Attention, a Female Director

Rarely do I think about being a female, and that somehow it would have a negative impact on the perception of my ability to direct a film. Over the first few weeks in Poland I managed to collect a number of publications about film and the information about the crew. Over the 50 films that have been financed in Poland in the last year there were 3 directed by a women and even less Produced. Wow, here we are, Belladonna is Produced and Directed by women, is this going to be a problem? I realised how much resilience and guts it must take for a women to want to produce here, and sometimes why they are perceived to be tough... that's because they have to be, in order to survive and make projects come to reality. I tend to be rather a positive person who assumes (or should I say assumed) that all things are equal, all you have to do is prove yourself. Then as the weeks progressed and we moved into the period of searching for locations and casting, things seemed to go a little pear shape. As I mentioned before we had made a trailer of Belladonna in order to attract the funding and not many of the Polish crew had seen it, so we brought it in, and Marcus was congratulated on his great work."Ok, he did do a magnificent job and ultimately who cares let's just move on" I thought to myself. But the next incident was a little trickier to reconcile. A particular core member of the crew who insisted on directing all his questions about creative aspects of the film to Marcus. Once again I though "don't be a sensitive flower let it go" until on one occasion Marcus turned to him and said" She is the boss" and he replied "And that's the problem" Oppsy... I think we might have a problem. This incident was one of the turning points in the process, I realised that my main mission was to make the best film that I could, and Marcus and I spent hours talking and planning the film and that I really had to reevaluate which battles to fight and which just to live with. The main question was how was I going to inspire this person, and then what turned out to be a mostly a male crew? I never really thought of myself as a feminist because as a said I rarely think about the way I may be perceived. I contemplated dying my hair darker, changing the way I dress...etc and then where does that end?
I do believe that our bodies are like costumes that we choose for the particular life, and there must be a good reason why I look like a woman by have the steely determination of a man. As Queen Elizabeth once said "I may look like a woman but I have the heart and stomach of a man" Annika