16 Days 16 Films - a project you should know about

This short film festival punches way above its weight

Last year’s winning film was Dandelion by Lorena Valencia

I’m aware, as I write this, that the prospect of watching 16 short films that explore the subject of violence against women doesn’t sound, in and of itself, like the most appealing prospect. However, bear with me.

16 Days 16 Films is a really fantastic initiative that promotes and supports female filmmakers, and campaigns to end all forms of violence against women - and as we know, there is no limit to the imagination of either women creatives, or those who seek to perpetrate violence against them. The ways which we find to express ourselves, and the ways they try to hurt us, know no bounds. Such is a grim fact of human life.

And yet, as the organisers point out, “despite its pervasive nature, only a fraction of philanthropic funding is directed toward women and girls with even less than one percent going to organisations working to eradicate gender-based violence.”

Really Big Sigh.

The project, founded by Johanna von Fischer and Ginta Gelvan, and run with the support of UN Women, UK Says No More, Voice of Change, the Geena Davis Institute, and the BFI, is inspired by the UN Women campaign 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence, and every year they run a competition for female filmmakers.

16 films are selected from hundreds of submissions from female-identifying filmmakers, and for every one of the 16 days of the campaign (starting today, November 25, and running to December 10), one film is screened on their online platform.

Each selected film explores a facet of the subject, which as well as the obvious stuff, also includes inequality and discrimination (in other words, not always physical violence, which feels like a mercy), with social and cultural sensitivity, but can take any form - fiction, documentary, animation or experimental, whatever that may mean - and must run for under 25 minutes.

And they come from all over the world - this year, the chosen films were made in the UK, France, Germany, Mexico, the USA, and Argentina. And they won’t all be grim! They might educate, they might shock, they might make you uncomfortable, but they might also be inspiring and beautiful. What this isn’t, by its nature, is another opportunity to fetishise women’s suffering. I think we’ve had enough of that.

Take a look. Like I said, they’re less than half an hour long, and among the awards is an audience prize, which you can vote for. The programme starts today with She Came to Me, directed by the actor Saffron Burrows, and can be seen here.

The new episode of my podcast The London Theatre Review is out now, with reviews of Wolves on Road at the Bush Theatre, a revisit to The Lion King, in its 25th year in the West End, and a chat with the cast of The Lehman Trilogy, at the Gillian Lynne. Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts