this is bbc news, the headlines presidents from three african nations are planning to travel to sudan, to try to broker a ceasefire, in the fighting between rival branches of the armed forces. around 70 people have been reportedly killed in the clashes. at least four people have been killed in a mass shooting in the us state of alabama. several others were injured in the incident at a teenage birthday party. the leader of the nurses�* union says they're prepared to continue strikes in england right up to christmas unless the government puts more money on the table for a pay deal. the chief minister of the indian state of uttar pradesh appeals for calm after a former politician convicted of kidnapping is shot dead live on tv

along with his brother. you're watching bbc news, now its time for women in hollywood: the producers a warm welcome, i am kim chakanetsa. i have come to hollywood to the women in film headquarters where i am joined by keri putnam and stephanie allain, two women who are working to reshape the industry. they are both part of an initiative founded and led by women in film and the sundance institute called reframe. the aim is to advance gender equity. keri putnam is a film

executive and producer and the founder of putnam pictures. she served for 11 years as the ceo of the sundance institute, which runs the sundance film festival. prior to that, she worked as a senior executive at miramax and hbo and is also the co—founder of reframe. welcome. thank you, it's great to be here. stephanie allain is a film producer and writer and the newly elected co—president of the producers guild of america — the first woman of colour to hold the position. stephanie served nine years as vice president in women in film and runs her own company, homegrown pictures, which focuses on creating content by and about women and people of colour. keri and stephanie, welcome to you both. happy to be here. keri, you were set on a korean theatre, but there's a plot twist when hollywood came calling. tell us about what happened. that was a very early plot twist in my career. i was coming out of college

and i was going to go work at a theatre, and i had a a friend who was working at hbo, which at that time was a very start—up network, a long time ago. pretty start—up network. and she said, "well, you are going to go work in the theatre but there is some guy coming who's going to be making plays for television on hbo, you could maybe be his assistant," and so i got thatjob as a secretary at the very bottom, starting out a long time ago. they don't say secretary any more. they did back then! i had to take a typing test! and then i was very lucky to be hitting a company like that at the time where my rate of growth and knowledge, really, the company was growing at the same pace so i was able to move up there and just learn so much about making film and telling stories, still working with a lot of playwrights and working close to the writers and the story, which is what i loved, so that's where i got my start, and from there i stayed a really long time at hbo and then moved to miramax and then to sundance.

stephanie you grew up near a cinema and spent a lot of time outside the cinema trying to get in. tell me about that. i also love stories, i loved reading, i was an avid reader, and the thing that really triggered my interest was two films — the godfather and the exorcist. i had read both books and i was about 12 years old, i had to sneak into the theatre. i was about to ask — how do you see those! 7 i stood outside and asked an adult to buy me a ticket and i wasjust blown away by the connection between what was in this book and what was on the screen, and i thought... i didn't even have the tools to understand that there were movies and directors and producers, but i loved stories, i went to school for story, for english, and then i got pregnant, right after college, and i had this baby and i was like what am i going to do? and somebody told me there was a job called reading,

and i was like reading is a job!? sign me up! so that's what i did, and that just created an opening into the world of cinema for me, and then women — it was amy pascal and dawn steele. they recognised my affinity for writing and for analysing material they promoted me, and the first thing i did was find somebody to replace me in the story department because i was the only person of colour there. keri, stephanie says two women were instrumental in helping her. what about you 7 what helped you succeed? i would say i didn't have the luck to have a woman boss early on. but the big boss of original programming on hbo in the �*80s was a woman, and she was an incredible force and very rare in that time, and she really set a clarity of what hbo stood for,

what kind of stories. who was that? bridget potter. and she has been written out of the history actually. but, what i found out, i don't know if you found this, but i found a lot of my strongest mentors and supporters in my career have been peers. i think that's true too. one of my peers, and i made more movies with him than anybody was john singleton. my first movie, boys in the hood, i made with him, he is the one who really set me on a path of protecting the vision of an auteur, which basically taught me how to produce. what an incredible movie to start with. i was like, 'this is easy!�* i could do this all day long! having worked for the big studios, columbia, hbo, miramax, you both went independent. why was that important for you to do, keri? i'm late coming to independent.

i think stephanie has been a producerfor longer, but i felt it was my time to try something new, and i had never bet on myself and done something entrepreneurial, and i felt i wanted to get closer to storytelling, to be setting my own terms in a way and using the experiences i had, so i was giving it a shot, i just started really. is a frightening, stepping out on your own? it is, but again, you are caught by the community that you have come to know and you can reach out and call and get advice, and it is frightening, but it is also... exciting! ..it�*s a time in my life i think when it's ok to shake it up a little bit. stephanie, i know you went as far as selling your house to start your own company. idid. big move! would not do that again. i started producing because if you're at the studio, it is a slog —

i was there for a decade, but i think it was 20 years ago — yes, 20 years ago this year that i formed homegrown pictures, and just decided to bet on myself. ijust thought i don't want to support somebody else's vision. it was basically that. after boys in the hood, many years later i went to john with another script, hustle and flow, and i said we should do this, this was at the advent of people were switching from film to digital, so the idea of making a movie yourself was really for real, you could do that. i was thinking i will sell my house. ijust woke up one day and i said i don't care, i don't care about the house. i had teenage boys, i said you guys don't care, do you? and they were like 'no, ma, do it'! i remember being in the first screening at sundance, that was amazing. it was electrifying for a couple of reasons, the movie is fantastic but it took us four years

from the time i sold my house to get the movie made, and everybody in town passed on it, and we took it to sundance and, after that amazing screening, everybody that passed wanted it. it was really the time that cemented my understanding of how valuable trusting your gut is. that was electric, and we all did make money. that's great producing right there. we all did make money in the end, so that's what i have been doing for the last 20 years, just riding a wave. i tell people it doesn't matter how successful you are, i'm telling you this right now, it's a hustle, and you have to be in that spirit of... you have to believe. you have to believe! i don't do anything unless i am so passionate. that i wake up in the middle of the night, write something down, every day wake up and think what can i do to this forward? i do to push this forward? let's talk about the obstacles. what are some of the obstacles that

women encounter in your industry? i think it's sort of depends on the seat the women are occupying, so if you are talking about women directing, the obstacles, it is interesting, because some of the obstacles are not particular to this industry, it is this perception that leadership and the qualities that make a great director, which are decision—making and leadership, and a lot of it is very gendered, it's often talked about in terms of war — they are the general pushing the troops. these are extremely gendered terms and they tend to reinforce the idea that leadership looks a certain way. whether that is around race or it is around gender, i think these things are very intersectional. women directors often have a difficult time assuming that mantle of leadership, being handed that mantle

of leadership for that reason. so that's one thing that i think is hard. i also think — and this is a particularly applicable factor across a lot of different categories of work — but, there is a perception and there has been a perception that stories about women or by and about women are somehow less universal and less worthy of spending money on because they're going to be less commercial than stories by and about other people. so a story about two men is a universal story of friendship, a story about two women is a niche story. that has led to the problem of financing, getting access to money, being able to build careers, because it is not perceived that certain stories that are by and about women are as valued. and then add stories about black women. as i said, it is very intersectional.

people who make the financial decisions are still very homogenous group of people who look at the business side. there are exceptions, but they look at the business side as what are we going to make back, what are the international sales going to be, what is the box office going to be? they set their budgets around that. so the money follows stories that look like what has succeeded before. so if things are coming from a different perspective, there is no comp. we used to call it the fiscal cliff. women could get low—budget movies made, people of colour could get low—budget movies made, but as the budgets got higher and more financial eyes were on what that marketability was, suddenly, those creators fell out of the mix and it ended up being a more homogenous set of people. what would you add to that, stephanie? i have been in this business 35 years, at least.

there are big stories to tell, there are really big stories to tell. i will say that, in television, it feels like there are more opportunities for women to tell our story. it's a much more even playing field. why do you think that is? well, i would guess that part of it is when something is on television or streams, it already has an international audience, right? but the thing about the streamers is that, i made a movie on netflix called juanita, my mum's favourite movie i ever made. she was a huge hit in brazil. she can't go places in brazil without being mobbed

because of that movie, because you just turn it on and get that. it does a great point of view. isn't that interesting? i think that is the bright side of it, the idea that a global conversation is happening and proves some of those old beliefs wrong, i think that is great, i also think there is another factor which is in the last, in this decade, where the streamers have come into business there has been more television made than ever before in history, in these ten years, more than all the years before, so there is actuallyjustjobs, it's a place of abundance. they needed bodies. this isn't to say that there wasn't goodwill about what stories to be told, opportunities like the one stephanie described, but i think a mindset of abundance immediately provides more opportunity for people than one of constriction, and unfortunately, what we're seeing in the film side of the business... is a scarcity. because the movie studios that used

to make 20 to 25 movies a year are now making eight to nine movies each year. the streamers are making films and there are other places, but i think that means that everyone is bigger now, places, but i think that means that everyone is bigger now, everyone is more expensive, everyone is a franchise now. there has still been progress, i would also say even in the last few years, it was 4% of film directors were women. i think less than i% were women of colour in the top 100 films, for years and years and years. in 2017, 2016—17, which coincided with the movements, the social movements around the world, that also came to hollywood and including the organisation that we are part of, reframe, these movements led to an opening of things, and we actually saw 150% growth in female directing those

top box—office movies, and a small growth in women of colour as well — not proportional unfortunately, but still growth. now, numbers in 2019, the numbers went from 4% to 12%. since 2019, it has flatlined, no progress for the last four years. so when you think about constraint, fear, the way the global market is, i worry that there needs to be a conversation about how do you take a time where maybe the market conditions are more challenging and not forget about all the commitments to equity and all the commitments to a wide array of stories we all believe in. which is why reframe is so valuable to our business. the idea of reframe was originally research—based.

seeing the research in the cold light of day and saying, nobody can deny that this is an equity problem, nobody can say this is an accident. we really felt instinctively, just by presenting that research to a wide array of people in studio jobs who are producers, agents, at senior levels, they would be shocked, because i think most people don't consider themselves biased, and yet the cumulative effect of their decisions was biased, and indeed that proved to be true. when we first started, the biggest obstacle to making change was a perception that there wasn't a problem. ah, yes. america is a patriarchal, racist society. it is. that is the world that we live in. just to say it out loud, "oh my god, don't say it!" but we have to say it because we have to know it, we have to look at it to make that change, you know? and even all of us, not just the white folks but all of us operate under these

assumptions and biases. so really exploring that on a human level, really so really exploring so really exploring that on a human level, really, really, i think, changed the way that people think and out of that came the toolkit. i agree. so the culture change toolkit is something that we built for them to have actual tangible tools to be able to make change along the way. like when you submit a script, take the name off. just read the script for the script. don't read betty's script orjohn's script, just read the script and see what you think. and what we discovered was scripts written by women, especially like action, or perceived genre things, were all of a sudden rising up. because there wasn't this preconception that if a woman wrote it, it wasn't as good as a man. but it was also about involving the audience, so we created something called the reframe stamp that allows films that are gender balanced in the way they are made and in what is on the screen, and this doesn't even necessarily

have to be a woman director. it could be a woman in other roles. we started awarding those stamps and really shining a light on things that were made that way and then it became, "i want the stamp," and audiences are looking for the stamp. when we started, nobody wanted the stamp. we were trudging into the studio saying, "we've got this stamp," and they were like, "we want no part of it, we're not going to be labelled." and now it's like, "can i get the stamp?" and to get the stamp, you have to hire fairly. so it is exciting that there are ways to move the needle. keri, what is lost when women are left out of the decision—making process? i think with decision—making, it is a hard question because there are a lot of ways to approach that. i think when any decision—making

process doesn't get made by a group of people that reflects the full world we live in, there will be unconscious bias. there will be a voice missing to be able to say, "i'm interested in that." "i care about that, did you think about this?" and i would say the same if there were no men in the decision—making process. this isn't about an instead, it's about an expansion and it is about having rooms of decision—makers that reflect the world. i think what is lost without that is the ability to expand the palette. stephanie, what would you add to that? i totally agree. yeah, when you think about a movie like everything everywhere all at once, which was made by two men, but with michelle yeoh and all these other amazing...

jamie lee curtis. jamie lee curtis, it is really female based, the movie. it's so good and the world would be a sadder place, you know? we bring the collective inclusion of all these different voices — it's a celebration. it's a celebration of humanity and that is sometimes what is missing when you don't have that full spectrum. and i also think from the perspective of the audience, you know, we've seen so many examples of if you see it, you believe you can be it. i think that feeling of, obviously equity is important across all industries obviously equity is important across all industries, but i think when you are talking about culture and you are talking about storytelling and what stories we value and what reflects us,

young people either see themselves or they don't. i think, talking about what we each might have thought were possible forjobs or possible for ourselves, i think it is such an important part of this industry. it is one of the reasons i love it. hollywood, the industry, is one of the least, least... um, open, inclusive businesses. like, oil is more inclusive in terms of ceos and people of colour, than hollywood. and we're setting the agenda. we're creating the content that goes all over the world. so if you think about that, the power that we have to tell stories, to include people, it is kind of unfathomable, — you wouldn't think it's so liberal in hollywood and this and that but that is not the way it is. so there is still lots of work to do. but i will say there has been some improvement. if you've been in the game as long as we have, some of the young kids don't know. we've come a long way, baby.

and television and streaming is a really good example, i think. i think so, too. stephanie, in 2015, the #oscarssowhite campaign highlighted the lack of diversity in hollywood and you produced one of the most diverse awards ceremonies in 2020, so that's a completely different muscle you're using there. how was that for you? that was the most fun in my career. it was the combination of live theatre and what we do, but there were no take—twos, nothing like that. there was one rehearsal. there was one rehearsal for that whole show. it was really important to us that it be diverse and inclusive. there was a lot of pushback, i'll be honest. even for someone as amazing asjanelle monae, who opened the show, it was a struggle. it was a struggle to make that

happen, you know what i mean? but we persevered and i'm super—proud of the show. it took me three weeks to come down. the adrenaline. i bet it did. it did. i wasjust operating at... i remember seeing you after that, you did a greatjob. i was buzzing. there is an ongoing debate about having gender neutral awards at the oscars. where do you stand on this, keri? you know, i was just thinking about this and i don't have the answer, because, i think, i would say on balance, i'm for it. i actually think acting shouldn't be awarded in a gendered way. the thing that i worry about is fewer. so if you have only one acting category, then it would be five not ten,

so, and then i think you could end up replicating some of the issues we've seen in the directors' category where — we talked about that about that earlier. so in a way i like that there is a space to be sure that women and women identifying artists will be honoured but i wish there didn't need to be, so that is kind of where i stand right now. i'm with her. i think that's really smart. one final question. is there a story or a narrative that hasn't been done yet that you would like to see on the big screen? dream project, essentially. i have my dream project, it is not on the big screen, it is on hbo and it is sula, tony morrison's amazing toni morrison's amazing novel, and it's going to be a limited series. we already have four of the eight scripts, they are beyond amazing and it's one of these projects that...

i read that book in college, it is black women being whatever we want to be and that is what is so great about it, and it is going to frighten the hell out of people because it is wild. i don't have a project like that in my head right now that i feel like... yeah, i don't have a single project that is the one i've been waiting to see or waiting to make, but i think i'll know it when i see it and i am certainly out there looking. keri and stephanie, thank you both so much. thank you, it's been fun. thank you.

hello. pressure has been building through the weekend but also with it a much moister airflow bringing a lot of cloud across the uk today. that cloud has been thick enough for patchy light rain and drizzle, and we will keep some of that going through this evening and overnight, initially across parts of southern scotland into northern england as the night wears on, the midlands, maybe east anglia by the end of the night. could see some clearer skies across kent for a time but for most a generally cloudy night, but not as cold as last night. temperatures generally between 5—10 celsius, perhaps two or three if we see clearer skies developing for long enough across parts of kent. this is how we start the new week, with high pressure firmly in charge and we will keep that area of high pressure close by for much of the week. unlike the weekjust gone, the week ahead is looking much drierfor many, some spells of sunshine and a little warmer at first before we start to develop an easterly wind which will gradually turn things

cooler as the week wears on. a lot of cloud to start the day through monday, some outbreaks of rain initially across southern and central england, that will soon clear and we will see spells of sunshine develop for many. keep an eye on this bank of mist and low cloud on the north sea, perhaps pushing into the coast of east anglia and south east england. monday is likely to be the warmest day of the week, temperatures potentially up to 16, maybe even 17 celsius, and once again that mist and low cloud could push its way a little bit further westwards as we head through monday evening but some clearer skies further west. here is an area of high pressure as we head into tuesday, it changes its orientation slightly, so this is where we start to pick up that easterly wind. should be a good deal of sunshine for many on tuesday, perhaps more cloud drifting into parts of east anglia and south east england through the afternoon but for many, dry, fine and plenty of sunshine. the winds do start to strengthen, particularly for eastern coasts, temperatures here may struggle to get above 12 or 13 celsius. elsewhere, in the sunshine,

it should be pleasant enough with temperatures getting up to 1a or 15 celsius, but those easterly winds do start to strengthen further as we head through wednesday and thursday. keep an eye on what is happening to the east and south—east of us, could potentially see some areas of rain pushing in later on thursday and into friday, but for most the week ahead is looking much drier, some spells of sunshine, warmer to start, but then turning cooler through the week.

tonight at ten: nurses warn their strike action could go on until christmas in their dispute over pay. with more industrial action promised for the end of april, the threat is months of rolling strikes, if ministers don't act. fighting has continued in sedan. these are the latest pictures from sunday night from the capital khartoum. three hour temporary humanitarian is in place to allow civilians to escape.

the world food programme halted its operations in sudan after three of its members were among nearly 70 people reported to have been killed.