In 2022, FIRST continues to collaborate with CHANEL to launch the curation of FIRST FRAME, in regard to the diverse images of women in the works of emerging talents in China, and to further encourage the cinematic representation of female characters and themes. This year, we are honored to invite such guests as the independent jury of FIRST FRAME, main creators of the selected works, senior media practitioners, filmmakers, etc. to gather and share their viewpoints, as a collective effort to explore the annual trends in female frames.
Based on this year’s selection of films, we apply a set of diverse evaluation criteria to the distillation of annual trends from the cinematic landscape. And through conversations, a space for multi-dimensional discussion could be developed, that ranges from cinematic paradigms to mass cultural criticism.
Among all the eligible submissions from 2021, films that are by female directors and on female themes account for a total of 20%. This year, we witness an increase in this percentage, with such works rising to as high as 28%, a new breakthrough.
It could be seen from the growing numbers year by year that a different kind of vigor and liveliness is manifested in the spectrum of female images by these filmmakers. While the creation of these films is lacking in number and discipline, we should continue to raise and address questions of how to respond to the issue of self-identification; how to eliminate the binary opposition between sexes through taking on a more equal perspective; and how we should have more public discussions, in the spirit of rational thinking, on the text of female films as well as the creative prowess of women. In these conversations, we hope to arrive at another kind of imagination about “female” narratives through the link of cinema.