Documentary filmmaker spoke with Anthony Greenwald as research for her film "Bias."
Notes from U.S. Consulate Documentary Film Festival
Vanessa Obioha
For its inaugural Documentary Film Festival, the United States Consulate spread its tentacles across issues that resonate in today’s society. From race to gender, the four-day event featured eight documentaries that plumbed these topics. Opening the festival on August 19 was the 2018 thought-provoking documentary ‘Bias’ by the award-winning documentary filmmaker Robin Hauser.
Using a personal approach, Hauser attempts to understand the provenance of implicit/unconscious bias, how it affects our interactions with others, and if it can possibly be curtailed.
“Unconscious bias affects us everyday depending on who we are. I want to look at unconscious bias and how it relates to gender and race,” she said in one of the opening scenes.
To achieve this, she interviewed professionals from diverse fields such as the police force, sports, ventures, technology and politics.
The findings were as shocking to the filmmaker as well as to the audience.
Naturally, human beings are biased. It is what we do with the unconscious bias that affects our society and professional lives. Female CEOs in ventures businesses experience unconscious bias in their profession because of their gender. It takes more determination to be considered worthy in a career dominated by men.
Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures lamented in the docu-film that it is very difficult to be a lady in the industry due to the mounting challenges they face almost on a daily basis.
To fully understand unconscious bias and if she is guilty of such snap judgments that affect others, Hauser visited Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald , the creators of Implicit Association Test (IAT), a test that measures unconscious biases.
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