Last week I was listening to The Movidiam podcast, and they were interviewing director Åsa Riton from Sweden, who recently signed with RSA for commercial work. Naturally, I looked her up.
Her work is amazing. It's a perfect blend of the masculine/feminine, grit/gorgeous, romantic/moody, dream-state/reality, all wrapped up perfectly in a beautiful little bow. She's avant-garde, without being inaccessible. You just want to throw her your boards and see what amazing vision she comes back with. Take a look:
Her goal is "to stay true to her ethic of merging art and film," and she does it like a perfect pairing of salty and sweet. With a graphic design background, she studied at Central Saint Martins, The Danish Film School, worked with the ever-inspiring David Lynch and countless other artists, and counts Nike, Mercedes Benz, Playstation, Diesel, Philips, Microsoft and Sony as clients...and she's just getting started.
She believes that clients need to take more risks in their work. To make things viral and shareable, they need to be memorable (creative folks, everywhere, nodding enthusiastically). Her work is bold - something needed to stand out in the overly saturated media-driven world we live in.
Seeing her work, however, begged the question; does Sweden, known for being incredibly progressive, have the same issues as women filmmakers in the US? Turns out they do. In fact, they have their own initiative, called One Of Three, that encourages agencies/clients to bring at least one woman to the bid process and more women to production company rosters. Sound familiar?
Alex Reeves of The Beak Street Bugle, sat down with Åsa a couple of years ago in Cannes to ask her all of the questions that I had: what kind of projects attract you? Does your work attract clients that are looking to do something more creative instead of pushing their message too hard? How has the One Of Three initiative been beneficial? Do you have to try harder to get projects that are more universal and less female-related? Take a look:
One Of Three is important, because it shows the lack of women directors represented in the commercial world--or the entire film world for that matter--is not just a US issue, it's a global issue. If Sweden feels the need to have such an initiative, then you know it's needed everywhere else. The female lens and perspective is not only needed, it's a lens I believe the advertising world is starving for.
So for this edition, I'm leaving you with One Of Three's website that highlights some of the best women directors in Sweden, including Åsa Riton. So if you can't find the woman director you are looking for, let this be another resource. Go ahead, bookmark it now: http://oneofthree.se/
If you are interested in working with Åsa on your next project, contact:
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: Chris Karabas - chris@thehouseofrepresentatives.tv and/or Rob Mueller - rob@thehouseofrepresentatives.tv