Leslie Ann Coles is the kind of woman who finds more hours in a day than the rest of us. She dances, arranges and attends endless workshops and panel discussions, acts, writes, directs and produces films, plans festive soirees around writers and artists, directs the annual Female Eye Film Festival (FeFF) and oh, raises three teenagers.
A love of film
One August six years ago, Coles was thinking about all the great films she saw and thought Toronto needed a venue to show women’s films all together. “I decided in August, and staged the whole thing—47 films—in October,” says Coles.
Today I can’t tell that Coles has been up all night, volunteering at a women’s shelter. In addition to relief work, Coles is heavily involved right now with an annual young filmmaker workshop, plus the plans in the works to involve film in the lives of kids at risk, the upcoming annual film screening in memorial of the Montreal Massacre, and a script development program open to male and female filmmakers. Oh, yeah, and there’s The Women Behind the Films of Studio D event, coming up in a few short weeks. Piece of cake.
“You just have to do it,” Coles says. “Life is short but wide. Follow whatever is closest to your heart. It’s a scary thing when it’s creative or personal, there’s a lot at stake when it means so much to you. That fear can prevent us from going for it. Even if the fear of failure is terrifying, though, I can’t imagine not trying.”
No Marxist-feminist mandate
The FeFF screens films made by women the world over, ranging from short documentaries to full-length features. More flock each year into cinemas to see the range of films, and Coles is hopefully anticipating mixed audiences of 2,500 plus this year. “I’m pleased to say we have a loyal male audience,” she states, because the FeFF is not about films for women but by them. “We don’t have a Marxist-feminist mandate,” she explains. There isn’t really any mandate.
Coles raised a few eyebrows for screening a retrospective of Doris Wishman’s sexploitation films in 2005. “They weren’t technically brilliant,” she concedes, “but she has a huge cult following of cinephiles and she is the most prolific woman director—she made over 900 films.” Censoring the female eye to conform to her own views or anyone else’s is not what the festival is all about. “Life is about diversification,” she says. “We like to challenge the perception of the general public.”
The most amazing thing about the FeFF is that diversity. Coles doesn’t see a lot of similarities in the films she receives. It isn’t about ‘chick flicks’ or feminist films; though both may and have happened. What she does notice in common is how many women do all the work—just like with her own award-winning In the Refrigerator, Coles sees that women often write, produce, direct and act in their own film. But the works are “not all Cinderella stories. Women create complex characters; the films are multidimensional, showing different situations. They feature uncharacteristic roles, not just classic stars. It’s really refreshing to work with the female eye.”
Running on love and kindness
It’s also frustrating. In a world where ranging estimates show four percent or fewer films are created by women, funding her project has been the hardest part. The festival runs on love, government grants, service-in-kind contributions, donated merchandise and facilities, and Coles’s own pocketbook.
“We need to look outside of the government to become more sustainable,” she says. The right corporate sponsor would be nice. The festival began on a shoestring budget of less than a grand: Coles footed the bill herself, as there were no grants that first year. To grow into the kind of international film festival Toronto is famous for, to attract the kind of attention these women filmmakers deserve, there’s always need for more money. The more money, the more visibility can happen for women directors.
“It’s hard in this business for a woman, regardless of how prolific she is,” Coles observes. “Specifically for women who direct. It’s still the bastion of the old boys club.”
But Leslie Ann Coles is going to change that.
While the 6th annual Female Eye Film festival is scheduled for February 2008, you can enjoy film screenings at The Women Behind the Films of Studio D event in Toronto on October 20. . For more information, visit www.femaleeyefilmfestival.com.
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