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The term women's cinema usually refers to films made by women.[1] Above all, it designates the work of women film directors and, to a lesser degree, the work of other women behind the camera such as cinematographers and screenwriters.[1] Although the participation of women film editors, costume designers, and production designers is usually not considered to be decisive enough to justify the term "women's cinema", it does have a large influence on the visual impression of any movie.
Some of the most distinguished women directors have tried to avoid the association with women's cinema in the fear of marginalization and ideological controversy.[2]
Alice Guy-Blaché made the very first narrative film La Fée aux Choux in 1896. More than 700 films followed, working in France and the U.S. [1] Lois Weber was among the most successful film directors of the silent era. Actresses like Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, and others were the stars. Women screenwriters were highly sought after including Frances Marion, Anita Loos, and June Mathis. June Mathis was the first female executive in Hollywood and produced and wrote several silent films.
In the twenties large banks had assumed control of Hollywood production companies. Production supervisors began to standardize film making. The introduction of sound demanded new investments which further increased the control of the banks. In 1929 Hollywood accepted a list of taboos which was later to become the Hays Code. Any unconventional film maker had a hard time. Women film makers could afford economic failures even less. Dorothy Arzner was the only women film maker to survive in this unfriendly environment. She did so by producing well made but formally rather conventional films. Nevertheless, she succeeded in smuggling in feminist elements into her films.
Germaine Dulac was a leading member of the French avant-garde film movement after World War I, and Maya Deren's visionary films belong to the classics of experimental cinema.
Shirley Clarke was a leading figure of the independent American film scene in New York in the fifties. Her work is unusual, insofar as she directed outstanding experimental and feature films as well as documentaries. Joyce Wieland was a Canadian experimental film maker. The National Film Board of Canada allowed many women to produce non-commercial animation films. In Europe women artists like Valie Export were among the first to explore the artistic and political potential of videos.
In the late sixties, when the Second Wave of Feminism started, the New Left was at its height. Both movements strongly opposed the 'dominant cinema', i.e. Hollywood and male European bourgeois auteur cinema. Hollywood was accused of furthering oppression by disseminating sexist, racist and imperialist stereotypes. Women participated in mixed new collectives like Newsreel, but they also formed their own film groups. Early feminist films often focused on personal experiences. A first masterpiece was Wanda by Barbara Loden, one of the most poignant portraits of alienation ever made.
Resisting the oppression of female sexuality was one of the core goals of Second-Wave Feminism. Abortion was still very controversial in many western societies and feminists opposed the control of the state and the church. Exploring female sexuality took many forms: focusing on long-time censured forms of sexuality (lesbianism, sado-masochism) or showing heterosexuality from a woman's point of view. Birgit Hein, Elfi Mikesch, Nelly Kaplan, Catherine Breillat and Barbara Hammer are some of the directors to be remembered.
A film notable for its empathic portrayal of prostitution is Lizzie Borden's Working Girls (1986). Molly, a white lesbian in a stable mixed-race relationship, is a Yale-educated photographer who has chosen to augment her income through sex work in a low-key urban brothel. We accompany Molly on what turns out to be her last day on the job, understanding her professional interactions with her "johns" through her perspective, a completely original point of view, since, until Borden's film, prostitutes had largely been depicted sterotypically. The story's sympathetic, well-rounded character and situation humanizes prostitution, and the film itself combats the anti-pornography stance touted by many Second-Wave feminists, which Borden rejects as repressive[3].
Resisting patriarchal violence has always been a key concern of Second Wave Feminism. Consequently many feminists of the second wave have taken part in the peace movements of the eighties, as had their foremothers in the older pacifist movements. Nevertheless the patriarchal cliché of the 'peaceable' woman needed to be criticized. Women film directors documented the participation of women in anti-imperialist resistance movements. In their Kali films Birgit and Wilhelm Hein assembled found footage from 'trivial' genres, the only domain of cinema in which the portrayal of aggressive women was allowed.
Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust (1991) was the first full-length film with general theatrical release written and directed by an African American woman. Since then there have been several African women who have written, produced or directed films with national release. Neema Barnette (Civil Brand), Maya Angelou (Down in the Delta), Kasi Lemmons (Eve's Bayou), Cheryl Dunye (My Baby's Daddy), Stephanie Allain (Biker Boyz), Tracey Edmonds (Soul Food), Frances-Anne Solomon (A Winter Tale) and Dianne Houston (City of Angels) are among these filmmakers. In 1994 Darnell Martin became the first African American woman to write and direct a film produced by a major studio when Columbia Pictures backed I Like It Like That.
To date, Nnegest Likké is the first African American woman to write, direct and act in a full-length movie released by a major studio, Phat Girlz (2006) starring Jimmy Jean-Louis and Mo'Nique.
For a much fuller accounting of the larger history of black women filmmakers, see Yvonne Welbon's 62-minute documentary Sisters in Cinema (2003) (http://www.sistersincinema.com/).
The first African woman film director to gain international recognition was the Senegalese ethnologist Safi Faye with a film about the village in which she was born (Letter from the Village, 1975). Other African women filmmakers include Sarah Maldoror, Anne Mungai, and Fanta Régina Nacro (The Night of Truth, 2004).
Mira Nair, Aparna Sen, Deepa Mehta, Gurinder Chadha, Manju Borah are among the best known Indian women filmmakers, partly because of commercial success of their films. However there are a number of other Indian women filmmakers who have made some remarkable films that address a variety of issues. Other noteworthy Indian women filmmakers include Nisha Ganatra, Sonali Gulati, Indu Krishnan, Eisha Marjara, Pratibha Parmar, Nandini Sikand, and Shashwati Talukdar.
In Japan for a long time Kinuyo Tanaka was the only woman to make feature films. She was able to do this against fierce resistance because she enjoyed a status as star actress. Using genre conventions her films showed women "with a humorous affection rare in Japanese cinema of the period" (Philip Kemp).
Currently, the best-known women filmmaker of Japan may be Naomi Kawase; 2007 she won the Grand Prix in Cannes, while Memoirs of a fig tree, the directorial debut of well-known actrice Kaori Momoi, saw the light of the day in 2006. The sociocritical adventure film K-20: Legend of the Mask by Shimako Sato's was a breakthrough into a bigger budget; it starred Takeshi Kaneshiro and was released all over the world.
Similarly in South Korea, Lim Soon-rye landed a box-office-hit with Forever the Moment, while So Yong Kim got some attention for her film In Between Days and Lee Suk-Gyung made the women-themed and subtly feminist The Day After.
One of the important 5th generation filmmakers of China is Ning Ying, who won several prices for her films; in contrast to the controversy over some of her sixth-generation colleagues such as Zhang Yimou, who got accused of having sold out their ideals, Ning Ying has gone on to realize small independent films with themes strongly linked to Chinese daily life, therefore also being a link between the 5th and 6th generation. The 6th generation has seen a growing number of women filmmakers such as Liu Jiayin, best known for her film Oxhide, and Xiaolu Guo; in 2001 Li Yu caused quite a stir with her lesbian love story Fish and Elephant.
The most famous women filmmaker from Hong Kong is undoubtedly Ann Hui, who has made a wide array of films ranging from the wuxia genre to drama; Ivy Ho and Taiwanese Sylvia Chang also are known names in the Hong Kong industry, while in Taiwan queer filmmaker Zero Chou has gotten acclaim on festivals around the world.
In Pakistan, where film industry is not very big, some prominent and brilliant[says who?] directors are working. Conventional film industry has directors like Sangeeta and Shamim Ara who are making films with feminist themes. Specially on Sangeeta's credit there are some issue-based films. Now some new directors from television industry are also coming towards the medium of films. Sabiha Sumar and Mehreen Jabbar are two new names for films in Pakistan and are making brilliant films. Both of these directors has made films which are not only issue based addressing national issues but also these films have won international awards at different film festivals.
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, a writer and a director, is probably Iran's best known and certainly most prolific female filmmaker. She has established herself as the elder stateswoman of Iranian cinema with documentaries and films dealing with social pathology. Contemporary Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad (1935—1967) was also a filmmaker. Her best known film is The House is black (Khane siah ast, 1962), a documentary of a leper colony in the north of Iran. Samira Makhmalbaf directed her first film The Apple when she was only 17 years old and won Cannes Jury Prize in 2000 for her following film The Blackboard.
Marta Rodriguez is a Colombian documentary film maker.
Brazilian Cinema has an expressive number of women directors whose works date from the 1930s. Brazilian women directors' most prolific era unfolds from the 1970s. Some contemporary names include: Ana Carolina, Betse De Paula, Carla Camurati, Eliane Caffe, Helena Solberg, Lucia Murat, Sandra Kogut, Suzana Amaral, Tata Amaral.
Elvira Notari was a pioneer of Italian cinema, and she was followed by other prominent female directors as Lina Wertmüller and Liliana Cavani.
The Economist wrote of Leni Riefenstahl that Triumph of the Will "sealed her reputation as the greatest female filmmaker of the 20th century".
During the "golden age" of "Classical" French cinema Jacqueline Audry was the only woman to direct commercial films. In 1959 writer Marguerite Duras wrote the script for Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour. She turned to directing with La Musica in 1966. Among the best known French women film makers are Agnès Varda, Claire Denis, Nelly Kaplan and Catherine Breillat. The work of many more French female directors is rarely screened outside France.
German woman filmmaker Helke Sander was also one of the pioneers of the feminist movement. Other prominent female film-makers include Margarethe von Trotta and Helma Sanders-Brahms. Monika Treut has also won recognition for her depictions of queer and alternative sexuality.
In Hungary Marta Meszaros has been making important films for decades.
In Britain Jane Arden (1927–82), following up her television drama The Logic Game (1965), wrote and starred in the film Separation (Jack Bond 1967), which explores a woman's mental landscape during a marital breakup. Arden went on to be the only British woman to gain a solo feature-directing credit for The Other Side of the Underneath (1972), a disturbing study of female madness shot mainly in South Wales. Arden's overtly feminist work was neglected and almost lost until the British Film Institute rediscovered and reissued her three features, and the short Vibration (1974), in 2009.
Cinenova is a London based organization that distributes women produced films.
Sally Potter is a prominent British feminist film maker.
British filmmaker Ngozi Onwurah explores the legacies of colonialism.
Edith Carlmar was a prominent Norwegian film director, working in a variety of genres (crime, melodrama, comedy).
Portuguese editor and director Manuela Viegas' 1999 film Gloria, premiered at the 57th Berlinale, is considered in her country the climax of a cinema of feminin sensibility.
Since the beginning of sound cinema, with very few exceptions, the films of women had been absent from mainstream cinema for more than half a century. Sometimes actresses enjoying a star status turned to directing (like Barbra Streisand). Though directed by men, Thelma & Louise and The Color Purple showed the acceptability of feminist themes.
Kathryn Bigelow works in male-dominated genres like science fiction, action, and horror. Dörris Dörrie landed a box office hit with her satire Men. Italian Lina Wertmüller has directed a great number of popular films on the war of the sexes, with various artistic success.