cléo journal is a digital journal of film and film culture informed by intersectional feminist perspectives. They publish three times a year around a theme and you can check out their past issues here. Why “film and feminism”? There is a woeful lack of feminist perspectives, womens bylines and representation in film criticism. Women write just 18% of the top reviews and make up only 20% of top critics on Rotten Tomatoes. In four of the top film critics associations, women account for less than a quarter of membership. This gender gap doesn’t only impact film criticism, but the entire film ecosystem: fewer women writing about film means coverage of certain films is favoured, which influences box office success, which means we end up seeing the same kind of stories by the same kind of people over and over. By working in a concrete and structural way, cléo is looking to change who writes about film, how that writing is undertaken and whose work gets covered. This is why the journal takes its name from the protagonist of Agns Vardas Clo de cinq sept (1962), who comes to self-realization through the observation and mastering of her space. In the spirit of Vardas film, cléo is an open space for emerging and established writers to address issues of film and feminisms. They aim to reach a wide audience beyond the film community and to connect engaged readers everywhere with critical commentary written by women and about women.
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