Does that

mean you will not be making so many films? There is an understanding

that people like me to make films and then also go to the Lords.

There is a misunderstanding about film-makers. I have been making