How black and Asian women are bringing their experiences to film

Women make up 38 per cent of the film industry, with just 7 per cent coming from an ethnic minority; the first Hollywood studio feature film to be directed by a black woman was Euzhan Palcy's A Dry White Season as recently as 1982. But two women's film festivals have emerged since then to bring attention to the cinematic contributions of black and Asian women.

With films such as Provoked, Water and Namesake, the Tongues on Fire film festival puts "Asian women in a deciding position, to feature films that discuss the issues we need to talk about", says the festival's co-founder and psychotherapist Dr Pushpinder Chowdhary.

After visiting the annual Tongues on Fire festival four years ago, Images of Black Women (IBW) film festival directors Sylviane Rano and Betty Sulty-Johnson decided to "make something for us". They have been showcasing the work of black women at an annual festival for the past three years, at the Tricycle cinema in Kilburn, north London. "This came out of frustration," says Rano. An aspiring film-maker herself, the mother-of-three took a job at the BBC as a rights assistant, hoping it would be a foot in the door. But getting her voice heard "has not been that easy. Black people are under-represented in the first place, so if you do hear a black voice, it will always be the male voice. We suffer a double burden. We are at the bottom of the social ladder." The pair chose the films on the basis of the presence of black women, whether in front of or behind the camera.

This year, IBW marked 200 years since the abolition of the slave trade. Two documentaries, screened back to back at IBW, Legacy (2006) by Inge Blackman and Shared History (2005) by Felicia Furman, explore the effects of slavery on intimate relationships. During the question-and-answer session after the screening, Blackman, a descendant of Jamaican Maroons (warrior runaway slaves who resisted the British Army), offered post-traumatic slavery syndrome as an explanation for the beatings, the "down-playing of children's achievements" and obsession with genital cleanliness with which she was raised. Furman, a daughter of former white slave masters, dissects the myth that her parents could have been benevolent towards the people they enslaved. Both film-makers convey a powerful impression of their sense of identity as the offspring of the people caught up in slavery.

The Tongues on Fire film festival directors Chowdhary and business entrepreneur Harvinder Nath say they particularly identify with Jhumpa Lahiri's tale of immigration, The Namesake. Sensitively directed by Mira Nair and with outstanding performances by Irfan Khan and the actress Tabu, the film, due to be released in the UK later this month, warmly portrays the arranged marriage of a couple who grow to love each other in a foreign land.

In naming the festival, Chowdhary and Nath were a little more careful, aware that "some people would not even pick up the brochure" if they named it as specifically female and Asian. They want to appeal not just to Asian women but to the mainstream. The duo intend not only to resist the stereotype of their gender and race as "down-trodden, subservient and devoid of personality" but also to offer an alternative perspective.

Talking at IBW, the film director Dami Akinnusi said that on top of having to work harder to interact with a predominantly white elite, black women in the media compete with each other "like there can only be one of each: one Asian, one Chinese, one black person", rather than realising "we are only a minority in the West and how powerful we could be if we unite". In 2005 her documentary Bleach My Skin White, which by her own admission was geared towards mainstream middle-England by comparing skin-bleaching to tanning, was given a primetime slot on ITV. She is currently looking for a distributor for her latest documentary Malcolm's Echo, a story about Malcolm X.

Many of the film-makers have encountered difficulty distributing their films. Despite being included in the US National Film Registry in 2004, Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust (1991) is not available in mainstream video stores in the UK. Screened to great applause at the IBW, the film depicts the migration north of a Gullah family at the turn of the 20th century. As the family prepare to leave their island off the coast of the US state of Georgia, to which they fled to escape slavery, their Nana (played by Cora Lee Day) calls on her family to remember their ancestors and to question the promises of the land of "milk and honey".

The highlight of the IBW festival, French Wedding Caribbean Style, has been marred by controversy. Shot as a home video, Sasha films the guests at the celebrations of his sister's marriage to a white man and unwittingly reveals the prejudices of all concerned. Exposing the hypocrisy of Western culture, which relishes pornography yet disapproves of the women it features, Nef, the younger sister who commandeers the camera, says she can not feel "like a person in this society" and begs her mother to "educate your boys".

For their festival, Chowdhary and Nath had to source many films from overseas. "Asian women just don't get the opportunities here," says Nath. "Scriptwriters don't write parts that can be picked up by Asian women, and casting directors lack imagination."

But one UK offering serves up a spicy mix of Scottish humour and Bollywood spectacle. Pratibha Parmar's Nina's Heavenly Delights is a feelgood comedy about a mixed-race marriage and lesbian love affair - with a side dish of The Chutney Queens drag act.

'Tongues on Fire' continues at various venues in London and Leicester to 31 March (020-8961 8908; www.tonguesonfire.com)