By Justine Gendron

Let’s talk about dat F. What does an F-Rated movie mean? Well quoting http://f-rated.org directly, “The F-Rating is applied to all films which are directed by women and/or written by women.” AND if the film also has significant female characters, like the kind that drive the story, you’ve got yourself a Triple F-Rated movie. How. Difficult. Could. This. Possibly. BE?

Well here on The Cutaways we just celebrated our 10th female directed movie in nearly 120 episodes. (I’ll pause for golf claps.) I KNOW. I know we’ve covered movies from a time where women were barely even ALLOWED to direct and that movies nowadays have waaaaay more female directors. 

I asked my friend Amanda of Amanda’s Picture Show A Go Go, who covers current movies on her podcast a question: How hard is it to find female directed movies in wide release?

Her response, “Fairly difficult most of the time. More recently we get one maybe every month or two. But that’s still minuscule when you compare that to the three or four wide release movies directed by men that released each week.”

This of course brings us to how does this rating help us? Just like the Bechdel Test, this rating is not a judgement of the quality of the film, if it is good or bad. It doesn’t not mean the movies are feminist. It really is a call to action and an alert to public to think about the media they consume. The F-Rated tag was added to IMDb in January 2017.

The F-Rating has been noted as a reaction to the Celluloid Ceiling phenomenon. Which is, “a metaphor for the underrepresentation of women in hiring and employment in Hollywood.” I wonder who we know that works in film in Hollywood… and are women… why The Cutaways of course! While this is a multi-faceted dilemma, I think just starting with awareness and sharing that awareness with others is a good place to start for change. Also our jobs are in your hands. I know we’re not directors, but studies have shown that when a women is in a hiring position on a film crew, she does what men do, hires her peers.

I’ve been guesting on Amanda’s podcast for the past year, and every month we try to cover a Triple F-Rated film. Remember, that’s a movie that is directed, written, and staring women. It’s called the Celluloid Ceiling series. We also usually highlight a project or group that advocates raising awareness and promoting women working in Hollywood. You should totes check it out.

I really don’t have a thesis but if you like supporting women-made art, look for that F-Rating. If you keep supporting, then more of us will be able to work. And we want to give you such good things.

-Justine