More than 50 participants from all around the Mediterranean joined the final conference of the EU co-funded project SouthMed WiA – Women in Audiovisual in the Southern Mediterranean, which took place at the Instituto Cervantes of Casablanca on 11 and 12 July 2019.
This 2-day event represented a great opportunity for all people involved in this action to meet and exchange on the objectives and outputs achieved in the framework of this programme.
The conference was structured into two panels, respectively dedicated to ‘’Gender equality in the audiovisual sector in the Southern Mediterranean: a pending issue for the profession’’ and ‘’Opportunities for professional cooperation and development with and by women’’, each followed by two working groups. COPEAM’s Deputy Secretary General, Paola Parri, moderated the first session that addressed the imbalances that women face in the audiovisual sector and how a greater representation of female talent would impact on the promotion of equality in SouthMed societies. The panel was composed by three speakers coming from both Mediterranean shores – Khadija Boujanoui, Financial Director and Equality & Diversity Committee President of Soread 2M (Morocco); Karin OSSWALD, President of Festival Films Femmes Méditerranée (France); and Laila AOUDJ, Director of Rencontres Cinématographiques de Béjaïa (Algeria), who brought their experiences as women committed towards achieving gender equality in the audiovisual and film industry.
All participants agreed that SouthMed WiA has been a pioneering project, which will hopefully inspire and encourage future actions and initiatives to multiply its effects and really contribute to build more gender-equal societies in the Mediterranean and beyond.
Funding programme: MEDFILM – Europeaid/European Commission
Consortium partners: Interarts (Project leader, Spain), COPEAM (Italy), CUMEDIAE-Culture & Media Agency Europe aisbl (Belgium), ESAC-École Supérieure de l’Audiovisuel et du Cinéma de Gammarth (Tunisia), SIB- Screen Institute Beirut (Lebanon) and the European Women’s Audiovisual Network (associated partner).
Duration: February 2017 – August 2019