IMDB Adopts ‘F-Rating’ To Highlight Films Made by Women

Most emotionally applicable your avatar has been so far 

in all seriousness eh i don't mind it

I like it.

For the moment is simply a keyword, if you click on Moana for example and keyword you will see F-rated among the hundreds of them:


www.imdb.com/title/tt3521164/keywords?ref_=tt_ql_stry_4

If you are looking for movies with Roosters, talking crabs, or having a lot of female element to it, IMDB will give Moana in is list.


on the movie main page itself, I do not see anything different:

www.imdb.com/title/tt3521164/


It is an easy to have a list of over 20,000 movies on IMDB that involved women in prominent roles for people that want such list.

cornnetto Well, if that's the case, then that's almost nothing at all. Like you said, they already have similar keywords.

Someone link me to where IMDb says something about this

That's not true. You could search for the keyword "female director" which isn't an accurate search but simply a list of films where people thought it was important to add the keyword female director. It shows you an extremely skewed picture because you get no Denise, no Akerman, no Riefenstahl, no anyone: www.imdb.com/search/title?count=100&keywords=female-director&sort=num_votes,desc

Also it's not about a search option to find movies directed by women, that would even potentially be useful. They'll give the F (which is not a search function but an extra label) to "Films either written or directed by women [...or] if they “feature significant women on screen in their own right.". The last part sounds like the Bechdel test and the bechdel test is a joke. In the end I really don't see what good this should do. It creates an unescesarry barrier and it's a condescending label, an extra pat on the back just for being a woman. In the end if women want to really make it in the film world men have to watch these films aswell. I mean here is what Chantal Akerman had to say about that:

"I wrote a story that I liked. Everybody thought it was political. But it was a normal love story. It's not a feminist movie. I'm not saying it's a gay movie. If I did, then you go to it with preconceived notions."

I think IMDB itself has a hand in this not just users who can add it at will, so far more than 22.000 movies have been marked F: www.imdb.com/search/keyword?keywords=f-rated&mode=detail&page=1&ref_=kw_ref_key&sort=moviemeter,asc and it's the 5th most popular keyword after like a day or so...

Also it can be pretty much given out at will. Directed or written by a woman is pretty clear but what does "featuring significant women on screen in their own right" even mean? How do you want to determine that and who decides?

My favorite film is actually written by a woman and she is the only character in the film that has more than 15 min. screentime (she's on screen 98 % of the time or so) but it got no F rating. Now I don't necesarily want it to get an F-rating because I think it's a pretty stupid idea but nontheless it proves just how dumb this is because the film in question, The Green Ray, is among the most highly regarded films of all time (voted in the top 300 on Sight and Sound's ballot). An F-rating means nothing of the sorts. A woman is just as likely as a man to write or direct a trashy, cliche filled film that misrepresents one or both genders as a man. Much more effective than an F-rating (which isn't effective at all) would be to simply lead people to watch good films... like The Green Ray for instance. Why not give films a Sight and Sound top 588 label or a TSPDT top 1000 label? The percentage of female directors among highly acclaimed films is much higher than among summer blockbusters or Oscar nominees. Likewise they are pretty rare to echo preconceived notions or cliches about women or men which conventional films do all the time. I mean 2 among the 10 most popular F-rated titles are currently 50 Shades of Grey and there are only 2 50 Shades of Grey movies...