One is an actress, famous for her role in Desperate Housewives, but also a producer and director. The other is a researcher, a professor at the University of Southern California, specializing in the study of gender in film and television. Eva Longoria and Stacy L. Smith met in Cannes a few years ago. They met there on May 23 as part of Kering's Women In Motion talk, a program aimed at promoting the actions and struggles of women in the film industry. Together, they addressed the issue of the place of minorities in the latter and initiatives to make them shine, in an environment still too paralyzed by old mechanisms.
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In video, the guests of the Kering dinner on May 22
Illusions and statistics
"I have a passion for data, statistics, and they're at the heart of Stacy's work," said Eva Longoria, who works to promote the Latino community in film. "So we were destined to meet." Stacy L. Smith launched the "Inclusion List", an online tool listing films, directors and distributors that promote the promotion of minorities in cinema, in front of and behind the camera. An essential initiative: "If we look at the latest winners of the Oscar for Best Picture, these are largely works by directors from minorities," notes Eva Longoria. "But that doesn't reflect the reality of Hollywood at all. When we focus on the statistics of the films that are financed there, we understand that the idea that this milieu is progressive is a myth. There is still a lot of work to be done."
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She is working on it herself: "On a film I produced, I specifically asked that the cinematographer be a woman. And I was found female CVs without any problem. Proof that talent exists, but that we do not automatically think of contacting them." This is one of the goals of the "Inclusion List": "Our goal is to create an 'imdb' (the online directory of the film industry, editor's note) of inclusion," explains Stacy L. Smith. "So that we can be sure that the studios know where to find people from minorities, when it comes to putting together the crews or castings of the films."
New representations
For both women, this greater diversity must naturally lead to a better representation of populations on screens. Cultural and economic progress: "We represent 20% of the American population," says Eva Longoria, herself of Mexican-American origin. We have the highest population growth. A movie won't work if Latinos don't go there. So it's time to tell stories about ourselves as well." That's what she did by making her first feature film, Flamin'hot, available June 9 on the Disney+ platform: the story of Richard Montañez, a worker who turned the food industry upside down by using his Spanish-American heritage to create "Flamin' Hot Cheetos" chips. "For a long time, no one wanted to listen to her," says Eva Longoria. "But since he wasn't aware it was because he was Latino, he kept saying he had an idea and believed in it, until we paid attention. It was his naivety that also contributed to his success."
In video, "06400 Cannes episode 2", our postcard from the Cannes Film Festival
Memory of the cast of Desperate Housewives
The one who says she always wanted to be a producer even before being an actress recognizes that it is this activity that excites her the most today. As well as the foundation she created and which bears her name, whose goal is to help Latina women develop their potential: "Today, I want the legacy I leave to be embodied more by my philanthropic activity than my career," she explains. "Since the birth of my son, I have become all the more aware of the problems that threaten our society, of all that needs to be changed in the world." At 48, Eva Longoria has risen to a position that gives her the power to act. A beautiful path traveled since that day in the early 2000s, when she passed the casting of Desperate Housewives: "We were in the middle of the "pilot season", when the castings are linked before the launch of new series. I spent hours in my car changing according to the characters I had to embody, one moment a nun, the other a prostitute... I was exhausted. The show's creator, Marc Cherry, asked me if I had read the script. Usually, we were never asked any questions. I answered frankly: I had only read the part about the character of Gabrielle Solis. That's how I was taken: it corresponded to the shameless selfishness of the character." A compositional role.