Industry ‘must forge more diverse co-pro treaties’

The industry is missing out on “culturally valuable” stories due to an overabundance of international co-production treaties with ”predominately white” countries.

Tonya Williams, executive director of diverse recruitment platform Access Reelworld, said promoting inclusivity in the industry has been hindered by the fact that there were few co-pro treaties with majority non-white countries.

Decision-makers should “look beyond this”, she told a digital Banff World Media Festival on diversity and co-productions.

“I’m really hoping the industry acknowledges this is a barrier,” Williams said. “If we want to have more inclusive storytelling, we’re going to have to open up and embrace a lot more countries across the world.

“Co-production treaties between them and countries like Canada could create amazing stories and reach a broader audience than we’re reaching right now.”

She cited Idris Elba-directed feature Yardie, which explores the British-Jamaican community in 1980s London. “There was not a formal co-production treaty with Jamaica, but he knew there was a Jamaican audience in the UK that knew the story and would want to be a part of the story,” she said.

‘Editorial imperative’ 

Derren Lawford, creative director of UK indie Woodcut Media, said the wider industry needs to be the driving force on diversity and “take it upon itself to create opportunities” for people from diverse backgrounds, rather than piggyback off the work done by “Bipoc (black, indigenous and people of colour) individuals to create some momentum” for themselves.

He added there was a responsibility for international co-productions to reflect diverse stories, even if those collaborations were not specifically diverse themselves.

“There is a commercial and editorial imperative to make sure you’ve got as many different stories as possible in there,” Lawford said. “Even if you can’t necessarily have inclusivity in terms of your partnerships, there is no excuse for not having inclusivity in terms of your storytelling.”

His comments came as Tammy Garnes, vice-president of education and understanding at Ava Duvernay’s distribution firm Array, announced plans to expand its crew hiring database Array Crew into Canada and the UK by the end of 2021.

The platform, which provides film and television hiring managers access to crew members from underrepresented backgrounds, has previously been running in the US.

“We want to be of service by offering the database in those markets and allowing people to put themselves in there to be found,” she said. “We also want to allow producers from the UK to participate and find crew.”