Wal-Mart supported the Bentonville Film Festival, a women and diversity in Northwest Arkansas. Even though there is a focus on empowering women, there are a lot of beauty and grooming products in the event, adding the corporate sponsors' brands.

Forbes reported that Geena Davis had already built herself as a advocate of women in Hollywood films. She founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media in 2004 and has done current statistics on the girls and women in entertainment media. The study found out that 29.3 percent of highest grossing Hollywood films rated PG 13, PG or G, from 2010-2013 had women leads while only 17 percent in crowd scenes were women.

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There is an exercise done during the festival where original dialogues in the films were made reference to a character's female romantic interest, girlfriend and wife. In all instances, male names were changed for female names and gender pronouns were reversed. Rosie O' Donnell was one of the performers.

Emily Best, the film producer and founder of Seed&Spark, a crowdfunding platform, was invited by Wal-Mart to speak on a panel and teach a workshop in the festival. Like other guests, Best was not at ease with the beauty products at Bentonville and explained she was repeatedly reminded by festival organizers about the VIP Lounge. Best said, the purpose of the festival was defeated by the chosen brand and products sponsors. They are there to empower the voices of women not just work on their faces. The empowerment of diverse voices was not really given emphasis, she added.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles Times reported that the organizers denied that LGBT films had been deliberately excluded from the festival. They claimed that they were persistent in courting a movie showing a transgender character; however, the filmmaking team chose to premiere in another event. They also made follow-up request for more details on the film but to no avail.

TagsWal-Mart news, Wal-Mart Business, Bentonville Film Festival, Wal-Mart Sponsorship, film festival, Geena Davis, Emily Best