So Many Dreams, So Little Imagination

Recently, I was in a panel discussion with ideas in the air regarding film and representation. It was all good and carefully put together. I’m not a fan of panel discussions, mainly because I have difficulty concentrating and spend the entire time daydreaming while staring at the panellists. That is, unless the panellists are my friends, in which case, I beat myself repeatedly to make sure I remain mentally present, which is what I did on this particular panel. In the Q & A afterwards, I brought up a question about film festivals and the relatively new trend of introducing an award/grant category dedicated to BIPOC creatives. At first glance, it is exciting to have that instant feeling of being acknowledged and heard. Some may call it a step forward, but it’s one of those pieces of good news that has an aftertaste that you are not quite sure how you feel about. I asked myself if the winners of this category get nearly as much attention and resources as the winners of the main category awards, such as best motion picture or best director. BIPOC creatives spot breadcrumbing from miles away, and to me, this trend comes off as one. But since I hadn’t made up my mind about it, I brought it up as a question, as I am genuinely interested in listening to other opinions. After all, I believe one should be extra cautious not to let one’s trauma projections rob themselves and others of the joy they could otherwise experience. So I asked, “Is this good news, or is this breadcrumbing that delays us pushing and asking for more?” I received different responses from the room, more or less indicating that it is either this or nothing and that we should take these opportunities but not be content with them and keep pushing for more. They also reminded me that, technically, BIPOC filmmakers are not excluded from entering the main competition at festivals. Hence, the door is always open for them to be part of the main competition. I took these responses as they were, nodded off, and we moved on to other questions.

Later, I wondered to myself, _What do we mean by saying that no one is excluded from the main competition?_Aren’t we ignoring the structural barriers that exist from the ground up, stopping us from seamlessly passing through the gates that enable us to enter the main competition? The fact that there is no outright ban doesn’t indicate that this is a fair fight. It never is.

In Finland, the private Aalto University and Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki host the main university-based film schools in the country. The Department of Film, Television, and Scenography within the School of Arts, Design, and Architecture has its origins in the former industrial art school, the latter having been integrated into Aalto University in 2010. “The education on offer at Aalto remains quite exclusive: out of 457 applicants for the different film programmes in the 2014 round, only 18 students were accepted in total, across all the different specialisations.” This number has not changed much in recent years.

I remember once, in a meeting with the Head of the Department of Film, Television, and Scenography at Aalto University, she expressed her frustration with the applications they were receiving at Aalto University and the fact that “the majority of applicants are white and from upper middle class “artist” families and that not many interesting stories can come from their rather limited, comfortable, and privileged backgrounds”. When I inquired about the reason, one speculation was that the educational consultants whose job it is to advise students on which major to pursue for higher education rarely recommend creative majors such as visual arts, film, or theatre to BIPOC students or students from working-class families. These students also have a lower chance of receiving such encouragement from their families, not because their families don’t value art and culture, but simply because they can’t afford to support their children living a life of precarity in the arts. What are the chances that their kid ends up being one of the chosen few?

A few months ago, I came across this information in a call for papers for a special issue of the _Journal of Scandinavian Cinema_focused on race and ethnicity in Nordic film cultures, which I find relevant to this conversation:

“In 2017, the head of the Swedish Film Institute (SFI), Anna Serner, highlighted the distinct lack of ethnic diversity in Swedish film culture and signalled ambitions to ‘broaden representation, both behind and in front of the cameras’ (2017: 4). Echoing these sentiments, the Danish Film Institute (DFI) and the Norwegian Ministry of Culture (NFI) have outlined targets for ‘increasing cultural diversity and reaching new audiences’ (NFI 2018). These statements reflect the Nordic film industries’ aspiration to address the significant underrepresentation of black, Asian and minority ethnic voices in the creative sectors across the Nordic region. However, themes of race and ethnicity have long-established patterns of representation on Nordic screens (see Wright, 1998, Gustafsson, 2014 and Sundholm, 2018). With no established industry voice or body overseeing representational diversity, as the above studies attest, cinematic depictions of diversity matter precisely because they largely offer the only insight into the way these themes are understood and construed. Overwhelmingly, white filmmakers produce these examples and, as a result, many offer self-critical introspective forms of whiteness. While most are well meaning, often they reflect a liberal perspective that is symptomatic of institutionalised notions of inequality within Nordic media cultures. First and second-generation filmmakers like Hella Joof, Josef Fares, Omar Shargawi and Ali Abbasi have made headway into challenging these ideas by producing films that highlight more complex and diverse perspectives on Nordic societies, but they have received little scholarly attention.”

This new category that is supposed to make me happy tells me one thing: it says, hey, we hear you, and we feel for you, but at the moment, it is not feasible for us to make any systematic changes in order to ensure equity for all. But here, take this bandaid and put it on your wound, so you don’t bleed all over the freshly cut grass of my lawn. And you think to yourself, OK, at least they’ve heard me, they’ve taken one step forward, another step will follow soon. But will it? How long will it take? How much more should we fake it in order to make it? I’ll give you a hint: Someone once told me last year that the first objections to the Kiasma staff being made up of entirely white-Finnish professionals happened more than a decade ago. It took Kiasma around 15 years to hire one non-Finnish curator (who is a European male curator, by the way, so not too far out of their comfort zone, one might say). If this tiny step took 15 years, how many years do we have to wait for an unapologetic anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist black/indigenous/person of colour coming from a working-class background to get a leadership position there? Will it even happen in our lifetime?

The problem with awards and grants that claim to promote diversity, in my opinion, is that they are mainly engineered to let only a few people in. Those people become the shining stars that have to carry the burden of being outspoken advocates on behalf of all their communities. Not everyone wants to be an advocate; not everyone wants to be a representative of their race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Even if they want to take on that role, it still won’t make things fair. Putting a spotlight on a few people robs others of rays that can brighten up their day equally. This is a system that might do good in the short term, but in the long run, it fosters resentment, competition, hatred, and loneliness among members of the same marginalised communities. It is the same old divide and conquer tactic.

I fully understand and empathise with the point of view that believes we should accept these steps as tokens of good intention and visible change. But I want to put this out there: “What if we don’t?” What if we started imagining principles and actions that would level the field for us from the ground up? What would that world look like?

We must persist in dreaming, but not dreams so devoid of imagination and so boring that they beg you to wake yourself up. We are artists, not neoliberal politicians. So, how about we leave them and their dried up and self-serving visions and build our own dreams in which we are the main star and not their supporting best friend? Let’s imagine a world where cultural work isn’t dominated globally by wealthy white liberals; where they don’t hold the power to monopolise cultural scenes by designing and holding in place systems that keep us working in unsustainable jobs and projects, in constant states of fear and anxiety, until we finally give up and leave the field for good.

Scrolling through my IG reels, I came across a video of a dating coach saying this:

You see, when you are starving for love, the breadcrumbs of attention that every motherfucker presents to you start looking tasty. You don’t deserve breadcrumbs. You deserve the entire bakery!

I could not agree more.