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.
-
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... -
Animalia
Directed by Sofia Alaoui | 91 mins | 2023
Alaoui’s atmospheric and entrancing debut feature stars a superb Oumaïma Barid as Itto, a newly married and heavily pregnant woman from a rural Berber background who is separated from her husband (Mehdi Dehbi) and his upper-class family when extraterrestr... -
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... -
Carry Me, I'll Let Go
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 others.“These sh...
-
Don't Hurry Back: A Diaspora Fable
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 others.“These sho...
-
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... -
Four Women
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 others.“These short...
-
Leonor Will Never Die
Directed by Martika Ramirez Escobar | 100 mins | 2022
A festival favorite, Escobar’s debut feature offers a surreal, self-reflexive tribute to Filipino action cinema. Retired screenwriter Leonor Reyes (Sheila Francisco) lays comatose in a hospital after a collision between her skull and a televis... -
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 ... -
Pandemic Bread
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"), and others.“T...
-
Spirits of Rebellion: Black Independent Cinema from Los Angeles
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—beginning in the late ’70s... -
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... -
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...
