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

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Bite-sized blog post: Tamra Davis

TAMRA DAVIS began her career directing music videos for popular bands in the eighties and nineties including the Bangles, Depeche Mode and NWA.

She has gone on to direct feature films including Chris Rock’s “rockumentary” spoof CB4 (1993) and Billy Madison (1995) starring Adam Sandler, direct for television and direct and produce a documentary about her friend, the renowned artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

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Where to watch her films:

YOUTUBE

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:

LIONSGATE SHOP

Bite-sized blog post: Mary Harron

MARY HARRON began her career as a music journalist after studying at Oxford. Her first feature film I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) screened at Cannes Film Festival.

Harron went on to direct American Psycho (2000)which brought both her and Christian Bale into the spotlight.

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Bite-sized blog post: Nina Menkes

NINA MENKES studied film at UCLA where she first began collaborating with her sister Tinka Menkes who served as her actress and muse on several projects. As a director she has worked in all areas of production, writing, editing, working camera and sound on her projects.

Menkes’ films have been known to challenge the viewer (especially the male viewer) nonetheless films including Phantom Love (2007), The Bloody Child (1996) and Queen of Diamonds (1991) have found a home at mainstream festivals such as Sundance because of their boldness and craft. Sundance also embraced her New Media project The Crazy Female Bloody Center (2000).

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Bite-sized blog post: Amy Seimetz

AMY SEIMETZ began her career producing and directing shorts. Her first feature film Sun Don’t Shine (2008) was simultaneously released theatrically and digitally by Factory 25.

She has gone on to direct for the television series The Girlfriend Experience based on the film by Stephen Soderbergh.

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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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Where to watch her films:

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:

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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