We have launched the initiative to raise funds to provide production grants to women and diverse filmmakers in RTF at The University of Texas at Austin.

Donate here. If you donate $250, you can name one of the grants one semester after yourself or a family member. See the donation page for more details how we will honor you or one of your family members.

We want to end the days when any film student at UT walks into class on the first day and sees only 1, 2, 3, maybe 5 women in a class of 20. The goal of this initiative, organized by students and alumni, is to raise funds for production grants to support women and diverse filmmakers taking advanced filmmaking production classes in RTF at The University of Texas at Austin.

We are changing film school now, so that we can change Hollywood tomorrow.

Working to End Gender Disparity and Increase Diversity in Film Production Classes at UT

The grants would be open for submissions from people enrolled in certain classes including Advanced Narrative Production, 16mm Production, Advanced Directing, Cinematography, and Undergraduate Thesis. We hope to raise $10,000, which would allow us to give out at least 5 grants each semester of up to $250 each for several years. The amount and number of grants depends on how much we raise. Each semester, we will recruit judges to choose the grant recipients.

The grants will be administered by Women in Cinema, an official UT student organization.

This initiative will benefit film students in RTF, but to understand the wider issue, consider this: in the history of the Oscars only four women have ever been nominated for Best Director and only one woman has ever won the Academy Award for Best Director; no woman has ever even been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.

Why we are doing this

Morgyn Utzman, RTF senior, Women in Cinema officer, says “a sad reality we are facing in school is the fact that women, the more specialized the production classes get, the fewer women register for those classes. The socialization of women in art is a problem that needs addressing, and incentivizing registering for production classes through a scholarship can make a huge difference in diversity.”