Earlier this week the International Movie Data Base adopted a new, "F-Rating," in order to highlight the work of female actors and filmmakers. Originally developed by Holly Tarquini at the Bath Film Festival, the special rating is a step up from the Bechdel test and has a twofold effect. Firstly, it naturally makes it easier for audiences to identify features which are written, directed and/ or starring women. Secondly, it draws people's attention to the problematic gender imbalance of the film industry, in order to inspire some much needed changes. Currently, there are over 22,000 films on IMDB which bear the F-Rating but Tarquini hopes that the number will grow. "Our real goal is to reach the stage when the F-Rating is redundant because 50% of the stories we see on screen are told by and about film's unfairly under-represented half of the population: women," she said in a statement earlier this year. The new rating doesn't have a prominent position on individual film pages on IMDB.com as of yet, but can be found among the key wards, as well as by typing "F-rated" in the search bar. You can see the most popular F-Rated titles here: http://www.imdb.com/search/keyword?keywords=f-rated&sort=moviemeter,asc&mode=detail&page=1&ref_=kw_ref_key It is worth mentioning that, less than a fortnight before IMDB introduced the F-Rating, a startup named WealthSimple publicly shared their financial findings, according to which movies starring women are a better return on investment for Hollywood than movies starring men. WealthSimple analyzed the box office of more than 2,100 films and found that those featuring women in the starring role generated a 176% median return on investment, compared to 127% for those starring men. In spite of this, film studios are still less likely to invest in women-led films, preferring to bank on the classic patriarchal formula. Nevertheless, audiences are beginning to become more sensitive to these issues and more demanding towards the film industry as a whole. Now, with IMDB's support, our voices will become even harder to ignore! For more detailed information on WealthSimple's finishings, click here: https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-us/magazine/data-hollywood-gender-gap
