Deauville (AFP)

The proportion of women directors is still down in the United States despite the #MeToo movement, said Tuesday in Deauville the American actress Geena Davis, who founded a research institute on the representation of women on screen.

"Things do not get any better for female directors, the numbers in the US are down," Thelma's Thelma and Ridley Scott's "Thelma and Louise" (1991) told the press.

Geena Davis presented on Tuesday out of competition at the American Film Festival Deauville a documentary she produced, entitled "Everything can change and if women counted in Hollywood", to be released January 8 in France. On the basis of data collected by the Institute ("Institute of Gender in Media") founded in 2004 by the actress, and testimonials from many personalities (such as Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman and Geena Davis), the film shows how the world of American cinema retains discriminatory reflexes in the place it gives women in front of and behind the camera.

"In America, only about 4% of films produced are made by women," said the actress interviewed by AFP.

In France, it is 24%, said independent producer Sandrine Brauer, co-founder of the 50/50 collective in 2020, present at the press conference.

In film schools, however, the gender balance is 50/50, Davis said. In France the proportion of women is even slightly higher, according to Ms. Brauer.

"It's really a shame, we've known it for decades, how long will it take?" Added Geena Davis, before noting that "no one has yet found a solution for having more than female directors ".

The actress, also in the credits of "Beetlejuice" by Tim Burton (1988), thinks however that things can more easily change via children's films. Her institute showed how the female characters were a minority, but the actress found listening to the producers. "There, people were not aware of the problem, they were horrified and ready to change," she said.

According to the institute, entertainment media offer three male characters for a female character.

For the actress, who also played Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie", the only "big change" since #MeToo, "is that today we can talk".

"We've never been able to complain about sexual harassment in the past, there are so few female roles, they would always find someone else to replace us, or someone less expensive. ", stressed the actress.

Geena Davis said she discovered through Susan Sarandon (Ridley Scott's Louise) that a woman "could say what she thought." "When Ridley Scott suggested that I take off my top in a scene, I said I was going to lunch but Susan, she went to see him to tell him I will not do it, before going back to lunch".

As for the quotas, Geena Davis thinks that they are not possible in a "creative industry", except perhaps for the directors.

© 2019 AFP