Saatchi & Saatchi NDS reveals the directors with the most and their films

At 10am on Thursday, June 22, 2,000 Cannes delegates packed the Grand Théâtre Lumière for 70 minutes, to watch the 27^th Saatchi & Satchi New Directors’ Showcase, this year produced with partner, MPC.

With statistics showing that only 7% of commercial directors are female, the pre-reel entertainment was used this year as a platform to explore the topic of gender.

A three-minute piece, directed by 2016 NDS-featured Director, Jake Dypka, introduced the event. Called Open your eyes, it explores diversity, playing with the idea that everything in our lives is in some way, gendered, and presents how women and men perceive the world differently. Its aim was to provoke the audience to look again and reconsider their own views on gender, raise questions and start a conversation about the potential causes and impact of inequality in filmmaking today. It shows the divide between what young girls and boys are expected to be later in life and how we imprint our own ideals of gender onto our young.

Dypka commented, “I would like people to take away from this film the idea that men and women can follow whatever path they choose. Everyone is different, and everyone is beautiful. Let’s celebrate that fact! Casting this film carries its own message. From the start, the brief was to celebrate diversity and a large part of that celebration has also come through in the casting.”

Dypka’s NDS 2016 film, Embarrassed, which featured celebrated poet and spoken word artist, Hollie McNish, vocalised the daily battle mothers face when nursing in public. Both Dypka and McNish were invited back and commissioned to co-direct the new film together.

Michal Marczak

In keeping with NDS tradition, the audience experienced the film in a unique way, which married technology with emotion. The MPC team harnessed the power of 3D technology to present the NDS audience with two different stories simultaneously – one depicting the ‘male’ experience of gender stereotyping and the other the ‘female’ experience – while McNish narrated.

During the three-minute production, viewers switched between the two stories using custom-made polarised glasses, allowing them to self-edit the action in real-time. Unlike traditional stereoscopic technology, which uses one pair of polarised glasses, the glasses made especially for the Cannes premiere, have either two ‘left’ lenses (blue) or two ‘right’ lenses (pink) so the audience comfortably swapped between the two films.

To make it all possible, the two 2D films were projected onto the 3D screen, while filters on both the projector and the polarised glasses presented the viewer with just one narrative at a time.

Being able to change the glasses at any point in the film underlined the film’s core message of seeing things differently.

To find the featured directors, Saatchi & Saatchi cast its net wider than ever before, also using MPC’s global network to increase visibility of the showcase and to invite submissions from directors from all around the world. To maximize the amount of time for talent to apply, the submission deadline was also extended twice.

This year, Saatchi & Saatchi cast its net for directors even wider than ever before and the judging process was two-fold, with one internal and one external panel reviewing the entries. Both panels were formed of an equal number of female and male judges.

The second panel of judges was Caroline Bartleet, Sara Dunlop, Alma Har’el, Kai-Lu Hsiung, Juliette Larthe, Anandi Peiris, Fergus Brown, Davud Karbassioun, Nik Powell, Richard Skinner, James Studholme & Kibwe Tavares.

Dorian & Daniel

Kate Stanners, chairwoman and global chief creative officer at Saatchi & Saatchi introduced the show and spoke of Saatchi & Saatchi’s future commitment to using the event as a showcase for new female directorial talent, actively encouraging and promoting talent to come through to the forefront. She is committing to increase the ratio of female to male directors featured on the NDS reel by a further 20% by 2020. This year female directors, Alicia MacDonald, Anna Ginsburg, AV Rockwell, Holly Blakey and Mollie Mills were featured, making it the highest number ever.

Stanners commented, “Over the last 26 years we have been hugely privileged to have built up industry respect and reputation for our show, the New Directors’ Showcase, as a place for new talent to come through to the forefront. Following our theme of gender this year, we intend to use the momentum to commit ourselves to be the place to view the best and brightest female stars and we hope under the NDS they’ll continue to flourish and to springboard onto greater things. We’ve still got a long way to go but we’re committed and want the wider industry to start having this conversation too.”

The reel this year shows a typically eclectic mix, ranging from music videos, animated shorts, humour, erotica, surrealism and the grotesque. Directors on the reel hail from Canada, Germany, Iran, Japan, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, the UK and the USA.

NDS curator, Andy Gulliman noted, “This year the NDS maintains the reputation which has been built up over the previous 26 years. The 2017 reel demonstrates that ‘new’ Directing talent has been inspired to deliver a ‘social message’. Previously where there was hard hitting visual, this year we have powerful words married to arresting images. Traditional film making styles are still very well represented. Whilst, watching the individual films you have to remind yourself that this film was delivered by a ‘new’ director. We want to be introduced to a new generation with a fresh approach and attitude. We want to find young talent that can manage a traditional format and stand out from the crowd. We want to give great work great exposure.”

The 20 directors selected for the New Directors’ Showcase reel 2017 and their films are: