Some statistics are calculated to make blood boil. For the women behind London’s Bird’s Eye View Film Festival in particular, it’s the fact that only six per cent of directors and twelve per cent of screenwriters are women. But instead of getting mad, Bird’s Eye View is getting even.

Following a host of screenings and events featuring prominent women in the film industry, this year’s festival is closing with the UK première of a film that socks it to the boys.

Tiny Furniture is the award winning début of 24-year-old writer-director-actor Lena Dunham. Wryly autobiographical, Dunham plays 22-year-old Aura, a film graduate going through a quarter life crisis after returning home to her artist-mother’s TriBeCa loft. According to Lena, it’s about a girl in transition and the women who love her: “I set out to tell an honest story that incorporated aspects of my own life, but knew my life had parallels with many others”. Shot in her own home on a minimal budget and with her family as co-stars; Dunham’s film is a stirring call to arms.

Tiny Furniture closes the Birds Eye View Film Festival, at BFI Southbank on 17th March.
birds-eye-view.co.uk

Tags: Bird's Eye Film Festival, Lena Dunham, Tiny Furniture