WOMEN IN MEDIA
The festival that started as the Investigative Film Festival Skopje, in 2021 has grown into Media Festival Skopje to include as many topics from the changing world of modern media. The fifth edition of the Media Festival Skopje occured from 5-8 October on the theme “Women in the Media”. The year’s program again included numerous speakers from the country and abroad and includes various discussions, workshops and an interesting film program.
The rich festival program was presented online, and the Macedonian audience had the opportunity to watch a series of film through the festival platform of Cinesquare.net and the site mfs.mk that were available for the duration of the Media Festival Skopje, from 5 to 8 October 2021, as well as a few days after the end of the festival.
Several discussions of numerous speakers from Macedonia and abroad could be watched at the festival.
Journalists Sanne Terlingen and Elisa Lees Muñoz spoke on the topic “Women journalists in today’s media landscape – challenges and moving forward” where they talked about the situation of women in the media, what pressures they face, and whether the media industry offers equal opportunities for advancement of women and men.
Journalist Sanja Vasic spoke about what were the challenges faced by women journalists in the past. She also shared her experience about the challenges of this time. On the topic of “Women journalists and their influence on changes in society”, Vasic also spoke about whether women have equal opportunities in the domestic media sector, why there are not enough women in management, how women are portrayed today in the mainstream media, but also how to move things forward.
Researchers Angela Delevska and Elena Danova spoke about their analysis on Portraying women in the Macedonian media during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.
At the fifth edition of the festival, the audience could follow the discussion entitled “Feminist media on the domestic media scene”, where Kalia Dimitrova and Fisnik Djelili spoke about the work of the online media outlets Meduza and Mollëkuqja (Ladybug) dedicated to feminism.
Photojournalist Maja Janevska Ilieva and video editor Majda Bošnjak Atanasovska spoke at the Media Festival Skopje about the work, challenges and experience of women media workers as videographers, editors and photographers on the topic entitled “Through their cameras – media workers at the frontline”.
The film program included 10 films that dealt with themes related to feminism, media freedom, activism, migration and statelessness.
At the Media Festival Skopje, the audience had the opportunity to participate in a workshop entitled “Everyone has a podcast!”. The workshop was led by the German journalist Susanne Klingner, who since 2013 has been running the “Lila Podcast”, the first and largest German feminist podcast.
