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

Bite-sized blog post: Penny Marshall

Penny Marshall began her career as an actress who became famous for her role as Laverne on Laverne & Shirley. She directed a couple of episodes of the long-running sitcom and then went on to direct the feature film Big (1988), the first film directed by a woman to gross over $100 million.

Her film Awakenings (1990) was nominated for Best Picture by the Academy, however she was not nominated for Best Director for the film.

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Where to watch her films:

HULU

Bite-sized blog post: Cheryl Dunye

After directing and producing several shorts CHERYL DUNYE made her first feature film The Watermelon Woman (1996) exploring sexuality and race and film, funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts.

After the success of The Watermelon Woman and the HBO movie Stranger Inside (2001) Dunye directed the Hollywood vehicle My Baby’s Daddy (2004) written by Eddie Griffin. She continues to write and direct as well as teaching at various Universities in California.

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FIRST RUN FEATURES

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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Bite-sized blog post: Allison Anders

ALLISON ANDERS made her first feature film Border Radio (1987) while still a student at UCLA, shooting with classmates Kurt Voss and Dean Lent and reaching out to punk music icons to act in the film which is now a Criterion classic. She has gone on to direct features as well as for television.

For The Miramar Summit in the spring of 2000, well before the issue of the lack of women directors became mainstream news, Anders gathered women in the film industry to discuss the challenges facing female filmmakers in Hollywood.

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Where to watch her films:

HULU

CRITERION

Bite-sized blog post: Agnès Varda

Despite being only a few years older than Truffaut and Godard AGNÉS VARDA is known as the Grandmother of the French New Wave. With a background in art not cinema, her first film La Pointe Courte (1955) was made in her hometown without film training but by her simply picking up a camera and making it happen which has proven the inspiration for many of her subsequent films.

Varda did a brief stint in Hollywood where she directed Lions Love a film about New York transplants (including some of the famous Warhol crowd) in Los Angeles and a short documentary about the Black Panthers. Her time in Los Angeles was short lived but she returned to France to continue making movies and just last year at the age of 87 premiered her short Les 3 boutons at the Venice Film Festival.

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Where to watch her films:

HULU

Bite-sized blog post: Bette Gordon

When BETTE GORDON attended film school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison MFA film program she was one of two woman and one of her professors joked when they were working with a Bolex camera “do you girls even know how to use that thing?” She became an expert and has gone on to teach film classes at Columbia as well as continuing to direct award winning features including Luminous Motion (2000) based on the novel by Scott Bradfield and Handsome Harry (2009).

Her most recent feature starring Josh Charles and Julia Stiles, Border Crossers is in post-production.

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Bite-sized blog post: Lexi Alexander

LEXI ALEXANDER went from being a World Kick-boxing champion to a stunt woman to making an Academy Award nominated short film.

She then took her fighting skills to the screen and directed Green Street Hooligans (2005) and Marvel’s Punisher: War Zone (2008) before writing a scathing article on the hypocrisy of Hollywood liberals and gender discrimination.

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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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Bite-sized blog post: Nancy Savoca

NANCY SAVOCA graduated with an MFA from NYU and then went on to self-fund her first feature True Love (1989) which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. She then went on to direct Dogfight (1991) for Warner Brothers.

She continues to direct independent films and for television. Her company Cine-Si is a collaboration with her husband, film producer Rich Guay.

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Where to watch her films:

iTunes