IMDb introduces "F-rating" to celebrate women in film
The new rating is based on the Bechdel test, which requires a movie to have at least two women in it who talk to each other about something besides a man
The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) has adopted a feminist F-rating to highlight films that have been written by women, directed by women, or which star a significant woman in their own right.
Created in 2014 by Holly Tarquini, director of the Bath Film Festival, the F-rating is based on the Bechdel test, which requires a movie to have at least two women in it who talk to each other about something besides a man. It has been used by 40 UK cinemas and festivals and now the industry bible IMDb has tagged 21,800 films with the F-rating.
The F-Rating is a classification for any film which...
1. is directed by a woman
2. is written by a woman
3. features significant women on screen in their own right
The rating is designed to support and promote women working in film and redress the imbalance in the industry. Films that tick all three of the above criteria are awarded a triple rating, which has been handed out to films such as Frozen, American Honey and Bridget Jones’s Baby.
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Other F-rated films include Metropolis, Kung Fu Panda 2, The Girl on the Train, Freaky Friday, Animal Farm and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
"The F-rating is intended to make people talk about the representation of women on and off screen," creator Holly Tarquini told the Bath Chronicle.
"Our goal is to reach the stage when the F rating is redundant because 50 per cent of the stories we see on screen are told by and about film's unfairly under-represented half of the population – women."
In the top 250 films of 2015, F-rated found that women made up just 3.6% of all directors, 4.4% of all writers and 10.4% of all producers.
