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

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Bite-sized blog post: Gina Prince-Bythewood

After attending UCLA film school GINA PRINCE-BYTHEWOOD began working in the industry as a writer on A Different World. She used her free time and experiences as a basketball player to write her first feature Love & Basketball (2000) where she worked with actress Sanaa Lathan to turn her into a realistic basketball player (her first instinct was to hire a player not an actor).

Bythewood is in talks with Fox for a new television series, Shots Fired, about the aftermath of police shootings in a small town in Tennessee, where she would reunite with Lathan

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Bite-sized blog post: Martha Coolidge

MARTHA COOLIDGE was the first female president of the Directors Guild of America from 2002-2003. She got her MFA at NYU before moving to Los Angeles to begin her career as a director.

Her first feature film Not a Pretty Picture (1976) is a hybrid documentary fiction film exploring a date rape Coolidge suffered as a young woman. She went on to direct commercial fiction feature films starting with Valley Girl (1983) which launched Nicholas Cage’s career as well as her own.

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Bite-sized blog post: Ida Lupino

One of the only women to work as a director in Hollywood in the 1940s IDA LUPINO began her career as an actress and succeeded directing and acting in numerous films of the era – specializing in noir.

Well before “indie film” became a household phrase she, along with her husband, ventured out on her own to direct and produce her own work outside of the studio system. As the only woman in the DGA meetings opened with, “Gentleman – and Mrs. Lupino.”

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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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Bite-sized blog post: Jennifer Phang

San Francisco-based filmmaker born in Berkeley JENNIFER PHANG attended AFI for an MFA and went on to make sci-fi films Half-Life and Advantageous.

Phang is one of six women chosen for the 2015-2016 Women of Sundance Fellowship.

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VIMEO

Bite-sized blog post: Susan Seidelman

After graduating from NYU Susan Seidelman did what many filmmakers did in the eighties and made an indie film on a shoe string budget which received critical acclaim, Smithereens (1982).

Following the success of Smithereens Seidelman went on to make the classic Desperately Seeking Susan giving her neighbor Madonna her first film role

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Bite-sized blog post: Elaine May

Known for her comedy, ELAINE MAY was one of very few women in Hollywood to direct films in the 1970s. An actor and director she has helmed now classic films such as Neil Simon’s The Heartbreak Kid (1972).

After the financial and critical disaster of Ishtar May has acted in several films but hasn’t directed since (arguably a fate that would not have befallen an equally skilled male director). She is slated to direct a documentary on her comedian partner Mike Nichols who passed away in November 2014.

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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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CRITERION COLLECTION

Bite-sized blog post: Maggie Greenwald

Unlike many up -and-coming filmmakers in the 1980s who went the film school route MAGGIE GREENWALD learned the ropes of filmmaking directly through working on sets, driving vans, editing and exposing herself to the ins-and-outs of the industry before making her first feature Home Remedy (1987).

Her film noir The Kill-Off (1989) based on the novel by Jim Thompson is listed as one of the top 100 American Independent Films by the British Film Institute. Greenwald went on to direct The Ballad of Little Joe (1993) taking over the traditionally male-genre of the Western and putting a woman at the center of it and she continues to direct films and for television.

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