THE 2ND SEX &amp; THE 7TH ART: WOMEN DIRECTORS IN FILM

Bite-sized blog post: Gurinder Chadha

GURINDER CHADA was a BBC news reporter who made award winning documentaries in England before her fiction feature film Bend It Like Beckham (2002) became a US (and international) success.

She continues to direct for the screen and has recently turned Bend It Like Beckham into a stage musical.

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Where to watch her films:

Bite-sized blog post: Sarah Polley

SARAH POLLEY is a Canadian actress who made a career in independent film before directing a few shorts and attending the Canadian Film Centre’s directing program in 2001.

Her feature film directorial debut Away From Her (2006) garnered her an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Her most recent film was a documentary hybrid about her family Stories We Tell (2012).

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Where to watch her films:

AMAZON (PRIME STREAMING)

LIONSGATE SHOP

Bite-sized blog post: Maya Deren

MAYA DEREN began her career studying literature and as a photographer and then went on to make her mark as an experimental filmmaker with films such as Meshes of the Afternoon (1943).

Deren was the first filmmaker to receive a Guggenheim grant in 1947. She died in 1961 at the age of 44 of a brain hemhorrage.

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Where to watch her films:

FANDOR

AMAZON (PRIME STREAMING)

Bite-sized blog post: Barbara Kopple

BARBARA KOPPLE began her career working with the Maysles brothers and has gone on to win two Academy Awards for her documentaries, the first for Harlan County, USA (1976) and for American Dream (1990).

She has directed numerous documentaries and for the Emmy award winning television series Homicide: Life on the Streets.

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Where to watch her films:

FANDOR

AMAZON (PRIME STREAMING)

VIMEO

Bite-sized blog post: Debra Granik

Before attending New York University’s MFA program in Film DEBRA GRANIK worked as a videographer for trade unions where she first became interested in characters and sharing their stories.

In 2011 her film Winter’s Bone was nominated for an Academy Award and catapulted Jennifer Lawrence into the category of A-list actor.

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Where to watch her films:

AMAZON (DVDs for PURCHASE)

Bite-sized blog post: Mira Nair

MIRA NAIR began her career as a documentarian and then went on to make fiction films including one of Denzel Washington’s first features Mississippi Masala (1991).

Born and raised in India, Nair moved to the United States to study on a scholarship at Harvard before embarking on her film career.

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Where to watch her films:

HULU

Bite-sized blog post: Chantal Akerman

I had the opportunity to study with CHANTAL AKERMAN right before she left this world in October 2015. She was definitely eccentric in her brilliance and never filtered her points of view … which sometimes caused for controversy… nonetheless she clearly cared about film and those studying it and her passion for it never dulled.

Best known in academic and art house circles for her feminist epic Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) which she directed at the young age of 25 Akerman vacillated between documentaries and fiction but always remained faithful to expressing the truth as she saw it.

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Where to watch her films:

FANDOR

HULU