This Filmmaker Is Changing The Game For Women In Hollywood
Filmmaker Chiara Tilesi is the founder of We Do It Together, a nonprofit production company focused on the empowerment of women.
Chiara sees huge gender disparities in Hollywood. “Women are vastly underrepresented in the film industry. Only 7% of the directors of the top 250-grossing Hollywood and independent films are women; Female characters made up just 13% of the protagonists in the top 100-grossing domestic films in 2014; the Sony e-mail hack revealed that female leads were being paid a fraction of their male counterparts.”
Chiara believes that cinema has the power to change “the deep-seated perceptions about outworn female stereotypes, pervasive in the film industry, and the world.”
“We Do It Together was founded to harness the capacity movies have to influence and inspire their audiences,” Chiara explains.
She says the nonprofit will raise money from foundations, governments, individual donors and sponsors. “This unprecedented business model, where values meet art, creates a structure devoid of the usual financial considerations which put commerce over creativity.”
We Do It Together will work with a group of female directors intended to break down stereotypes about women in film.”When given the chance, women will deliver compelling, accessible, and equally commercial stories,” the filmmaker says.
A variety of Hollywood professionals, including producers, writers, agents, managers, actresses, actors and directors from around the world have joined We Do It Together. “Outstanding and empowered woman will tell inspiring stories that also mirror the realities of life,” she says.
Chiara hopes to see We Do It Together have a dramatic impact on Hollywood. “Ultimately we will create more opportunities for women to compete with men on an even playing field, where women are as apt to succeed or fail, based upon merit and not perception or prejudice. That is all we are fighting for, no more, no less.”
“All profits generated through our activities will be reinvested in the nonprofit production company, in order to ultimately create a self-sustaining system, which in turn, will invest in more movies, talents, take risks and further our objectives,” she says.
Ultimately, the filmmaker says, as if chanting a mantra, “If we can dream it together, we can do it together!”
On Thursday, March 31, 2016 at 3:00 Eastern, Chiara will join me for a live discussion about We Do It Together and improving opportunities for women in Hollywood.
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More about We Do It Together:
We Do It Together is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) film Production Company created to finance and produce films, documentaries, TV and other forms of media, uniquely dedicated to the empowerment of women. Its goal is to change the utterly outdated and discriminating paradigm that we see in media, and its marginalization of women worldwide. If we want more representation, we need to make more women oriented movies to ultimately have women compete on an even playing ground.
Filmmaker Chiara Tilesi, courtesy of We Do It Together
Chiara’s bio:
Chiara Tilesi is an Italian film producer with a philanthropic outlook. She is the founder of the nonprofit film production organization “We Do It Together”, whose purpose is to finance, and produce films, documentaries, and other media forms dedicated to the empowerment of women and minorities, by telling their stories. We Do It Together will establish a new cultural paradigm, promoting gender equality in the film industry, and shift the prevailing imbalance until society will embrace and adopt a gender blind approach.
Chiara moved to the United States when she was eighteen, to attend Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, California, where she graduated Cum Laude in Liberal Arts. Production became the focus of her activities, which combined with her philanthropic attitude turned into a very effective entertainment impact activism. Her first feature film “All the Invisible Children”, was directed by eight internationally acclaimed directors (Spike Lee, Ridley and Jordan Scott, Emir Kusturica, John Woo, Stefano Veneruso, Katia Lund, Mehdi Charef). Produced in favor of the United Nations’ agencies UNICEF, and World Food Programme, the movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival, and was released in 120 countries. At the present time she is producing We Do It Together’s first feature presentation, “Together Now” (working title), which will follow the model Chiara implemented in “All the Invisible Children”, and will be composed of seven segments, each directed by an extraordinary women filmmakers, each about outstanding and empowered women.
Her philanthropic efforts earned her the position of Event Vice Chair of Rock the Kasbah, a nonprofit foundations of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. She is a member of the UNICEF Chinese Children’s Initiative Advisory board, as well as of the board of advisors of the nonprofit organization Children Mending Hearts.
Chiara also is the founder of Globunity, a global cultural event and digital media platform whose mission is to inspire creative people in their personal life, and in the cultural evolution of our planet. This venture has earned the Patronages of UNESCO, as well as that of the President, and the Prime Minister of the Italian Republic. In 2014 Chiara was invited by the United Nations’ Nexus Conference to present Globunity as a new self-sustaining platform that will support artists from developing and emerging countries.
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