Erika Addis. (Photo: Erin Lee)

Opinion: Why aren’t there more female cinematographers?

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Erika Addis. (Photo: Erin Lee)

Erika Addis, head of cinematography at Griffith Film School and Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS) Queensland president and national vice-president, chairs ACS’ Women’s Advisory Panel. She reflects on why cinematography remains male-dominated. 

I’m frequently asked ‘Why are there so few women cinematographers?’ I do speculate on the reasons, but the answer is not simple.

Cinematographers need a combination of creativity, techn...

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2 Comments

  1. I am sorry this has happened to you.Thank you for sharing your thoughts and story.

    Positive discrimination. 50/50. 2020.

    We’re making less films as each year goes by. Screen Australia supporting less films. When the miracle occurs and a feature is greenlit for production in Australia – people want/need the biggest and most experienced guns on their teams or the person they have been in the trenches with for a lifetime. Sadly, the time the film industry is in – new opportunities to join that pool of ‘big guns’ for up and comers are very little.

    4 of those gender matters films were 1st time directors. They’re not going to put an emerging or early stage dop on there male or female. The few women of scale working in Australia tend to be unavailable as they’re rightfully booked or probably overseas like Bonnie, Ari, Jody, Ashley, Zoe etc. Next Gender Matters needs to address HOD’s and also not focus on film and address television, webseries, short film etc and making opportunities across formats for women. So many heads of department are having to go abroad if they want to shoot films like Germany, the US and UK but particularly DOP’s.

    We’re only going to be breaking handfuls of new people in any department in the craft of cinema across the board from here. The CEO of our national screen agency thinks cinema is dead and people dont watch films so good luck out there, everyone.

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