Well, I’m not sexist, and I’m not even sure you’re addressing that question to me, Roderick, but let’s say, for the sake of argument, that there is a difference between how men and women perceive and relate to the world. Whether due to the way they are raised, or life experience, or biological factors. No one gender better or more correct than the other, but with some difference. If we’re used to masterpieces looking a certain way — following the mold of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Kurosawa, etc. — then a film made by a woman, no matter how great, may not “look like” a masterpiece to us. We may miss what it’s saying because it’s not primarily about the struggle and suffering of a man.
umm… mary harron?
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve watched two works by women that were disparate but intriguing. I came back to Varda’s CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 for the first time in decades and found it a pleasure. It takes a scene or two to get to know and embrace Corinne Marchand’s Cleo (she has the aspect of an outsized Kim Novack), but you do. Dorothee Blanck as Dorothee the model is a treat. The ending is over-the-top, maybe the most compressed love story in film. But Varda and her camera weave through the Paris streets with as much deftness and energy as any of her new wave brothers. It was all very uplifting.
And I needed that because only a few days before I’d wactched Barbara Loden’s WANDA for the first time, and I think this may be one of the darkest films I’ve ever seen. Loden wrote, directed, and played the title role, the only film she would make. (It opened in New York City in February, 1971 at Cinema II to appreciative notices, then quickly disappeared from the face of the earth.) I’m still digesting it — it does not go down easily. At its center a road movie/bank heist story, shot in 16 mm and blown-up to grainy 35 mm. Michael Higgins is great as the asprin-popping, petty hoodlum, Mr. Dennis It is a film without joy, without hope, and it is unblinkingly honest — true to its central character, and to itself as a film. And recommended.
There is a film festival dedicated to women directors in the UK every year – very committed to championing the cause of women in film. It’s the only one of it’s kind so with this USP it always gets loads of press and everyone says how great it is.
However, several female directors I know in the industry have said to me that they’d prefer if their films were not screened there because they don’t want their film to be seen specifically as a “woman’s film” – the gender of the director shouldn’t be a factor and it is more divisive than useful. Interesting.
I didn’t spot any mention of Alice Guy Blache, who very likely invented the narrative film at a time when her company (Gaumont) was still doing things like filming trains arriving at the station.
mmoore – Thanks for mentioning WANDA. It is such a great movie! Also Elaine May deserves to be mentioned. MIKEY & NICKY is terrific and highly recommened for anyone who likes Cassavetes’ movies. And THE HEARTBREAK KID (1972) is a good movie too. As is Sandra Goldbacher‘s ME WITHOUT YOU. Oh, and am I the first one to mention Kelly Reichardt – one of the most promising new director of the last years. And one must not forget Lynne Ramsay. MORVERN CALLAR is a masterpiece – I really hope she’s going to direct another movie soon.
Harry, i mentioned Alice Guy-Blaché at the bottom of page 1- but glad you appreciate her too. I started a thread on her a day or so back. Yeah, she was well ahead of Gaumont,and should be much better known. Her great great grand-daughter runs a site promoting her and there are videos of her shorts at another well known internet site (don’t know if i can name it).
>>Harry, i mentioned Alice Guy-Blaché at the bottom of page 1<<
Oops! And to think that after a certain point in reading the thread I was actually looking to see if anyone mentioned her.
It’s a pity that most of her films, expecially her US films are lost or incomplete.
Just the fact that she used film to tell stories when no one else was doing so should get her prominently mentioned in film histories, but she’s pretty much ignored.
I’ll google her & see if I can find that site. Thanks.
Also Mania Akbari
Agnes Jaoui
Nicole Garcia
and the Brilliant Brelliat
and lets not forget Doris Wishman’s sexploitation flics!
>>there are videos of her shorts at another well known internet site (don’t know if i can name it).<<
Haven’t found that yet, but someone has posted what remains of THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM on yahoo. I knew those first 2 reels were at the LOC, but how did they get out into the big, wide world?
Harry, i left you a message
Harry – a friend of mine is a Chesty Morgan devotee (I’m guessing she wasn’t born with that name), and he gave me Double Agent and Diary of a nudist – they didn’t make it into my top ten!
Nelly Kaplan b. 1936, Argentina. A maker of powerfully erotic and subversive films (the few she has been fortunate to make), driven by a deep regard for surrealism and revolt. Her work has been characterized as “Insolence raised to the status of fine art.” How could you not love work made in that spirit?
Andrea Arnold’s Red Road is interesting and creepy and very British, and I forgot Mira Nair – her films are always interesting, particularly Salaam Bombay and Monsoon Wedding. More mainstream are the crowdpleasers of Gurinder Chada – Bend it like Beckham, What’s Cooking? etc
There’s also Lotte Reiniger with her silhouette animations- The Adventures of Prince Ahmed was one of the first animated features
Great piece about Mary Harron here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/06/mary-harron-film
Oh i forgot Meszaros (Hungary), and Diary for my Children etc. Off to bed now
Lucrecia Martel: ‘La Cinenega’ ‘The Holy Girl’ and ‘The Headless Woman’ — all great.
Claudia Llosa:‘Madeinusa’ and recent Berlin winner ‘The Milk of Sorrow’
I think these two plus (already mentioned Claire Denis and Lynne Ramsay) are just about the most exciting working today.
Gina Kim. Never Forever and Invisible Light deserve a bigger audience
I was going to say Mira Nair, but Kenji’s list is pretty extensive, and has it all. Good on you, KENJI.
Watched Varda’s Le Bonheur last night. Not her best, but it’s somewhere there, on her Top 5.
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned the Scottish film Dear Frankie directed by Shona Auerbach starring Emily Mortimer and Gerard Butler who gives an Oscar worthy performance.
lucrecia martel
katheryn bigelow
my earlier list now amended:
Adler: Under the Skin
Akerman: All Night Long
The Captive
D’Est
Jeanne Dielman
Night and Day
Amaral: Hour of the Star
Armstrong: Little Women
My Beautiful Career
Arnold: Red Road
Arzner: Dance, Girl, Dance
Bani-Etemad: Nargess
Under the Skin of the City
Bigelow: Near Dark
Point Break
Strange Days
Borden: Working Girls
Breillat: A Ma Soeur
The Last Mistress
Campion: An Angel at my Table
The Piano
Sweetie
Caro: Whale Rider
Caviani: The Night Porter
Chytilova: Daisies
Clarke: Connections
Cool World
Coixet: Elegy
My Life without Me
Coppola: Lost in Translation
The Virgin Suicides
Dash: Daughters of the Dust
Denis: Beau Travail
Chocolat
The Intruder
Davaa: Cave of the Yellow Dog
Story of the Weeping Camel*
Deren: At Land
Meshes of the Afternoon
Despentes, Trin Thi: Baise-Moi
Di Nata: Arisan
Dulac: The Seashell and the Clergyman
The Smiling Madame Beudet
Duras: India Song
Edzard: Little Dorrit
Enyedi: My Twentieth Century
Faris: Little Miss Sunshine
Farrokhzad: The House is Black*
Ferran: Lady Chatterley
Gomez: One Way or Another
Gorris: Antonia’s Line
A Question of Silence
Greenwald: Songcatcher
Hadzihalilovic: Innocence*
Harron: American Psycho
Heckerling: Clueless
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Hogg: Unrelated
Holland: Europa Europa
Olivier Olivier
The Secret Garden
Huang Shuqin: A Soul Haunted by Painting
Hui: Boat People
Song of the Exile
Huillet: Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach
Not Reconciled
Jaoui: Look at Me
The Taste of Others
Jong Jae-eun: Take Care of my Cat*
July: Me and You and Everyone We Know
Kawase: Forest of Mourning
Leaf: Metamorphosis of Mr Samsa
The Street
Link: Nowhere in Africa
Loden: Wanda
Lupino: The Bigamist
The Hitch-hiker
Makhmalbaf: The Apple
At Five in the Afternoon
Blackboards
Marshall: Awakenings
Big
Martel: La Cienaga
The Headless Woman
The Holy Girl
Medeiros: The Captains of April
Mehta: Earth
Fire
Water
Meshkini: The Day I Became a Woman
Meszaros: Adoption
A Diary for my Children
Meyers: Something’s Gotta Give
What Women Want
Muratova: Asthenic Syndrome
Long Farewells
Nair: Monsoon Wedding
The Namesake
Salaam Bombay
Palcy: Rue Cases Negres
Peirce: Boys Don’t Cry
Polley: Away from Her
Potter: Orlando
Rainer: Film about a Woman who
Ramsay: Morvern Callar
Ratcatcher
Raynal: Deux Fois
Reiniger: The Adventures of Prince Achmed
The Little Chimney Sweep
Riefenstahl: The Blue Light
Olympia
Triumph of the Will
Romand: Mix Up
Rozema: I’ve Heard the Mermaids Sing
Sagan: Madchen in Uniform*
Sanders-Brahms: Germany, Pale Mother
Shepitko: The Ascent
Shortland: Somersault
Shub: The Fall of the Romanoff Dynasty
Solntseva: Enchanted Desna
Poem of the Sea
Taymor: Frida
Titus
Tlatli: The Season of Men
Silences of the Palace*
Trotta: The German Sisters
The Lost Honour of Katherina Blum
Rosa Luxemburg
Turner: Celia
Ullmann Faithless
Sofie
Varda: The Beaches of Agnes
Le Bonheur
Cleo from 5 to 7
The Gleaners and I
Vagabond
Veysset: Will it Snow for Christmas?
Villaverde: A Idade Major
Zheliazkova: The Attached Balloon
The Swimming Pool
sorry for going a little OT:
This thread reminds me of a film critic class at university, long time ago. Upon receiving the list of films to watch for the semester, one girl complained there were no female directors on that list, except for Rosa von Praunheim …
very witty- reminds me of one time i was at a hospital near a drunken guy in a cubicle called Petra von Kant.
@Kenji No, it was the opposite of witty. She really thought von Praunheim was a woman.
Oh i’d assumed the whole thing was a witty story! Wasn’t Carol Reed on the course too?
Binka Zheliazkova (from Bulgaria)‘s The Attached Balloon- there’s a short video about her on youtube, taken from a documentary by a female, with a little clip from the film, – something about the film struck my imagination years back, i think it was from reading about it in an earlier edition of David Cook’s History of Narrative Film. Poor Bulgaria hardly gets a look in even with committed cinephiles, i’d be delighted if the best films from there became more widely available. Anyway, i must say i’m disappointed with the relative lack of interest in my Chantal Brejchova thread, even with beautiful pics attached.
Actually, that question was addressed mainly to the public, Justin. But it’s a great point you made there!
Lynne Ramsey
Sophia Coppola
Vera Chytilova
Agnes Varda
Leni Riefenstahl
Catherine Breillat
Claire Denis
Maya Deren
Jane Campion
Lucrecia Martel
Roderick
What’s the difference between female directors and male ones? There’s nothing different at all (unless you’re sexist).