Ellen Tejle has the wonderful job of running the beautiful Bio Rio cinema in Stockholm Sweden which is a chain of four picturehouses in Sweden. A truly independent cinema, they mix contemporary releases as well as being a haven for indie film, docs and discussions for the local community. Her passion for film and sensitivity towards positive representations and honest portrayals in cinema, led her to create ‘A-Rate’ (A-MÄRKT in Swedish) in 2013 – the world’s first film classification to signal if a film passes The Bechdel Test.
In somewhat of a pilgrimage, we visited Ellen who gave us a tour of her retro-esque cinema with its wood panelling and cosy café, to discuss the hopes and dreams for A Rate.
The Bio Rio in Stockholm – looking just as lovely as the Rio Cinema in London Hackney (which also use the A Rate!)
This feels like a truly independent cinema, tell us about the programming and personality you’re trying to create here at Bio Rio?
We are an independent cinema and show a lot of independent films. The purpose of the cinema is not to make a lot of money, it’s more to give the people of Stockholm good stories and perspectives from the screen and we almost always try to have discussions and debates. We have live music or dance performances or other kinds of arts depending on the theme of the film and food! We have a lot of food. We do movie breakfasts where we’ll show an interesting movie and then have breakfast with discussions and then sometimes people come in and sing or dance.
…”A Rate is for everyday use – to remind everyone that this is a democratic problem – that women’s perspective and women’s stories were not being told on the screen and we are so effected by what we see on the screen so we need to change that”…
Because our focus is on human rights it really wasn’t that strange that we then went on to look at gender equality. We asked ourselves – ‘ok, what can we do? We are just a cinema. We’re not producing films we’re just showing them. So when we looked closer at the movies, we saw that it was so bad that so few women were actually on the screen. It didn’t matter that it was a movie from Sweden or Germany or China or from the States or Nigeria it’s always the same!
When did the A Rate come about? At what point did you think – now’s the time to start looking at gender equality?
We’d been working with anti-racist themes over the past year – maybe a subject that was a little easier to have documentary about as well as films regarding things like the environment and sustainability. But then we were like – hey, what about the women? We initially thought, yeah but there’s a lot of women on the screen, right? But then we started counting and read the stats that in 2013 only 30% of women had speaking roles and we were shocked.
Did you know about The Bechdel Test before you decided to introduce a female focused program to your cinema?
Yes, we wanted to do something about it and highlight it from a cinematic perspective as well as give people an eye-opener and say to people that this really isn’t democratic. This was three years ago and then when we started to look at The Bechdel Test. From the beginning we thought we could do something more because for one it’s old – 30 years old in 2015 – plus it’s a really low bar. It’s not radical at all because it says almost nothing. So we looked at the test’s criteria and talked to a lot of people in the Swedish film industry and after a while we thought, actually this is kinda strong and so many people don’t know about it but it really has an eye-opening effect, it’s so easy for people to understand, and it’s funny!
We wanted to do a visible campaign. It’s something we wanted to do everyday not just for one festival or Women’s Day. A Rate is for everyday use – to remind everyone that this is a democratic problem – that women’s perspective and women’s stories were not being told on the screen and we are so effected by what we see on the screen so we need to change that.
Little girls, when they are seven-years-old they seem to stop dreaming. When you look at boys and girls from age 1 – 7 they have the same dreams, they think they can do whatever they want with life. But when girls turn 7 they seem to stop dreaming and think they can’t do what they want anymore. Something happens with the guys as well, I mean it’s not perfect with the guys, but they have more opportunities and I think it’s really important from a child’s perspective to have more role models.
How did you come up with the concept of ‘A Rate’ as a brand rather that ‘The Bechdel Test’? What does the ‘A’ stand for?
When you first talk about the Bechdel Test people mix it up with other things, or don’t remember it. It’s a little complicated name to say. So we wanted to make it easy for people. A is for ‘Approved’ – something that everyone understands and it gets the message across. At first we were thinking maybe it should be a ’B’ rating but then a ‘B-Movie’ is something that’s a bit misleading! We also thought of an F or a Q or something for ‘women’ but then we wanted it to be something for everyone not just women and we also wanted it to be international which is why we used English rather than Swedish as we wanted everyone to use it.
What kind of support have you had? Have you had any organisations that have helped you get this off the ground? What has the reception been like?
For a start we were just four cinemas connected to each other in Sweden so it was just us, as well as the organization Women in Film and Television and also quite a huge network called The Equalisers’ we worked volunteering for free to try and make the campaign, it took two years but about six months hard work. We had a lot of good contacts with big newspapers in Sweden so we knew that when we launched it we could get some good press. We also talked to a lot of people in the film industry so we knew they were interested as well.
A lot of the newspapers I’ve read tend to highlight the problems with the test, one quote is from Jan Holmberg – founder of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation – has said the test is too ‘ simple and catchy’ and ultimately ‘hiders rather than encourages’ the conversation. What is your response to this?
I think it’s the opposite. When we talked to people who write scripts for example…when you write a script you automatically put in just men because this is what you always do! Men need a reminder to say ‘hey, why don’t you put in some women!’ I don’t think that’s a negative at all for the story or the quality. Actually I’ve been in a lot of debates with Jan and he’s now changed his mind! He now thinks it’s effective in a good way and of course you can always say it’s not a guarantee for anything – be it feminist, sexist or if it’s good or bad movie, but who are we to put a mark on a poster to say this is good? That’s not what we’re saying. We’re just highlighting the simple criteria – we don’t say anything else. He also, loved to talk about porn. The most common critiques from the men are that ‘ hey, but so many pornographic films pass the test’
But that comes back to your point about the A Rate not being a seal of approval, it’s just saying this is a movie, that has two women in it, that have a conversation about something other than a man…and that’s it! It’s not saying it’s feminist.
Right.
You originally wanted to run the A Rate for one year. Will you be carrying on?
Yes, at least one year but we’ll run it as long as we need it. We’re not finished. Hopefully we will stop using it in 30 years when it’s no longer needed!
How important is the A Rate to the film Industry and a whole?
It’s been overwhelmingly important! If you take a look at all the publicity across the world we got – we can’t believe it’s true. The first month, I was on the BBC, The New York Times asked me to write a debate article and I’ve had coverage in France, Spanish, Canada, Australia, India, South Africa, all over the world! My friends from all over got in touch and were like ‘what are you doing!? This is crazy!’ They actually talk about this in this cafe, or this film festival. People especially from the United States were really thankful – IndieWire’s Women in Hollywood’s editor Melissa Silverstein – people like that were really thankful.
…”A Rate is for everyday use – to remind everyone that this is a democratic problem – that women’s stories were not being told on the screen and we are so effected by what we see on the screen so we need to change that”…
Have Hollywood come calling?
Melissa Silerstien came to Sweden just for this!
And how about your home turf of Sweden – how are they supporting you?
Thanks to A Rate, gender equality has been more of a topic in the media, film festivals and in the film industry. In Sweden the Swedish Film Institute have been really supportive and I’m meeting with them as they want to put money into researching all films that screen at the cinema. They want to know if it passes the test or not and want to publish the stats as part of their research. The institute that give money to films – they also have the A Rate stamp in their office and I also know scriptwriters that have taken back their scripts because it’s not A Rated so have then re-written it to pass.
You must feel really pleased and proud.
Yes, and we hope it continues. It’s still not enough we need more than just one scriptwriter to change their script, hopefully it’s to create more perspectives and more stories about women in film.
ViaSat have done a month long marathon and using the Rating. Are they going to do it again, was it successful?
Yes, it was really successful and there was a lot of publicity about it. It’s great that they want to collaborate with us because they are so commercial which is kind of the opposite of what we’re standing for but we also need those type of companies to take this seriously. I contacted them and they were really positive, we were planning to do something in Cannes.
Anymore activity planned?
Every week someone is contacting us, it could be a distributor to say – hey we’d like to use this. A lot of distributors use the A Rate stamp on their posters or their ads for this films. We don’t have to ask them – they want to. And sometimes they send me some scripts and ask me ‘is this alright? Can we pass this film?’
Are you slowly becoming the ‘gatekeeper’ for the Bechdel Test? Would you want to be?
Ha, no. That’s not the point. The point it anyone can do this themselves, they don’t have to ask me or anyone else they can take a look at the movie and see by themselves.
One thing that’s bad about the Bechdel Test website is that everyone wants their favourite movie to pass the test and they’ll do whatever they can to make it look like that. The criteria that’s hard is the conversation itself. What is the conversation the two women are having? If it’s just a ‘hello’ is that a conversation? Mm, I don’t think so. We think it has to be a dialogue. It has to be more than ‘can you pass the salt’. Some raters are trying to install a time limit – something we were talking about in the beginning.
As far as I know the Bechdel Test.com were the ones that introduced the fact that the women needed to have names, rather than just two random women talking. So I guess that’s a sign of it evolving. People are looking at the Bechdel Test and thinking how they can better it without taking it too far from the original objective.
Interview by Bechdel Test Fest Founder: Corrina Antrobus and researcher and journalist Nika Jazaee.
Check out The Guardian’s piece on A Rate’s launch (an article that inspired the Bechdel Test Fest!
this is very insightful, thank you!