Ana Marcos on the Bechdel Test

As well as being an actress and screenwriter, Ana Marcos is also the script delegate of CIMA. We were lucky enough to chat to her recently about the famous Bechdel Test and gender perspectives in the audiovisual industry. As well as discussing the lack of female representation in film, we also talked about other topics, such as the difficulties women face as filmmakers, and possible solutions to move forward.

The first question we tackled was the definition of the Bechdel Test itself: What exactly is it?

It’s a method to evaluate the lack of female representation in audiovisuals. Did you know that it started as a joke? In 1985 the Swedish illustrator Allison Bechdel published the comic strip, ‘Dykes to Watch Out For’.

The requirements that the comic book mentions are the three following points:

1- At least two female characters must appear (with names!)

2- The women must talk to each other (more than 60 seconds!)

3- The conversation must be about something other than a man (with or without a romantic context!)

Surprisingly, what began as a simple anecdote morphed into a way to analyse the latent gender gap in cinema. Using it to look at the highest-grossing films to date revealed a bleak picture, and although it did not take us by…