Women's Work: Essential Films by Female Filmmakers
The ongoing struggle for a more equitable cinema of the future, in which male filmmakers don’t overwhelmingly dominate director’s chair assignments, can draw inspiration from the existence of a rich history of work by woman directors—a cross-section of which is on offer in this series. Here you’ll find a Weimar-era lesbian drama (Mädchen in Uniform), one of first feature-length dramas directed by an African American woman (Losing Ground), a tribute from Claire Denis to another towering female artist (Towards Mathilde), and many, many other landmark works drawn from the long alternative history of women’s cinema.
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2 Friends
Leaving December 1
Directed by Jane Campion | 76 mins | 1986
A formally daring inquest into a fractured friendship from Campion with a screenplay by novelist Helen Garner, 2 Friends opens with once-inseparable teenage girlfriends who having drifted apart, then moves back through the years to obs... -
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... -
A Woman, a Part
Directed by Elisabeth Subrin | 98 mins | 2016
Sick of L.A. and sitcom success, actress and woman on the verge Anna Baskin (Maggie Siff) looks to reconnect with her roots in the New York theater scene. But the city offers no respite in this smart and restrained drama, the sole narrative feature by... -
Dream Life
Directed by Mireille Dansereau | 85 mins | 1972
The first female-directed narrative fiction feature to come out of Quebec, Dansereau’s sensual and beguiling Dream Life centers on Isabelle and Virginie (Liliane Lemaître-Auger and Véronique Le Flaguais), two single young women who meet through thei... -
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... -
I Am Not a Witch
Directed by Rungano Nyoni | 93 mins | 2017
A young Zambian girl is accused of being a witch and then pressed into soothsaying service by a slick government official in this strikingly shot deadpan satire. Skewering superstition and corruption, it’s a feminist exposé of exploitation done with dazz... -
It Felt Like Love
Directed by Eliza Hittman | 82 mins | 2013
There’s not a single false moment in It Felt Like Love, Never Rarely Sometimes Always director Hittman’s feature debut about a sexually inexperienced south Brooklyn teenager (Gina Piersanti) who’s embarrassed to fess up to everything she doesn’t know abo... -
I Was at Home, But...
Directed by Angela Schanelec | 95 mins | 2019
One of European art cinema’s most distinctive voices, Schanelec—Silver Bear winner for Best Director at this year's Berlinale—orchestrates a tense elliptical drama that’s part psychological close-up, part middle-class Berlin pastiche. Widowed mother-o... -
Ornette: Made in America
Directed by Shirley Clarke | 85 mins | 1985
“Discovering the work of filmmaker and the Film-Makers' Cooperative co-founder, Shirley Clarke made me aware of the wide range of cinema’s possibilities. This 1985 documentary shot in collaboration with the late Ornette Coleman, using a diverse array of... -
Portrait of Jason
Directed by Shirley Clarke | 107 mins | 1967
A distillation of a single 12-hour interview in a room at the Chelsea Hotel with the charismatic Jason Holliday (“real” name Aaron Payne), a gay, African American cabaret dancer, part-time hustler, and full-time raconteur, Portrait of Jason grows from ... -
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... -
The Connection
Directed by Shirley Clarke | 110 mins | 1961
“Shirley Clarke’s The Connection based on and adapted by Jack Gelber is a film way ahead of its time. Arguably the first film to use the “found footage” trope to tell a fictional story. This film blew my mind when I first saw it, the direction and the ... -
Variety
Directed by Bette Gordon | 100 mins | 1983
A young woman lands a job as a cashier at a downtown porno theater, and soon finds herself inexorably drawn towards what’s happening onscreen—as well as other troubling fantasies. One of the great independent films of the ’80s, featuring a who’s who of t... -
Songs My Brothers Taught Me
Directed by Chloé Zhao | 93 mins | 2015
The feature debut of Zhao, future winner of Best Director Oscar for Nomadland, Songs My Brother Taught Me is an understated yet deeply felt naturalistic drama about life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, focused on two siblings (Jashuan ...
