A brief (and incomplete) history of women film directors.

 We're living in a time when women directors could finally be seen to be getting the recognition and opportunities they deserve: Julia Ducournau won the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year for Titane, only the first woman to win the prize in her own right, (Jane Campion had been a joint winner for The Piano, 1993) and Chloë Zhao won the best director Oscar for Nomadland, becoming the second woman, and the first woman of colour, to win that distinction, after Kathryn Bigelow, for The Hurt Locker (2009, but Oscar won the following year) (French title: Démineurs). So these could be seen as good times for women directors, but of course what could be considered as particularly shocking is that women directors have taken so long to get these prizes, and indeed, in many cases, just the chance to direct. I'm making the most of some seasons of films by Jane Campion and Kelly Reichardt in Marseille and Aix to give some background to the decades of un(der)recognised women filmmakers, and invite you to try and see their films.

The very first female director according to historians was Alice Guy-Blaché (1873-1968, above) (often just known as Alice Guy), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPUJRtrp_EE who was indeed one of the very first directors in the whole history of the cinema. Encouraged by watching the Lumière brothers' films, she threw herself straight into filmmaking, and made around a thousand short movies, mainly in the first two decades of the twentieth century, many of which are sadly now lost, although there have been many efforts to retrieve them. Here is one of the survivors, featuring a particularly enterprising young girl, and therefore feminist in its theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BOBQa7HGOE  Alice Guy's film Heroine

Sadly, however, there were very few female filmmakers in the following half-century. There was a great French director called Germaine Dulac. She directed La Souriante Madame Beudet 1923) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP0aQKJwYp0, often considered her masterpiece, and the more surrealistic La Coquille et le Clergyman (English title: The Seashell and the Clergyman, 1928) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypseXIQVaF0, which was written by Antonin Artaud. Amazingly, the chief film propagandist of the Nazi regime was a woman, Leni Riefenstahl, who made some films which are considered classics, in spite of the sickening politics behind them, such as Triumph of the Will (1935), and Olympia (1938) her film about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, awkwardly for the Nazis made famous by the success of the African-American sprinter Jesse Owens. Riefenstahl managed to avoid being charged with war crimes, denying any knowledge of the Holocaust, became a photographer in Africa and lived to over a hundred.

Hollywood seems to have produced only one woman director before the Second World War, namely Dorothy Arzner, whose career ran from the silent era, in the 1920s to her retirement from directing in 1943, at the shockingly young age of 46 (yes, people are still young in their mid to late forties). Her work received a retrospective at the San Sebastian film festival film in 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECjUnucDeBM, and I hope her work will become much more widely available, especially as she seems to have created some great roles for women actors like Katharine Hepburn, Maureen O'Hara and Joan Crawford. Some works can be found on DVD, and I must get moving, as I still haven't seen any of her films... 

Just after World War 2, a fine British-born actress (I had to point this out, as there haven't been many British women directors) called Ida Lupino, moved towards directing when the male director of a film she was starring in and had written, Not Wanted (1949), fell ill. At the time, out of respect for the original director, she didn't take the directing credit until her second film, Never Fear (1949), a personal film about polio, a disease she herself had suffered from. I was lucky enough to see these films and The Bigamist (a fairly self-explanatory title) during a recent retrospective at Aix's Institut de l'Image, having earlier seen her film noir The Hitch-Hiker (1953), which was the first of the genre to be directed by a woman. It became more and more difficult to finance her movies, though, and she turned towards directing for telly. Here are some links to her films: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-6sBx4iwTU   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9SxWhURBYA  

We could have hoped that Europe would have been more open-minded, but apart from the aforementioned Guy and Dulac, France didn't produce a female filmmaker of renown until the late, great Agnès Varda became more or less the only woman director of the Nouvelle Vague (actually she was born in Belgium). Even then, she was often identified as merely being the partner of the admittedly great Jacques Demy. Hopefully now, she is being much more recognised even than before, and has become a heroine to many who have aspired to follow in her footsteps. Her first film, La Pointe Courte (the title has never been translated, no doubt because it's a place name) actually dates from 1955, which makes it a forerunner of the New Wave, but I particularly recommend Cléo de 5 à 7 (English title, unsurprisingly: Cleo From 5 to 7, 1962), which follows the title character for two hours (well, a bit less, but that would have given an unwieldy title!), as she awaits the results of a cancer test. It was relatively rare for male directors to focus on a female character so much, so this was a breath of fresh air. Varda's career was long, varied and brilliant, and I particularly love her late movies which mixed autobiography and documentary. Watch Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (The Gleaners and I, 2000), Les Plages d'Agnès (The Beaches of Agnès, 2008), and Visages,Villages (Faces, Places - good translation, 2017) if you haven't already done so, and then watch all the others!

At around the same time, shamefully, there were hardly any British women directing films, although here's a list of recommendations https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-british-films-directed-women. I'll come back to some of the later ones later. There were, however, at least two great women directors in Eastern Europe at the time of the Cold War. Vera Chytilova directed a great film called Daisies (Les Petites Marguerites, 1966), an incredibly inventive, almost anarchic, movie from the Czech New Wave. A lot of great movies were made in the then Czechoslovakia during the 1960s, before the Soviet tanks arrived in 1968, but Daisies (photo below) is definitely one of the best! You can also find her earlier film Something Different (1963) on MUBI, my favourite streaming platform, and I'll definitely watch it soon. https://mubi.com/films/something-different

Meanwhile in Hungary, there was a great director called Marta Meszaros (or make that Meszaros Marta, as Hungarians, like the Japanese, always put the surname first). There seems to be a bit of a buzz around her, maybe as she has just celebrated her 90th birthday (women filmmakers seem to live long, as Chytilova and Varda lived to be 85 and 90 respectively, not forgetting Riefenstahl). I picked up a few of her DVDs, and then discovered there are about 10 of her films on MUBI. https://mubi.com/cast/marta-meszaros I'm working through them all chronologically, and have loved all the films up to 1976. They tackle various themes: her first Cati (1968) shows a young woman who lives in an orphanage of sorts, and who decides to seek out her birth mother. A later film Adoption shows a 40-year-old woman who wants to adopt a child, in spite of the objections of her married boyfriend. I also loved a quasi-documentary (although a story is integrated) about the late '60s rock scene in Hungary, whose French title is La Belle et le Vagabond (Don't Cry, Pretty Girls). Nine Months (see below) depicts the life of a single mother. I have probably driven my Facebook friends mad talking about MM, but I don't think any of them have followed my recommendations, so it'd be great if some of you did!

Rather less my cup of tea, but a highly respected filmmaker is the Belgian Chantal Akerman. Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), starring the great Delphine Seyrig, is a tough watch but fairly unique. Her work is well worth exploring, so that you can form your own opinion.

A great one-off, though, was made by another actress Barbara Loden. You simply must see her film Wanda (1970), where the director plays the title character (photo below) who goes on the run with a bank robber. It would be intriguing to compile a list of wonderful movies made by directors who only directed once... In Loden's case (as with Lupino), we can suppose that she wasn't given more chances as she was a woman.

Women filmmakers were still shockingly rare in the 1980s (but perhaps we shouldn't be surprised seeing as the US and France, among others still haven't elected women as their heads of state). Nevertheless towards the end of the decade, and the beginning of the '90s, some great female directors emerged. Probably the most famous of these would be the aforementioned, and prizewinning, Kathryn Bigelow and Jane Campion. Sadly, I think I've only seen The Hurt Locker and Detroit (2017), by the former, but they're both really good, and well worth watching. Bigelow famously tackled stories that would have been considered "virile" like surfing in Point Break (1991) or the army in THL and Zero Dark Thirty (2012). Her horror film Near Dark (1987) is meant to be brilliant too. As for Jane Campion, I really recommend that you see her films at the Institut de l'Image in Aix in January. Her film about the Romantic poet John Keats Bright Star (2009)is a personal favourite, but The Piano is her most famous (photo below). Strangely, I was totally indifferent to it the first time I saw it, but loved it the second time (not sure why I chose to see it again). The relationship between Holly Hunter's mute pianist and her daughter (the Oscar-winning 11-year-old Anna Paquin) is remarkably drawn. Campion's TV series Top of the Lake was also great. I'm particularly looking forward to finally discovering An Angel at my Table (1990), an early work adapted from the work of her fellow New Zealander Janet Frame. Here's the programme for January at the Institut https://www.institut-image.org/programme/prochainement/portraits-de-femmes-jane-campion-kelly-reichardt/  

As you can see, it also features films from a more recent discovery Kelly Reichardt. I was lucky to catch her early, as she made a film starring one of my favourite singers Will Oldham (aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy), which I made it my business to find. You too can discover Old Joy (2006). I've enjoyed all her films featured here, but particularly love her most recent film First Cow (2019), which I discovered on MUBI but MUST see on the big screen. You will also have the chance to see three of her films at the Baleine in Marseille. The two I've mentioned, and an excellent Western called Meek's Cutoff (La Dernière Piste, 2011 ). You can even see all 3 in one day on Sunday 9th if you've already finished your homework! https://labaleinemarseille.com/downloads/current/Gazette.pdf but there are other showings meanwhile, including tomorrow for First Cow. Here's the trailer for FC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T84800584V8

Well, to finish, because I've said a lot, and my daughter (Zoé) is begging me to do a jigsaw with her, here are a few others higgledy-piggledy. As we're studying Orlando in 1ère, I couldn't neglect Sally Potter, who brought it to the screen in 1992, with a memorable performance by Tilda Swinton. Essential viewing (even if the book is even better!) The rest of her career is very interesting too: Ginger & Rosa (2013), starring Elle Fanning and Alice Englert (Jane Campion's daughter)  is well worth a look, for example. Other great films by British women directors include works by Andrea Arnold (especially Fish Tank, 2009, photo below), Clio Barnard (The Selfish Giant (2013) was one of the very first films seen by the St Charles Cinema Club, all 4 of us!), Gurinder Chadha (I prefer Bhaji on the Beach (1993)to Bend It Like Beckham (2002)but of course it was great to have a film about women's football), Carine Adler (I must see Under the Skin, 1997), Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, We Need to Talk About Kevin 1999, 2011), and Sarah Gavron (Suffragette, Rocks, 2015, 2019).

Stateside, I enjoyed Selma about Martin Luther King, by Ava Duvernay (2014), who has also directed a lot of good telly apparently. Sofia Coppola has also made a few good ones (I particularly enjoyed her recent reworking of The Beguiled), the Wachowski sisters have made some box-office smashes and I've loved films by Julie Delpy, and Céline Sciamma, here in France, Naomi Kawase in Japan, Samira Makhalbaf in Iran, and will see Wadjda, a 2012 movie by a Saudi Arabian woman called Haifaa Al Mansour, soon. The list, though, is clearly incomplete, https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/best-female-directors/ (here's another list) and I would welcome any additions or comments when you make some commentaries (please do!). And here's a great page from MUBI of films by women directors https://mubi.com/specials/women-with-movie-camerasAnd of course, ideally, some of you (men too, of course) will go out and make some great films yourselves!