In Portland filmmaker Dawn Jones Redstone’s in-progress film
Mother of Color, protagonist Noelia is a single mother trying to balance career ambitions with caring for her children in a society that doesn’t make things easy for working parents. In one scene, as she is faced with an impossible choice of going to an important job interview or making sure her kids are properly looked after, Noelia senses a metaphysical intervention.
“My ancestors have watched, and waited for the right time to make their move,” she says in a short proof-of-concept clip posted to
Mother of Color’s Kickstarter page, as different colors flash on screen and the camera goes in and out of focus.
Print
After her first experience of the Cannes Film Festival in 2008, talent manager Eryn Brown wanted to end her nascent Hollywood career.
Attending film markets such as Cannes can be grueling for most attendees, with parties and meetings held in busy hotels, restaurants, theaters, even aboard yachts. For Brown, who has a congenital, unidentified disability and uses leg braces to walk, accessing many of the buildings and events was a struggle.
At the iconic red steps at the Palais des Festivals, where women are expected to wear high heels, Brown either had to be carried or use a side entrance and be separated from her clients. Inside, accessible seating was reserved.
“I have two words to leave with you tonight, ladies and gentlemen: inclusion rider.”
When Frances McDormand ended her Best Actress acceptance speech at the 2018 Oscars with those two words, it was the first time most people had heard of the concept of an inclusion rider.
The Oscar winner’s call to arms amplified the work of the three women who had been developing the concept for several years: film executive Fanshen Cox, the head of strategic outreach at Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s production company Pearl Street Films; civil rights attorney Kalpana Kotagal of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll; and University of Southern California associate professor Stacy L. Smith, the founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. The inclusion rider is an attachment to a film or television contract which delineates that the project’s production team must take steps to seek out and hire cast and crew members from historically underrepresented backgrounds. In 2018, the team posted a templa