“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” So said a founding member of Magnum, an international photography collective renowned for finding an art form in reportage. Questions of closeness—spatial proximity and also emotional involvement—had an influence on photojournalism in the twentieth century, and cinema too. In 1982, writer and documentarian Trinh T. Minh-ha, for instance, said that her films spoke not “about” the world, but instead “nearby” it: not too close, but close enough. Programmed in cooperation with C/O Berlin, whose current exhibition Close Enough focuses on women photographers from the Magnum archives, this collection celebrates women filmmakers who take distance to heart.
Chantal Akerman’s particular perspective on the world informs each captivating scene of Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). Fixed on a tripod adjusted to the filmmaker’s diminutive height, Babette Mangolte’s static camera accentuates the scrupulous precision of Delphine Seyrig’s methodical gestures—which were directed according to what Akerman had, as a girl, observed of her mother and aunt. For Working Girls (1986), writer-director Lizzie Borden took inspiration from how Jeanne Dielman had represented sex work. Drawing from personal experience and an explicit feminist stance, she frames actors with respect for both aesthetics and dignity, in distinctive compositions that curve away from pornography’s ugly way of ogling.
Claire Simon wanted to liberate perspective from conventional beauty standards with Our Body (2023), a documentary that approaches the vulnerable bodies of patients in a gynaecological ward in Paris with invariable warmth. Dea Kulumbegashvili, meanwhile, visited Georgia’s maternity wards when researching April (2024), an arresting film that makes stark the fragility of women’s health in patriarchal societies. Asking permission to record a live birth for one scene and depicting an abortion with utmost care elsewhere, Kulumbegashvili worked with her cinematographer to find the right, respectful distance from these life-and-death moments, whether fictional or real.
That often obscure line between documentary and its opposites wavers across Samira Makhmalbaf’s The Apple (1998) and Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman (1996). While Makhmalbaf’s film is imaginative enough to let in poetic, playful interludes that lighten the tragic lives of the twins she encounters, Dunye’s impassioned search for a black female star of early cinema doesn’t let official history get in the way of speculation. Sometimes, straying from reality to enjoy artistic license opens up the kinds of truth that are drawn from intuition and feeling; that are, in other words, not quite true, but close enough.

&#8220;If your pictures aren&#8217;t good enough, you&#8217;re not close enough.&#8221; So said a founding member of Magnum, an international photography collective renowned for finding an art form in reportage. Questions of closeness&#8212;spatial proximity and also emotional involvement&#8212;had an influence on photojournalism in the twentieth century, and cinema too. In 1982, writer and documentarian Trinh T. Minh-ha, for instance, said that her films spoke not &#8220;about&#8221; the world, but instead &#8220;nearby&#8221; it: not too close, but close enough. Programmed in cooperation with C/O Berlin, whose current exhibition <a href="https://co-berlin.org/en/program/exhibitions/close-enough">Close Enough</a> focuses on women photographers from the Magnum archives, this collection celebrates women filmmakers who take distance to heart.
Chantal Akerman&#8217;s particular perspective on the world informs each captivating scene of Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). Fixed on a tripod adjusted to the filmmaker&#8217;s diminutive height, Babette Mangolte&#8217;s static camera accentuates the scrupulous precision of Delphine Seyrig&#8217;s methodical gestures&#8212;which were directed according to what Akerman had, as a girl, observed of her mother and aunt. For Working Girls (1986), writer-director Lizzie Borden took inspiration from how Jeanne Dielman had represented sex work. Drawing from personal experience and an explicit feminist stance, she frames actors with respect for both aesthetics and dignity, in distinctive compositions that curve away from pornography&#8217;s ugly way of ogling.
Claire Simon wanted to liberate perspective from conventional beauty standards with Our Body (2023), a documentary that approaches the vulnerable bodies of patients in a gynaecological ward in Paris with invariable warmth. Dea Kulumbegashvili, meanwhile, visited Georgia&#8217;s maternity wards when researching April (2024), an arresting film that makes stark the fragility of women&#8217;s health in patriarchal societies. Asking permission to record a live birth for one scene and depicting an abortion with utmost care elsewhere, Kulumbegashvili worked with her cinematographer to find the right, respectful distance from these life-and-death moments, whether fictional or real.
That often obscure line between documentary and its opposites wavers across Samira Makhmalbaf&#8217;s The Apple (1998) and Cheryl Dunye&#8217;s The Watermelon Woman (1996). While Makhmalbaf&#8217;s film is imaginative enough to let in poetic, playful interludes that lighten the tragic lives of the twins she encounters, Dunye&#8217;s impassioned search for a black female star of early cinema doesn&#8217;t let official history get in the way of speculation. Sometimes, straying from reality to enjoy artistic license opens up the kinds of truth that are drawn from intuition and feeling; that are, in other words, not quite true, but close enough.

Close Enough: Perspectives by Women Filmmakers

CLOSE ENOUGH: PERSPECTIVES BY WOMEN FILMMAKERS

Calibrating their cameras and finding the right distance from their subjects, each of these filmmakers once wondered: How close is close enough? Programmed in partnership with C/O Berlin, this collection celebrates women who recognize an aesthetics and ethics of distance, and take them to heart.

Calibrating their cameras and finding the right distance from their subjects, each of these filmmakers once wondered: How close is close enough? Programmed in partnership with <a href="https://co-berlin.org/en/program/exhibitions/close-enough">C/O Berlin</a>, this collection celebrates women who recognize an aesthetics and ethics of distance, and take them to heart.

Perspectives by Women Filmmakers