CodeGirl
Special Screening - Ajyal Youth Film Festival 2016
Lesley Chilcott / Feature Documentary / United States of America / 2015 / 107 min / Colour / Bluray / In English, French, Portuguese, Spanish / English subtitles / Qatar Premiere
Rated: Parental guidance is advised for viewers under the age of 13. Individuals under the age of 13 are not admitted into cinemas unless accompanied by an individual aged 18 or older.
Synopsis
While there is still a long way to go, great strides have been made worldwide toward recognising the equal rights of women and providing them with the same opportunities as men in education and employment. Nevertheless, there remain areas in which men still dominate, making it difficult or uncomfortable for women to participate. It is something of a surprise to learn that technology is one such area, but indeed only four per cent of tech start-up companies are headed by women.
Enter Technovation, a global technology entrepreneurship programme that invites teams of high-school girls from around the world to participate in an annual competition to create a mobile app that helps to solve a real-world problem. ‘CodeGirl’ follows several of these all-girl teams as they attempt to address issues from feeling isolated at school to wasting water, from garbage in the streets to violence in the home.
Technovation itself has identified a shortcoming: a lack of access to the tech industry for women. By encouraging young women and providing them with a comfort zone in which to develop their entrepreneurial abilities – including hard skills like coding apps and creating business plans, and softer ones like effective presentations – it seems bound to eliminate it.
About the Director
Lesley Chilcott is an award-winning director and producer, and Chair of the West Coast Producers Guild of America (PGA) Non-Fiction Documentary Committee. She got her start in film and production with MTV Networks. In 2014 Chilcott directed the feature documentary ‘A Small Section of the World’, about a village of women coffee producers from the Talamanca mountains of Costa Rica. Her short film ‘Codestars’ had more than 20 million views online and was the number one video on youtube.com for two days.
Credits
- Director
- Lesley Chilcott
- Screenwriter
- Lesley Chilcott
- Producer
- Lesley Chilcott, Tiffany Haynes, Tracey Karka
- Editor
- Steve Prestemon
- Music
- Peter G. Adams
- Cinematographer
- Logan Schneider
- Sales Company
- Gunpowder & Sky
- Production Company
- Invented by Girls