By Neena Bhandari
Sydney, 10.08.2004 (WFS): For women in the film and television industry in Australia, it has been a long and arduous struggle to achieve gender equity on and off screen. Much of the changes in the portrayal of women on screen have come about with women filmmakers challenging patriarchal attitudes and making a mark not only in the field of script writing, direction and production, but also technical fields of cinematography, design, sound and editing.
Not long ago, a woman with a professional camera in public would be met with sighs and disbelief. The general notion was that women worked as production secretaries, negative cutters or in the editing, research, makeup and wardrobe sections.
One of the first woman cinematographers, Martha Ansara, recalls how she had cried on the steps of the Sydney Town Hall before shooting a demonstration.” You were made to feel as though you were from Mars. It wasn’t easy to be walking around with a camera on your shoulders”.