Bentonville Film Fest Co-Founder Geena Davis Touts Power of Emerging Female Filmmakers

The fourth annual Bentonville Film Festival, running May 1-6, will continue its overarching quest to increase gender equality and cultural diversity in the entertainment biz, both in front of and behind the camera. The Arkansas-based event, co-founded by Geena Davis and Inclusion Companies CEO Trevor Drinkwater and sponsored by such companies as Coca-Cola, Walmart and AMC, has been committed to the ideals of pluralism in Hollywood well before the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements emerged on the scene. Davis herself has been at the forefront of instituting positive systemic change in media content since 2004 when she founded the nonprofit Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, the first research-based organization of its kind to, per Davis, “engage, educate and influence content creators, marketers and audiences about the importance of eliminating unconscious bias, highlighting gender balance, challenging stereotypes and creating role models and scripting a wide variety of strong female characters in entertainment and media.” Read More…