Sundance: Robert Redford Calls #MeToo and Time's Up Movements "A Tipping Point"

As this year's event gets underway, it has adopted a new code of conduct that applies to all the festgoers. As the 2018 Sundance Film Festival got underway Thursday in Park City, Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford hailed the #MeToo movement and the Time’s Up initiative that are forcing Hollywood, both in the mainstream and indie film worlds, to confront gender inequality and sexual harassment.

“It’s kind of a tipping point,” he said. “It’s changing the order of things so that women will have a stronger voice. They didn’t have it before. Too much control by the male dominance. Now I think it’s going to be more even-handed. I think the role for women to be able to step forward and exercise their voices more is a really wonderful thing, and I think the role for men is to listen, let women’s voices be heard, and think about it.”

Redford was joined by Sundance Institute executive director Keri Putnam and Sundance Film Festival director John Cooper as they raised the curtain on the festival, which runs through Jan. 28. They were peppered with questions about the current re-examination of how women have been treated, about attacks on the press under the banner of “Fake News” and, most specifically, about Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced co-founder of both Miramax Films and The Weinstein Co., who had been a major presence over the years at the fest, at which some of the most egregious sexual attacks of which he is accused allegedly took place.

Asked whether they felt Sundance had played a role in enabling Weinstein, Putnam responded, “We were sickened to hear, along with everyone else, about Harvey’s behavior, and certainly even more so to learn at least a couple of those incidents happened during the Sundance Film Festival.” She went on to say, “Sundance as an institution never contributed to that behavior. We have long-standing values of respect and tolerance. We support artists. We stand for diversity and creativity — a lot of things that are in direct opposition to that kind of behavior. I do want to be firm about that. Of course, these things sickened us and happened during our festival, but they were nothing we were aware of at the time.”

Moving forward, Sundance has made some changes. While it has always maintained a code of conduct that applied to its staff and volunteers, this year it posted a code of conduct on its website that all festivalgoers are expected to observe to provide an atmosphere “free of harassment, discrimination, sexism, and threatening or disrespectful behavior.” Working with the Utah attorney general’s office, it also has established a hotline that anyone can call to report anyone violating the code.

While Weinstein was once an aggressive buyer at Sundance, scooping up some of the biggest films that emerged there, the trio discounted the impact of his absence this year. “He wasn’t that big of a deal at the festival the last couple of years,” Cooper observed.

“I think Harvey Weinstein was like a moment in time, and we’re going to move past that. I don’t think he’s going to stop the show,” said Redford. The Sundance founder added that while Weinstein appeared to be supportive of the festival, he actually used it for his own purposes. “Our purpose,” said Redford, “was to make sure the festival is showing the work of artists.”

On the larger topic of what Sundance is doing to support women filmmakers, Putnam noted that the Institute had worked with Women in Film and USC to identify the barriers women face in developing and maintaining careers in the film industry and then formed the ReFrame project to take their findings to studios and networks to press for change. “We learned we needed to spend more time and energy on early stage programs, we needed to do more outreach, we needed to find ways of going into communities and finding artists. We’ve done that — not just for women but a lot of different populations,” she said. In order to help women and minority filmmakers pursue careers beyond an initial film, the Institute has also created programs and fellowships “to enable people to sustain their careers.”

'Assassination Nation,' 'The Catcher Was a Spy' and 'Ophelia' READ MORE Sundance Hot List: 17 Market Titles Set to Heat Up the Fest Putnam noted that 32 percent of the films at this year’s festival have been directed by women, and 32 percent are the work of directors of color. ”Not where we need to be, we understand there is more progress to go,” she added, “but we’re really proud as a festival representing a really wide array of story and storytellers, and I think that’s very reflective of the conversation going on right now.”

Asked about current attacks on the press, Redford testified, “First of all, I’m a huge fan of journalism. ... Journalism is our means of getting to the truth, and I think getting to the truth is getting harder and harder in this climate when you have so many stories being told by so many sources and you have the floating word of "fake" journalism. It becomes threatening to the proper use of journalism.” He continued, “Our role at the festival to promote journalism that really works hard to get to the truth against the odds.” In an era of sound-bite journalism, Redford added, documentary films, which can devote an hour or more to explore a topic in depth, become even more important.

Cooper pointed to some of the docs at this year’s event that could have the impact of past Sundance debuts like Blackfish, citing Dark Money, which looks at election funding; The Devil We Know, an exposé about the dangers of a chemical used in the making of Teflon; and Our New President, which looks at the 2016 presidential election through the coverage of it by Russia’s state-run media.

Cooper also made special mention of a short film by Marshall Curry called A Night at the Garden, which unearthed footage of a Nazi rally held in Madison Square Garden in 1939 “with a man standing onstage talking about how to make a better America, America has to change and how it’s all the fault of the journalists. It is the most shocking thing I’ve seen of all the movies so far. It’s horrifying.”

>> “with a man standing onstage talking about how to make a better America, America has to change and how it’s all the fault of the journalists. It is the most shocking thing I’ve seen of all the movies so far. It’s horrifying.”

“Forward with Roosevelt” – Franklin Roosevelt 1936 campaign slogan

In 1939, the Depression was still on, didn’t FDR promise Americans that he was going to bring a better America? (via Fascism/Socialism and dictatorship)

Didn’t FDR attack journalists who disagreed with his policies and methods?

http://reason.com/archives/2017/04/05/roosevelts-war-against-the-pre
FDR’s War Against the Press
Franklin Roosevelt had his own Breitbart, and radio was his Twitter.
David Beito from the May 2017 issue - view article in the Digital Edition

Roosevelt, like Trump, had a good relationship with the press at the start of his public career. Journalists found him quotable and amusing. But by 1934 this honeymoon had frayed, and a year later it had given way to a war of words. Roosevelt complained constantly about the press’s “poisonous propaganda.” With a tone of mock sympathy, he reassured reporters that he understood they were not to blame, because publishers told them what to write.

In the 1936 election, Roosevelt claimed that 85 percent of the newspapers were against him. In the standard work on the subject, historian Graham J. White finds that the actual percentage was much lower and the print press generally gave FDR balanced news coverage, but most editorialists and columnists were indeed opposed to the administration. Convinced that the media were out to get him, Roosevelt warned in 1938 that “our newspapers cannot be edited in the interests of the general public, from the counting room. And I wish we could have a national symposium on that question, particularly in relation to the freedom of the press. How many bogies are conjured up by invoking that greatly overworked phrase?”

Roosevelt’s relationship with radio was warmer. The key distinction was that broadcasters operated in an entirely different political context: Thanks to federal rules and administrators, they had to tread much more lightly than newspapers did. At its inception in 1934, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reduced the license renewal period for stations from three years to only six months. Meanwhile, Roosevelt tapped Herbert L. Pettey as secretary of the FCC (and its predecessor, the Federal Radio Commission). Pettey had overseen radio for Roosevelt in the 1932 campaign. After his appointment, he worked in tandem with the Democratic National Committee to handle “radio matters” with both the networks and local stations.

It did not take long for broadcasters to get the message. NBC, for example, announced that it was limiting broadcasts “contrary to the policies of the United States government.” CBS Vice President Henry A. Bellows said that “no broadcast would be permitted over the Columbia Broadcasting System that in any way was critical of any policy of the Administration.” He elaborated “that the Columbia system was at the disposal of President Roosevelt and his administration and they would permit no broadcast that did not have his approval.” Local station owners and network executives alike took it for granted, as Editor and Publisher observed, that each station had “to dance to Government tunes because it is under Government license.” Some dissident radio commentators, such as Father Charles Coughlin and Boake Carter, gained wide audiences. But radio as a whole was firmly pro-Roosevelt—and both Coughlin and Carter were eventually forced off the air for pushing the envelope too far.

For Roosevelt, of course, the main advantage of radio was that the networks knew they had to carry his frequent fireside chats and other speeches in full, usually with minimal commentary. In very Trumpian language, Roosevelt praised the new media for restoring “direct contact between the masses and their chosen leaders.” As the media historian Betty Houchin Winfield notes, radio allowed the president to be “the news gatherer, the reporter, as well as the editor,” all at the same time.

Even as he was securing domination of the ether, Roosevelt worked hard to neutralize criticism from the print media. Here he used a combination of manipulation and intimidation. By 1935, the famous Roosevelt charm was much less of a guarantee of success, and his press conferences became increasingly orchestrated. Like Trump, he singled out some reporters who wanted to ask questions and ignored others. Writing for The Washington Post in 1938, Harlan Miller commented that Roosevelt only answered questions which enabled him to “utter an oral editorial.…He selects only those on which he can ring the bell.”

He also gave special access to pro-administration outlets, such as J. David Stern’s Philadelphia Record and Marshall Field’s Chicago Sun. Another Field publication, PM, was probably the closest facsimile to a New Deal Breitbart. In both editorials and news reports, PM repeatedly demonized FDR’s enemies, often comparing them to fascists. These pro–New Deal outlets had a special entrée to top administration officials, who gave them valuable scoops. The collaboration went both ways. In 1942, Field brought an antitrust complaint against the much less Roosevelt-friendly Associated Press...

(more at the link)

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