Women's Work: Essential Films by Female Filmmakers

Women's Work: Essential Films by Female Filmmakers

Experience the diverse storytelling and unique perspectives of women directors in this collection, featuring everything from intimate character studies and thought-provoking dramas to genre-bending narratives and compelling documentaries.

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Women's Work: Essential Films by Female Filmmakers
  • Clockwatchers

    Directed by Jill Sprecher | 96 mins | 1997
    Like "9 to 5" (1980) before it, this crackling indie comedy introduces a set of disparate women united by the drudgery and casual sexism of office temp work. Augmenting the delightfully funny and subversive script by sisters Karen and Jill Sprecher (who ...

  • Party Girl

    Directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer | 94 mins | 1995
    With her beguiling presence and spry, screwball energy, Parker Posey made her name as the queen of American indie cinema during its ’90s boom. The recently restored "Party Girl" captures an ascendent Posey in wickedly fine form as Mary, the to...

  • Signature Move

    Directed by Jennifer Reeder | 80 mins | 2017
    In writing this zesty but tender rom-com, Fawzia Mirza—also the film’s star—mined her life experience as a Muslim Pakistani lesbian living in Chicago. Zaynab (Mirza) finds herself falling for the effusive Alma (Sari Sanchez), but isn’t ready to come ou...

  • All is Forgiven

    Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve | 98 mins | 2007
    Mia Hansen-Løve was only twenty-five when she directed one of the most striking and auspicious first features in 21st century French cinema, which finds the brisk economy of expression, nuanced characterization, and formal daring of her future films (F...

  • Duet for Cannibals

    Directed by Susan Sontag | 105 mins | 1969
    In the late ’60s, a Swedish studio invited essayist, novelist, critic, cinephile, and all-around intellectual dynamo Susan Sontag to make her directorial debut in Stockholm. The resulting film, revolving around the quadrangular relationship between an ar...

  • Spirits of Rebellion: Black Independent Cinema from Los Angeles

    Leaving August 1

    Directed by Zeinabu irene Davis | 101 mins | 2016
    Davis’s documentary on the LA Rebellion, a surge of artistically ambitious, far-from-the-mainstream Black-American-directed films that came out of southern California—specifically, out of the UCLA film production program—beginnin...

  • Losing Ground

    Directed by Kathleen Collins | 86 mins | 1982
    One of the first feature films directed by an African American woman, and a charming, complex tale of personal discovery that follows the marriage between a philosophy professor (Seret Scott) and her painter husband (Bill Gunn), both at a crossroads ...

  • Four Women

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    Directed by Julie Dash | 8 mins | 1975
    A five-film shorts program curated by LA Rebellion affiliated-filmmaker Zeinabu irene Davis, including works by Pierre Desir ("The Gods and the Thief"), Julie Dash ("Four Women"), Portia Cobb ("Don’t Hurry Back: A Diaspora Fable"), and othe...

  • Carry Me, I'll Let Go

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    Directed by Alexis Hithe | 12 mins | 2022
    A five-film shorts program curated by LA Rebellion affiliated-filmmaker Zeinabu irene Davis, including works by Pierre Desir ("The Gods and the Thief"), Julie Dash ("Four Women"), Portia Cobb ("Don’t Hurry Back: A Diaspora Fable"), and o...

  • Don't Hurry Back: A Diaspora Fable

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    Directed by Portia Cobb | 26 mins | 1996
    A five-film shorts program curated by LA Rebellion affiliated-filmmaker Zeinabu irene Davis, including works by Pierre Desir ("The Gods and the Thief"), Julie Dash ("Four Women"), Portia Cobb ("Don’t Hurry Back: A Diaspora Fable"), and ot...

  • The Competition

    Directed by Claire Simon | 121 mins | 2016
    The Competition begins, significantly, with the image of a locked gate—that of La Fémis, one of the most prestigious film schools in the world, offering hands-on training from working professionals and accepting only 40 students per year from hundreds of...

  • Pandemic Bread

    Leaving August 1

    Directed by Zeinabu irene Davis | 22 mins | 2023
    A five-film shorts program curated by LA Rebellion affiliated-filmmaker Zeinabu irene Davis, including works by Pierre Desir ("The Gods and the Thief"), Julie Dash ("Four Women"), Portia Cobb ("Don’t Hurry Back: A Diaspora Fable")...

  • Old Enough

    Directed by Marisa Silver | 92 mins | 1984
    Eleven-year-old Lonnie (Sarah Boyd) is a Lower East Side kid who comes from money, while her teenaged pal Karen (Rainbow Harvest) doesn’t come from much of anything at all. At first these opposites attract, but then budding hormones and first crushes fur...