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CodeGirl

Special Screening

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.

Official Film Website

About the Directors

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

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