What’s GUT-C?
Give Us The F-ing Camera! (GUT-C!) is an inclusive creative collective that supports new voices in filmmaking. We make higher education and the film industry safer, more inclusive, and rooted in mutual aid.
History
GUT-C! was founded in 2019 by filmmaker Kelly Gallagher and a group of rad film students in Syracuse, New York. Soon after, Laura Conway and film students launched a chapter at the University of Colorado Boulder, carrying forward the mission of building equitable, collaborative film communities.
Why GUT-C? (The Problem)
Film and media remain inequitable. Women, people of color, LGBTQ+ and working-class artists are severely underrepresented behind the camera. Gatekeeping in education feeds gatekeeping in the industry, silencing marginalized voices.
GUT-C! was founded to break this cycle — to unlock the gates, challenge hierarchies, and build filmmaking culture around mutual aid, equity, and community.
Film and media production remain some of the most inequitable cultural industries. Studies show that women, people of color, LGBTQ+ filmmakers, and working-class artists are severely underrepresented behind the camera:
- In 2024, of the 112 directors across the top 100 U.S. box-office films, just 5.3% (6 directors) were women of color.
Sources: University of California, Annenberg.usc.edu, Women’s Media Center - Cinematography is even more exclusionary: in 2018 only ~2% of top-100 grossing films hired women cinematographers; by 2022 this had increased to ~7%.
Sources: Wikipedia, Women in Film - The first widely distributed film directed by a Black woman was Daughters of the Dust by Julie Dash, released in 1991 — shockingly late in film history. To this day, no film directed by a Native American woman has ever received wide distribution.
- In 2023, ReFrame found that only 3 films on the top-100 list had hired a woman as Director of Photography — a drop from 7 in 2022 — and none of those met the gender-based hiring criteria that would even mark them as part of ReFrame’s Women Cinema Crew benchmark.
Source: Women in Film
At the same time, student experience in higher education demonstrates how these inequities play out on the ground: while some students benefit from peer networks and crew members to help make films, others — especially those from underrepresented backgrounds — report feeling alienated, with fewer people to crew their films, fewer voices in class cheering them on, and a persistent sense that filmmaking work is a solitary, unsupported labor.
This dual dynamic — systemic exclusion and personal isolation — reinforces a cycle: gatekeeping in education feeds gatekeeping in the industry, training students to conform rather than to challenge or reshape the field. The effect is a culture that discourages experimentation, silences marginalized voices, and limits the kinds of stories that get made or seen.
GUT-C! was founded to break this cycle — to unlock the gates, challenge inherited hierarchies, and build a filmmaking culture grounded in mutual aid, equity, and community. Our community is open to all people who want to break this cycle.