Dinner With Dames San Francisco #2 – With Jennie Frisbie (Recap)

Dinner with Dames Case File

Who: Jennie Frisbie, Literary Manager at Magnet Management, hosted by Cinefemme and Dinner with Dames SF Program Directors Cameo Wood and Serena Schuler, and sponsored by Charming Stranger Films. Attendees included filmmakers Catherine Craig, Meg Smaker, Ryan Lynch, Monica West, and myself, Sanjana deSilva.

What: Dinner with Dames is an engaging discussion on expanding the network of Bay Area women filmmakers, the role of agencies and management in partnership with artists, and the need for equal gender representation in the film industry.

Why: To foster new relationships among female filmmakers and to extend the network for women in film in the Bay Area.

Over the past year, I’d been to more networking events than I could count. As a recent film school graduate, I knew you had to hustle to make it happen. But, at one such event a few months ago, I met Cameo Woods, co-director of Dinner with Dames SF, and shortly after was tapped to participate in an event far different than any I’d been to before.

When you think of film directors, a tiny brown girl is not what first comes to mind. Throughout these networking events I unconsciously sought out other women in film who were facing these same obstacles. I wanted to meet female filmmakers who’d inspire me to work hard and stay in the film industry for the long haul. At Dinner with Dames, I found these women.

Jennie Frisbie, co-founder of Magnet Management, is a literary manager of screenwriters and directors in TV and film. She started her career working on the production teams of now classic movies such as the American Pie franchise. During the dinner, Frisbie educated us on how to guide through the current trends in the film and television industry, and talked us through how to navigate our careers, by being the “CEOs of our own creative companies.”

Over a fantastic meal, Frisbie touched on subjects such as funding, career development, and playing to your strengths. She remarked, “Right now is a great time to be a female filmmaker, especially in TV,” noting the rising popularity of television and the various new distribution models and opportunities in the medium.

The conversation on television led to thoughts of diversity and representation in media, Frisbie noting “everyone wants to discover someone” continuing to answer her own question; “let’s find women and let’s support them – we need their voices.”

It was frequently mentioned at the table that this sort of great storytelling comes with experience, series creator Serena Schuler noted, “Your whole existence as an artist is not to go in a hole and hide, but to experience.” Frisbie explained the importance of developing stories that only you can tell, and posed the big question, “How do you lean into what the material wants to be?”
As the night ended, I couldn’t help but feel I had taken away so much more than a networking experience. I’ve always wanted to tell stories that spoke to a broad audience. I couldn’t help but feel that gatherings like these are the beginnings of more than the hope of representation, but true inclusion.

Growing up as a Sri Lankan-Australian-American, I bought into the belief that somehow my culture was not good enough, that my food, my clothes, even my own life experiences were something to hide. Today, I know that not only is my culture deserving of representation, but that diversity creates nuanced and compelling stories. But it takes courage to fight for these values. The creation of communities such as Dinner with Dames matters so much, because I feel like these are women who will have my back. Finally, this tiny brown girl has stopped hiding.

About Sanjana deSilva

Sanjana deSilva is a filmmaker focusing on directing and production management – with a heavy slice of grip and electrical. She’s the founder of The Angry Elephant Productions, an organization that strives to create content that is socially and culturally aware, and works as a producer for DO Yu Productions, a group of young filmmakers who create a variety of action films. Her short film “Not Forever” has just been released publicly – with several more releases on the way.