Reel Women Strive for Equality on Campus

UW-Milwaukee’s new production club Reel Women just wrapped shooting on their very first film Bottleneck. Reel Women is a club that strives for equality not just in film but in everything they do.

Bottleneck featured a predominantly female cast and a crew that, although mixed genders, was led entirely by women. Reel Women set out to make a film that would pass the Bechdel test, which requires that a film have at least two female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man. They have been working on the film all year.

“It was awesome to see something that was just a thought and being made into a reality and everyone was working together really well,” Reel Women founder Haley Kreofsky said. “We might do a small screening within Reel Women, and we’re going to submit it to the student film festival.”

Reel Women began in October 2015 when senior Haley Kreofsky had the idea to make a female-oriented production club.

“I came up with the idea because I had just been thinking a lot about the major differences between men and women within the film industry and the way that women are portrayed on film in general,” Kreofsky said. “I just thought it was really upsetting how big of an inequality there was [in film] and how big of a boys’ club it was.”

However, Reel Women is not just for women. Everyone is welcome no matter their gender or how they identify.

“I was just like, maybe we should make a production club focused around women, but not just for women because part of feminism is equality for both sexes and I never wanted to exclude men because that seems a little backwards,” Kreofsky said.

One of Kreofsky’s professors recommended that she contact senior student Shannon McInnis to help her run the club.

“Sometimes our club is misunderstood just because feminism is misunderstood,” McInnis said. “People hear Reel Women and they think it’s just a women’s film club and in a way they’re not wrong, but it’s a safe space for all genders, which is also our way of trying to be inclusive of any people that don’t identify as male or female.”

Over 30 students attended the first meeting of Reel Women and although the attendance has fluctuated over the past semester, the overall response has been positive.

“I think partly because we’ve never been like ‘oh men can’t be here’ I think that’s part of the reason why we’ve had such a good response,” Kreofsky said.

The club is run by four officers, all of whom are women, Haley Kreofsky, Shannon McInnis, Dana Shihadh, and Sydney Zahradka.

“We don’t really have specific jobs for each officer, we all sort of bring things to the table,” Zahradka said. “We all plan the meetings, we all moderate the Facebook page and create the Facebook groups.”

When Kreofsky was approaching other students to be officers with her, she had an idea of how she wanted Reel Women to be run.

“I didn’t want there to be a hierarchy of like this persons the president, this person’s the secretary because I thought it should be more of an even playing field in terms of working together, so we’re all officers and we’re all equal,” Kreofsky said. “We have certain tasks that we all delegate, but other than that we just try to work together on how to run the club the best way possible.”

The meetings usually consist of information and discussion, but Reel Women has also had two guest speakers this year. Past topics have included the whitewashing of this year’s Oscars, representation and why it matters, tropes in women characters, and being allies versus mentorship.

“I really love this group because it makes you feel like your voice is being heard, like you’re not just being racked with information,” Ryder Daniels said. “You’re getting that information, but then it’s a full on discussion and you can really talk about things and they don’t try to shut down thoughts.”

Daniels is a senior at UWM and has been to almost every Reel Women meeting so far.

“Next year things are going to change a bit in terms of how the meetings are going to be run so I think that will draw people back in again,” Kreofsky said. “We’re thinking about instead of just doing heavily discussions, doing one meeting that’s going to be a workshop, one meeting that’s going to be a screening of feminist films, and one meeting’s going to be screening of [student] films that they can show so they feel like they can get critiques that aren’t really harsh and that are helpful because sometimes having critiques in class can be discouraging especially if you’re one of the only girls in the class.”

Even though Kreofsky will be stepping down after this semester, she hopes that Reel Women continues to grow

“It’s more about the small victories, than this overarching thing if that makes any sense,” Kreofsky said. “Just making a difference for one person is all the change you need really.”

Reel Women has one meeting left this semester on Tuesday May 17 at 6:30 in Mitchel B91. The club is currently looking for two new officers. Students can like them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/reelwomenuwm/.