Kate Winslet, Gemma Chan attend L’Oreal party celebrating women filmmakers

Actor #KateWinslet presented an award to a promising female filmmaker in #Cannes on Friday (May 28) at a party celebrating female film makers. L’Oreal Paris ambassadors #GemmaChan, Andie Macdowell and Helen Mirren also joined the ’young cinema’ gala dinner at the beach club of the Martinez Hotel. The Lights on Women Award by L’Oreal Paris, in its second edition, honours a promising female short film director, aiming to provide a boost that would trickle down to other women in the industry, where only 17% of directors of top-grossing films are women. “So the statistics are quite sobering. We clearly need to do a lot more work. And I think it’s about access and opportunity more than anything. I think when you give women the access and the opportunity to direct films, you get that flow through of talent,“ British actor Gemma Chan said. This year, the Lights on Women prize money of 20,000 euros was awarded to Vietnamese short film director Mai Vu, recognised for her nine-minute short “Spring Roll Dream“. Macdowell said she has witnessed the struggle of female directors with whom she was worked including Nora Ephron, Diane Keaton and Anjelica Huston. “I saw how hard they worked and how they were treated. And there’s still, we have a tendency to walk behind, because we’ve been taught to do so, and to accommodate, because we’ve been taught to do so, rather than step in our power because we haven’t been given the opportunity to do that,“ she said. Mirren said there were only two women out of 200 people on a film set, when she started working in the industry - the script aid and the costume assistant. “Now when I walk on a film set, out of 200 people, there are maybe 20 women. So we’re certainly moving forward, but not so far for what as I would like to see. I want to see out of 200 people, 100 of them are women,” Mirren said. The 75th Cannes Film Festival has been criticised for lack of female representation, with only 5 out of 21 films in the main competition being directed by women. ........................................................................................ Follow Us: Facebook: Twitter: Watch “Princess Leonor, Spain’s future queen, delivers her first speech with ENG SUBs“ Watch “Spain’s 15-year-old Princess Leonor attends first solo engagement“ Check out our playlists to view the latest videos and don’t forget to subscribe to the NEWZEE YouTube channel for daily video updates. Must Share Your Thought in Comments!