I love hearing stories about people doing inspiring things. In particular, I’m interested in the women around me who lead projects that are making the world a more sustainable, just, knowledgeable, creative, well-designed, delicious, healthy, and all-round better place.
My blog series, ‘Five Minutes With’, takes you inside the world of a different trailblazing woman each month, finding out what they love doing in and around London, what’s catching their attention at the moment, and what powers the interesting work they do.
Mia Bays is an Oscar-winning film producer, director of Birds’ Eye View and the producer of Sundance Film Festival: London. Birds’ Eye View is a charity celebrating the work of women filmmakers and tackling gender inequality in film. Birds’ Eye View spotlights and celebrates new and classic films created by women through the BFI-funded #ReclaimTheFrame project, and supports women working in film through advocacy, mentoring and events.
Which book are you reading/podcasts are you listening to at the moment?
I’m reading and listening to a lot at the moment, during these COVID-19 times. I think that’s probably true for a lot of people at the moment.
The podcast that I’ve just discovered and love and am cramming in a lot is This Jungian Life. It’s three Jungian analysts in America tackling key topics weekly, and currently they are discussing what’s happening to the collective unconscious in these trying times, what the human capacity is to deal with fear and uncertainty, what the lessons are, and what the positive outcomes could be, if you do the work.
I’m reading Andrea Dworkin’s Letters from a War Zone. She is a ’70s / ’80s radical feminist. It’s amazing and is inspiring me a lot. Also the Hilary Mantel book The Mirror & the Light. I have bought it for my step-dad too. He has a bad lung condition and I haven’t been able to see or visit him for ages. We have a little book group together, reading it, checking in, catching up.
What’s the most interesting film/TV show you’ve enjoyed recently?
A big piece of work that I’m excited about is by Mark Cousins, called Women Make Film. Mark Cousins is a filmmaker, he ran the Edinburgh Film Festival and is a film ‘thinker’. Women Make Film tells the story of film but using only clips from films made by women. It will go through the best beginnings of movies, the best approaches to surrealism and all kinds of breakdowns of topics from the silent era to now.
Women Make Film has work by 182 Directors profiled from all over the world. Some are genius movies people will never have seen – because women’s work doesn’t get preserved. From the birth of cinema, women have always been there, but the evidence of greatness has been hidden. For example, we worked on a film called Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, the first female filmmaker. In the film, a (male) curator questions why we need the 20th new updated preservation of Metropolis, for instance, when all this great work by women has not been preserved nor digitised. Who makes these decisions? How do we overturn them?
The BFI are releasing Women Make Film online from 18 May and Birds’ Eye View is working on a massive, six-month long campaign where we’ll be encouraging people to watch the six-part documentary, week-by-week, and also point out how to see as many of the films featured as possible.
What’s your best new discovery for more eco-friendly living?
I am loving my Riverford deliveries – the local produce, it’s seasonal, the zero-waste packaging innovations. I really love that service. Their comms are great too.
What’s your most exciting new food discovery?
Because of COVID-19, I’m doing really weird things like baking cakes in the way that I never would have done before! These strange things keep surfacing and I’ll wake up and think, ‘I’m going to bake a cake today’. I made this cake that was ground almond, oranges, honey and pistachios. It was absolute heaven.
What’s your essential daily/weekly habit for looking after your mental health?
I find working out is important for my mental health. I normally go to classes and I can’t do that at the moment. I really like being told what to do so I don’t have to think about it. I have three jobs, so I find the things that work for my mental health are the things that make me not have to use my conscious brain.
Meditative practice and walking with a spiritual or psychologically-angled podcast is incredible balm right now, especially during the corona-era. I’m talking to friends a lot over zoom and the phone, but it’s just not the same. I feel like I’m on a strange retreat where I’m having to face things about myself. All the things we’re usually so busy doing is almost avoidance. I’m finding it really interesting, actually. But also stressful and really sad, as I know people really impacted, one of my best friends lost her dad, it’s really a huge global tragedy and that does of course really get to me.
I love walking too. The River Thames is really important to me. My favourite walk is from Vauxhall, where my studio is, to St James’ Park. I was born near the Thames and I have to get back to it – there’s something about the energy of the water.
Which women inspire you, and why?
There are several incredible American female thinkers I find very inspiring, they’re such sages. There’s something about the insight that being a woman of colour in the world brings. Gross injustices are often everyday… Audre Lorde, I’ve read practically everything she’s written, Bell Hooks, Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison. All goddesses.
I just discovered Robina Courtin, an incredible Buddhist nun, I love her, she’s fascinating.
There are filmmakers like Céline Sciamma who made Portrait of a Lady on Fire, who we interviewed recently. I could listen to her talk all day. Her consciousness around why she makes films about women in a particular way, she’s thought about it so much, she’s forensic and it’s incredible to behold.
I recently read Michelle Obama’s book Becoming. There’s something so inspiring about how approachable she is. She is also a real thinker and doer and I pay attention to anything she’s across.
Which book/article/video would you most recommend from the past year or so?
I’ve seen the stunning film The Pieces I Am by Toni Morrison four times now. It’s like listening to the most amazing lecture ever. I kept watching it and could again and again. She made the film just before she died and she narrates her story, looking right down the barrel of the camera at us, which is incredibly arresting and energising. She was a brilliant writer and editor. She published Muhammed Ali’s and Angela Davis’ autobiographies so she facilitated the stories of other great people in the world too. A lot of her audiobooks are narrated by her too, her voice is so mellifluous, I’d highly recommend these as a way in if you’ve not read her.
There’s something so inspiring about how she manifests herself, her confidence, her wisdom, life experience and language. She has a selfless ability that is rare in artists, having facilitated other peoples’ visions, as well as her own. I try to walk that line too.
Which online cultural events/resources would you recommend?
The best I’ve seen is the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) weekly newsletter with lists of resources from curators across the disciplines. There are lots of ace essays and articles from folks who are under the radar (for me anyway) – artists and thinkers. I’m really liking that during COVID-19 and finding it useful.
I do love Russell Brand’s podcast Under The Skin. It is a great resource personally and professionally. He has some great thinkers on there about economics, positive disruption, political and cultural systems. He is really interesting and he gets great conversation out of thought-leaders. It is very current and topical. Especially great now.
Are there any upcoming online events that you’re particularly looking forward to?
Because Birds’ Eye View and #ReclaimTheFrame missions were all based around our beloved cinemas which are closed during COVID-19, we’ve recalibrated events and reframed them for the online space.
We have an in-conversation with Philippa Lowthorpe, the Director of Misbehaviour, for example. It’s heartbreaking how films like Misbehaviour – 10 years in the making, all by women, about women, a wonderful film – have been affected by the COVID-19 closure of cinema. We are glad it’s been fast-tracked coming online.
We’ve hosted some great Facebook Live events, including a conversation with British Feminist Film Theorist, Laura Mulvey. Do follow our Facebook page for the latest events.
On Monday 25 May, we’ll be in conversation via Facebook Live with Mark Cousins, Pamela Hutchinson and Robin Baker about Women Make Film, and on Wednesday 27 May we’ll be hosting a Facebook Live conversation with the producers of Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Sarah Murphy and Adele Romanski.
Which project or cause is inspiring you at the moment, and how/why?
I’m in post-production at the moment on a documentary called Unspacely. It’s been filmed over 13 years about a young man who is disabled, he has cerebral palsy and epilepsy. It’s the first time, other than my mum dying, where I’ve really experienced the life of someone who is not able-bodied. The challenges that he faces, because of how able-bodied-designed the world is.
I am reading up a lot about disability, about activists and watching lots of amazing films, including Crip Camp which just came out on Netflix. It is a stunning film about a ground-breaking camp for disabled kids in America in the ’70s, out of which a lobby group grew and changed the law in America for disabled people.
The more I read and find out, the more upset I get, and ashamed. I feel like disability is invisible because we’ve made it invisible. Wilful blindness. It’s galvanised me, as an able-bodied person, to wake other people up, like me. That’s the point of the film. The film will be out next year and you can find out more through my company Missing In Action Films.
What’s one small action we can all take to promote equality and inclusion?
There is a strong place for unconscious bias training and conversation, and not being defensive around unpacking your biases, because we have all got them. It’s about being conscious, aware, open.
With many questions around equality, not just gender and the intersections, often people feel excluded and are defensive. Be aware of the macro and the micro. Integrate those things and be able to separate them. Think, ‘the way I spoke to or approached that person, are any of my biases showing?’. Often the person who experienced your macro or microaggression, all they want to hear is ‘I’m going to learn from that. That’s something I need to do some work on’. Never say ‘teach me’. That’s exhausting. It’s for the person with the issue to do the work.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
I want to wrap up by commenting on COVID-19. On the one hand, it’s horrendous and lots of people are suffering and losing people. One of my best friends lost her dad to it, and she hasn’t been able to see him in the hospital or bury him properly. It’s all kinds of horror. I lost my mum four years ago, I can’t imagine going through that. It’s making people like me, like us all I hope, see greater humanity and experience empathy especially for the people we may not think about – transport workers, health workers, carers, shop workers, food chain supply staff. There is going to be a huge outpouring of grief, this will be a unifying force to build a new world with. If we are paying attention.
It is teaching us what matters and what doesn’t. I hope we don’t all get back to ‘normal’. I don’t want to go back to the way I’ve been living my life the last few years. I want to learn from this. Now we know we can do loads of things online and ecologically it’s better to physically not be in the room. There is an incredible opportunity for positive disruption. On an industrial level too, in film, it’s really changing things we could never do before. I’m kind of excited about that as well.
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