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Watch A Short Film About The Women Fighting To Make Techno Inclusive

Meet New York-based crew Discwoman and the female artists they’ve connected with around the world.

March 08, 2016

This International Women's Day, it's time you got familiar with New York-based crew Discwoman. Formed by agent Frankie Hutchinson, producer Emma Burgess-Olson (aka Umfang), and promoter Christine Tran, Discwoman is a platform designed to highlight the work of women in electronic music. In practice, their goal is to get female DJs paid bookings, thereby actively addressing the sorry gender imbalance of the electronic music world. (As we learn in the above film, women made up just 10% of major festival line-ups in 2015, and only 18% of electronic labels have women on their roster.)

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This 12-minute documentary, part of a new series from Smirnoff, highlights the founders of Discwoman and their mission, as well as featuring interviews with female artists they've connected with around the world, such as The Black Madonna in Chicago and Demian Licht in Mexico City. Also interspersed are archive clips of Daphne Oram, the British pioneer of electronic music. This context is crucial—as The Black Madonna puts it: "If I had understood there is a history, and that we have always been here, then it wouldn't have seemed such a strange idea to be a producer or a DJ when I was 18."

Watch the film above. For more, dive into this list of 9 all-female DJ collectives you need to know right now.

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Posted: March 08, 2016