The first socio-labor study on the profession, sponsored by DAMA and the Film Academy, reveals a deep gender gap: 85% of the profession is male and only 15% is female
“People think a movie director is a rich person because you show up on the red carpet in the couché role and they think you’ve already solved life.” The expression belongs to the Minister of Culture Miquel Iceta, who yesterday took part in the presentation of the first study carried out in Spain on the social and employment situation of film directors. DAMA, the body for the management of audiovisual media rights chaired by Borja Cobeaga, and the Film Academy endorse this in-depth report which reveals, among other things, how many directors (of films, series, commercials, documentaries…) there are in Spain: 638 They have at least for the past five years. And no, they are not all rich, far from it.
How much does a director earn? According to the study signed by doctors Javier Carrillo, of Rey Juan Carlos University, and José Antonio Gómez Yáñez, of Carlos III, the average income is 42,000 euros (gross) per year. However, almost 30% receive less than 20,000 a year while a privileged 15% receive more than 80,000 a year. The work stoppage brings with it an irregularity in income that affects both established and aspiring filmmakers.
Quite a few directors attended the presentation of the studio at DAMA’s headquarters in Madrid: Enrique Urbizu, Pedro Olea, Fernando Colomo, Carlos Vermut… Benito Zambrano deplored a tax system that taxes the income from directing a film, without to bear in mind He realizes that it may take five or six years to direct the next one. “This course had to be given to film students, because they all want to be directors,” joked the president of the Academy, Mariano Barroso. Only about a third enjoy job continuity by working practically a full year. A quarter of them are employed for a maximum of three months a year. Among the elite, only 12% of the profession direct more than two films in five years. 60% have to do other things to eat, such as writing scripts, teaching, working in production…
Two pieces of data are particularly gory in the report commissioned by DAMA and the Academy. Being a film director in Spain remains a pre-eminently male profession, despite the boom of female directors who are successful at international festivals. On the same day that ‘Alcarràs’, by Carla Simón, Golden Bear arrives in the theaters of Berlin, 85.2% of Spanish film directors are male and a whopping 14.8% are female. In series, the percentage is divided between 16.4% female directors and 83.6% men.
“The gender gap is brutal,” said Borja Cobeaga, who will end his term as DAMA president in June. «There is also a pay gap, the drivers earn less (24%). They are not commissioned for projects with a large budget, hopefully that will change. In always very masculine sectors, such as cinematography and special effects, it is already changing thanks to ICAA policy».
The other big gap the report reveals is generation. In Spain, Ridley Scott (84 years) and Clint Eastwood (91) would have a hard time. The busiest directors among us are between the ages of 35 and 54. From 55, only 25% of men and 6% of women make films. Filmmakers older than 65 found 3%. “A 60-year-old director may be at the best moment of his career,” said Cobeaga, who hasn’t shot in three years. “It’s not that it’s a bad trait of mine, it’s that it’s natural.”
The platforms generate a lot of work, although the boom in series and films for Netflix, HBO Max or Amazon Prime Video has not led to more stability: only 12% of film directors also make series. Another problem is that these platforms sign their productions with their seal at the expense of the director’s authorship. “The posters of ‘Fe de ETA’ said ‘a Netflix movie’, my name or those of the actors did not appear anywhere,” the author recalls. «Then it seemed normal to me, they started, but today I see that the directors are being ignored, that we are starting to look at that anonymity with suspicion». And one last fact in ‘politicized’ Spanish cinema: not one director is affiliated with a political party and only 4% are affiliated with a trade union. “We are snipers, each goes to his own ball,” Cobeaga justifies.
Source: La Verdad
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