Women Filmmakers Research Articles

Les filles de Méliès: l’exception culturelle, analogue aesthetics and women filmmakers of le cinéma-monde

ABSTRACT This article examines transnational francophone films from writer-directors Marjane Satrapi and Chloé Mazlo, filmmakers who show how the politics of l’exception culturelle [the cultural exception] have made French cinema a multiply exceptional force in world cinema. The analogue effects in Poulet aux prunes/Chicken with Plums (2011) and Sous le ciel d’Alice/Skies of Lebanon (2020) mark an aesthetic resistance to the homogenising force of digital photorealism while also reflecting an approach to filmmaking pioneered by Georges Méliès, particularly his ground-breaking work in set design and cinematography. As women filmmakers, their reliance on practical aesthetics to present stories set outside l’Hexagone (mainland France) represent the French commitment to the diversity of cinéma-monde. This article argues that these filmmakers and their films have benefitted from policies rooted in l’exception culturelle while expanding the sense of ‘exception’ in a French context to mean films directed by women, films featuring analogue effects and films that reflect transnational identities and cross-cultural collaboration. Both Poulet aux prunes and Sous le ciel d’Alice frame an expanded logic for l’exception culturelle that has shaped more than three decades of contemporary French cinema.

Female Filmmakers in Nigeria: Breaking Barriers and Shaping Narratives

This paper explores the significant contributions of Indigenous women filmmakers in Nigeria, highlighting their roles in breaking barriers and shaping narratives within the Nigerian film industry, known as Nollywood. Indigenous women have made remarkable strides in an industry traditionally dominated by men, using their platforms to challenge societal norms and advocate for gender equality. This paper discusses the historical context of Indigenous women in Nigerian cinema, profiling key figures such as Genevieve Nnaji, Kemi Adetiba, Mildred Okwo, and several others. Additionally, it examines the cultural and feminist themes prevalent in their work, the impact of their films, and the challenges they face. Special attention is given to the emerging trend of female filmmakers leveraging platforms like YouTube to produce and distribute their content. Through a detailed analysis of films such as "Lionheart," "King of Boys," and others, this paper illustrates how Indigenous women in Nigerian cinema reshape narratives and contribute to a more inclusive and diverse representation of African experiences. Including visual materials from the films discussed will enhance the understanding of the cultural and thematic elements these filmmakers bring to the screen. This paper aims to underscore the importance of supporting Indigenous women filmmakers and promoting gender equality within the film industry

Women on Women in Contemporary Romanian Documentary Film

Guy Standing (2016) observes how in Eastern Europe, the post-1989 neoliberal order determined the working class to morph into what he names the precariat. This newly formed segment of society has to adapt to forever changing market imperatives in order to survive. Concomitantly, the Romanian state apparatus abruptly mutated from an overwhelming patriarchal structure into an all-out absent one (Bucur and Miroiu 252), thus making it more difficult for women to manage both patriarchally imposed roles and to find a workplace. Women filmmakers like Ana Căpățână-Juller (Aici…adică acolo [Here… meaning there], 2012) and Teodora Mihai (Waiting for August, 2014) decide to turn their cameras onto women characters engaged in a struggle for survival. Both filmmakers deal with the same theme, the lives of children who have to raise themselves, as their parents have gone abroad in order to gain better incomes than in Romania. Working with Sybille Krämer’s “second person model of witnessing,” where testimony is associated with concepts such as social interaction manifested through trust and authority (Krämer 34), I will examine how the two filmmakers particularly engage with their subjects and the differences between two directorial perspectives: one that approaches reality from a top down perspective, while the other is enmeshed with the characters in the historical world.

Simone de Beauvoir’s Philosophy of Ambiguity: A Contribution Towards Feminist Film-phenomenology

This review concerns Ambiguous Cinema: From Simone de Beauvoir to Feminist Film-Phenomenology, a work that applies Beauvoir’s existential philosophy of ambiguity to a selection of films by independent women filmmakers, demonstrating how cinema and philosophy may rethink life from new ethical-political perspectives through embodied epistemology and empathy.

Race, romance, and Hollywood: Black women filmmakers and the cultural production of Black love

ABSTRACT Hollywood has been instrumental in the construction of Blackness on screen, often perpetuating myths, stereotypes, and negative images about the Black experience, showcasing Black people as aggressive, unloving, and incapable of maintaining a healthy romantic relationship. With more diversity efforts in Hollywood, Black women have become more empowered to reshape those narratives. So, what happens when these women intentionally provide a diverse representation of Blackness? What depictions of Blackness and love are prevalent when Black women drive the story? Using Black Feminist Thought as a theoretical framework, this essay examines the narratives surrounding love in the films The Photograph and Really Love (2020), both written and directed by Black women. Using thematic analysis of the film’s narratives, cinematography, casting, sound design, and character development, this study found the films Really Love (2020) and The Photograph (2020) offer a new conception of Black Love in Hollywood. These deliberate considerations demonstrate the intention Black women film writers take in depicting a full expression of Blackness, including romantic and intimate relationships.

The Existence of Woman Filmmakers in Film Ecosystem of Bandung

The art of filmmaking is a creative process that involves collaboration from various parties and aspects. This also inspired women filmmakers to create their own works. Many women filmmakers have successfully addressed important issues through their films. The number of women filmmakers in Bandung is still relatively low. Based on data obtained from film communities in Bandung, women filmmakers account for only about one-third of the total number. However, women filmmakers have achieved various notable accomplishments on both national and international levels. This research was conducted to understand the presence of women filmmakers in Bandung within the scope of the national film. Data were obtained in collaboration with Bandung Film Commission (BFC). The informants were women filmmakers who are originally from Bandung and have made contributions to the national film industry. This paper represents a qualitative descriptive study. The research subjects were women filmmakers in Bandung, and the selection of informants was done using purposive sampling techniques. The results of the research indicate that the presence of women filmmakers does not happen instantly. There are internal and external factors that support the development of skills in filmmaking. The level of filmmaking activity in the region is crucial, making the presence of film communities in Bandung highly supportive of the emergence of women filmmakers on the national stage. The existence of women filmmakers is marked by their works, attitudes, and professions. To sustain the existence of women filmmakers, harmony between the realms of education, the professional world, and film associations is essential.

Curating Disruption

In this article, I show the potential of feminist film archiving to unsettle dominant paradigms in Peruvian film historiography. I describe my work as a curator of Rebeldes y Valientes (1913–2019) (Rebels and Braves, 1913–2019), the first digital archive that sheds light on the participation of women filmmakers in the history of Peruvian cinema. I argue that Rebels and Braves has challenged the overrepresentation of male filmmakers constructed by Peruvian film historiography, even as it was constrained in its capacity to redress the structural conditions that erase and delegitimize women’s contributions to film. This article also makes the case for a disruptive archive that visualizes a feminist approach to curation and film history.

“Wrath, Witches, and Wondrous Women”

Responding to the widespread material loss of silent films today, this article constitutes a playful exercise in curating a selection of nonextant films directed, written, and produced by early women filmmakers. After an introduction to the exercise, which sets up the feminist and film curatorial stakes of such an endeavor, I present my thematically organized film program (curatorial statement and program notes) to the reader. Drawing together films by women who worked in Peru, Croatia, Egypt, China, Mexico, Poland, and the United States, I argue that curating lost films not only makes space for a more inclusive picture of women’s contributions to cinema history; this exercise is also a call for more imaginative approaches to feminist film and media curatorial practices.

Montana as Place of (Un)Belonging: Landscape, Identity, and the American West in Bella Vista (2014)

Abstract The American West is not just a geographical terrain but a mythical construct that occupies a powerful place in the popular imagination thanks to myriad literary and artistic works that have presented the region through specific archetypes emphasizing its vast ruggedness, white masculinity, and unique Americanness. In recent decades, revisionist scholarly and artistic works, however, have attempted to offer more nuanced perspectives on the region challenging its assumed homogenous history and fixed and stable identity. In particular, women filmmakers have recast the region through multifaceted representations underlining its complexity, diversity, and transnational dimensions. This article analyzes Vera Brunner-Sung’s film Bella Vista (2014) to examine how the film intervenes in previously constructed representations of the American West through its emphasis on transience, displacement, and belonging. Set and made in Montana, the film employs a “slow cinema” aesthetic to offer deep insights into the local and global dynamics of the place as well as the formation of identity and (un)belonging within a Western landscape. The film, as the article argues, provides a reconsideration of the West through diverse localities that are in constant relation with the outside and in turn have generated diverse individual experiences regarding the place.

The Role of Women in Contemporary African Cinema: A Case Study of Nigeria

This paper explores the role of women in Nigerian cinema and its broader implications for the African film industry. Through a comprehensive analysis of historical perspectives, evolving narratives, and the challenges and opportunities faced by women filmmakers, the study sheds light on the transformative impact of women’s contributions to Nigerian cinema. By examining the representation of African women’s stories and experiences in global cinema through Nigerian films, the paper highlights the power of storytelling to challenge stereotypes, foster cross-cultural understanding, and promote gender equality. Through initiatives for women’s empowerment and advocacy for social change, Nigerian cinema emerges as a catalyst for inclusive and equitable representation in the cinematic landscape.

Rebels, Revolutionaries, Returnees: Palestinian Women’s Cinema as World Cinema

Abstract Grounded in Patricia White’s theorization of women’s cinema as world cinema, this article discusses select feature, documentary, and short films of two contemporary Palestinian women filmmakers, Najwa Najjar and Annemarie Jacir. Identifying the transformative and emancipatory processes within Palestinian society and the new Palestinian narratives of return as key elements in their films, this article concentrates on their contribution to the aesthetics and politics of Palestinian cinema. White’s theoretical framework allows for the analysis of the feminist and postcolonial concerns of Palestinian women filmmakers, their engagement with the minor form, and the place of their films within global production and distribution contexts. Taking into account the new responsiveness of Palestinian and global audiences, it also allows for the discussion of their increasingly prominent role in Palestinian cinema and their contribution to the struggle of women filmmakers for better conditions within the film industry.

Remaining Palestinian

Palestinian filmmakers are largely dependent on foreign funding for production and on foreign festivals for publicity. Making a Palestinian film can seem as “impossible” as remaining Palestinian amid fragmenting effects of occupation/war and peace accords. Against such pressures, Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir tells stories with protagonists, who, for foreign funders, can seem like “unruly subjects” for remaining Palestinian. As a consequence, her films themselves can seem like “unruly subjects” to industry film critics. Her films like twenty impossibles (ka’inana ashrun mustaheel, 2003), Salt of This Sea (Milh Hadha al-Bahr, 2008), When I Saw You (Lamma Shoftak, 2012), and Wajib (2017) tell stories about Palestinians debating each other (rather than Israelis via US negotiators) during key moments in Palestinian history, including the Nakba (1948), the Naksa (1967), the Oslo Accords (1993), and Al-Aqsa or second Intifada (2000–05). Jacir’s protagonists refuse the limiting choices on offer. They demand to be recognized as Palestinian, as does Jacir as a Palestinian filmmaker against the efforts of Western industry critics, festivals, and funders to label her as an “Arab woman filmmaker,” often carrying colonial assumptions of “oppressed” or “exceptional” women throughout Southwest Asia (“the Middle East”). Her films do more than offer a glimpse of everyday life to “humanize” Palestinians; they are “unruly subjects” that unsettle assumptions to reframe the debates.

A Women’s Nation: Feminism, Class, and National Identity in Margarita Ledo Andión’s Nación (2020)

Through her films, the Galician filmmaker Margarita Ledo Andión builds a singular benchmark on the margins of a peripheral cinema per se: the Novo Cinema Galego. Her performative and experimental narratives, in line with avant-garde films of other small European cinemas, her nationalist and feminist (political) discourse, and her condition as a woman filmmaker situate her filmography on the intersection of multiple peripheries. This paper analyzes her most recent film, Nación (2020), from the perspective of cinema made by women as minor cinema and an example of “fourth cinema” as an instrument to make visible the role of women in the class struggle and the construction of Galician national identity.

Women Breaking into the South Korean Film World: A Study of Female Filmmakers in the 1990s

In the 1990s, four women made their debut as film directors in South Korea. Considering that there were only five female directors from the beginning of Korean film history in 1919 until the 1980s, their debut was a remarkable phenomenon. This change was due to the structural innovation of the South Korean film field that began in the mid-1980s. With the collapse of the apprenticeship system, networks of cinephiles such as the Munhwawon sedae functioned as a new source of relational capital. In order to deepen our understanding of the emergence of the celluloid ceiling in South Korea, this study focuses on the experiences of three women filmmakers who made their first feature films in the 1990s: Yim Soon-rye, Lee Jeong-hyang, and Byun Young-Joo. Compared to male directors who had equivalent cultural and academic capital, and who entered the field during the same period, these women directors were unable to acquire sufficient relational capital to promote their careers as directors. It was the authorities of the field, such as film festivals and the media, that acknowledged them and established their reputations, allowing them to release their first films in the South Korean cinematic field. In other words, even in the new system, women remained excluded from the benefits of relational capital in the South Korean cinematic field, and they could only find their place as directors by demonstrating exceptional individual abilities.

History in Lithuanian Women’s Creative Documentaries: Critical and Personal Approach

Over the last two decades, documentary has become an important tool of communication for Lithuanian women filmmakers since their number and visibility on national and international screens has grown significantly. Better gender balance in documentary-filmmaking noticeably increased the exposure to greater stylistic and thematic diversity, as well as paved the way for the new cinematic approaches to national and world history, politics, warfare, collective identity, and other issues traditionally assigned to men. This article examines creative documentaries directed by Giedrė Žickytė, Jūratė Samulionytė and Vilma Samulionytė, Martina Jablonskytė and Ramunė Rakauskaitė. First, it investigates how these films combine subjective, analytical, and critical approaches to examine and mediate complex phenomena in Lithuanian history. Second, it discusses how these women documentarists engage with the past and in what ways their approaches and languages differ from conventional historical documentaries.

Filling (Feeling) the Archival Void

The video essay “Filling (Feeling) the Archival Void” delves into the systematic erasure and archival dispossession of works by early women filmmakers, using the case study of Helena Cortesina and her lost film Flor de España (1922), which was falsely attributed to a male director. Through a counterhegemonic, provocative, “accented” approach, the video essay challenges established, patriarchal film histories and exposes the lies hidden within their seemingly rigorous discourse. First, it pays homage to the authorship of an almost forgotten filmmaker, Helena Cortesina, while also making her lost film visible, ensuring that at least some of its images are brought to light. Second, it explores the potential of the video essay as a feminist archive—a practice-based counterarchive, capable of producing counterhegemonic discourses that subvert the status quo. Third, by challenging the presumed “objectivity” of traditional film scholarship through openly poetic, subjective, and imaginative modes of expression, it establishes and validates a new epistemology.

Toward a Feminist Fourth Cinema: Waru (2017)

Abstract This essay offers an analysis of Waru, an omnibus film written and directed by a sisterhood of nine Māori women, which illuminates a philosophy of Māori women's filmmaking and indicates new possibilities for a global Indigenous cinema. In the two decades since Māori filmmaker Barry Barclay declared the existence of a “fourth cinema,” the cinema of Indigenous peoples, the number of dramatic feature films by Indigenous directors around the globe has grown significantly, with particular attention garnered by the success of Māori filmmaker Taika Waititi. Yet, while it would be tempting to declare that Barclay's onetime ideal of a flourishing Indigenous cinema “outside the national orthodoxy” has been achieved, Māori women continue to be marginalized in the film industry. As many critics have noted, Merata Mita's Mauri (1988) remained the only dramatic feature film to be written and directed by a Māori woman for almost thirty years. That finally changed in 2017 with Waru. Drawing from the growing body of scholarship on mana wahine, often referred to as Māori feminism, by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Aroha Yates-Smith, Naomi Simmonds, and Leonie Pihama, this essay argues that Waru's filmmakers recenter mana wahine to devise a new cinematic framework that is simultaneously Indigenous and feminist to enable Māori women to contribute not only to the fourth cinema envisioned by Barclay but also to a feminist fourth cinema grounded in values specific to Māori women.

Intermediality in Academia: Creative Research through Film

This article provides an overview of the recent flourishing of research and pedagogy in higher education that seeks a greater rapprochement between criticism and creativity, bringing together diverse media, disciplines, and modes of knowledge production and expression. It focuses on transformations in film and screen studies and on the ethical and aesthetic possibilities of conducting creative, intermedial research through filmmaking, drawing on the author’s recent, first-hand experiences of conducting such research through her making of two films about the African women filmmakers Judy Kibinge (from Kenya) and Bongiwe Selane (from South Africa). The author gives specific examples from her filmmaking process to show how she has attempted to unsettle the generic space between documentary filmmaking, curatorial practice, and video-essay making to engage in a collaborative research practice with Kibinge, Selane, and their communities, as well as her research teams. Grounding itself in a decolonial feminist framework, this article draws on the perspectives of a wide range of thinkers and filmmaker scholars to explore ways in which the colonial, patriarchal values that have haunted many academic institutions can be reformed to allow for the envisioning of new futures that will lead to a more self-reflexive, socially just higher education environment.

Projecting Gender Identity: Woman’s Portrayal in Indonesian Female Directors’ Films

This paper aims to assess the role of female filmmakers in the contemporary Indonesian film industries. Throughout history, the presence of women in the Indonesian film industry brings many effects on the way a woman is depicted on screen. As the portrayal of women in Indonesian films tends to be homogenous, many female filmmakers strive to give another image of women on screen and work against the stereotype of women in earlier Indonesian movies. Hence, this study argues that Indonesian female filmmakers challenge the depiction of women in the contemporary Indonesian film industry. This research uses a qualitative methodology, mainly textual analysis to have a deep understanding of way the Indonesian female filmmakers contribute to the depiction of women in film. By selecting two recent films produced by women, the research portrays women through its cinematic elements. The finding in this research demonstrates that Indonesian women filmmakers contribute to a different portrayal of women on screen and adds more discussion about how female filmmakers speak about the issue of women through their productions. Furthermore, the character of women in the selected film has a strong correlation with the local culture which is embedded in the social life of Indonesian. Hence, it can be concluded that Indonesian female directors contribute not only to the depiction of women but also to the discourse of women in Indonesian films

Women Filmmakers, War, Violence and Healing on the Algerian Screen: Mounia Meddour's Papicha (2019)

Women Filmmakers, War, Violence and Healing on the Algerian Screen: Mounia Meddour's Papicha (2019)