womenfilmdirectors

[womenfilmdirectors]

Made in Bangladesh

       Based on true stories, Rubaiyat Hossain’s “Made in Bangladesh” explores garment worker stereotypes while revealing the pressure these workers carry from the fashion industry. Hossain is one of Bangladesh’s few women film-makers to have been selected and recognized at international film festivals.  “Made in Bangladesh”, focuses on the struggles and intimate relationships of Bangladeshi women who are constantly pushing against the constraints of their domestic and public lives. 

       When writing the script, Hossain says she wanted to smash through the stereotype of the poor, exploited factory worker: “I wanted to show that these women are active agents, fighting for their rights and demanding to be heard,” “Too many people think of Bangladeshi women as victims sitting behind a sewing machine, but it is thanks to female garment workers that Bangladesh is now a middle-income country. And these young women are not victims, they are often feisty, young, spirited women who are fearless and brave. All that beauty and dignity had to be the starting point of this film.” 

      Hossain based her this film on several stories from real women working in garment factories. These are the kind of movies that make me appreciate my parents, because they both work similar jobs as these garment workers (low-income jobs). Like Hossain wrote, these women are more than just “poor” and “exploited.” They don’t want to be pitied. My parents are normal people with jobs that may not seem “normal” but instead are see as “poor” jobs. People with these kinds of jobs have lives too. Everyone’s normal is different. 

Still from “Made in Bangladesh” 

Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jun/04/these-women-arent-victims-director-turns-the-spotlight-on-garment-workers

[womenfilmdirectors]

Bollywood’s Rising Women Directors

Zoya Akhtar is one of the leading names of Bollywood today. A film she made, “Gully Boy,” is a story of a young rapper from the slums of Mumbai who comes of age while using his music to spread awareness of the inequalities he experiences. 

Still from “Gully Boy”

Alankrita Shrivastava paved her way into the industry with a film titled “Lipstick Under My Burkha.” It tells the story of four women in India in search for freedom. A college girl struggles with her aspirations to be a pop singer. A young beautician, seeks to escape her small town. An oppressed housewife and mother, lives the alternate life of a saleswoman. And a 55 year old widow rediscovers her sexuality through a phone romance.

Still from “Lipstick Under My Burkha”

These women are only few of the many Bollywood directors in India. Other names are Kiran Rao, Shonali Bose, Pooja Bhatt, Reem Kagti, Farah Khan, Deepa Mehta, Mira Nair, and more. 

Source: 

http://thelinkpaper.ca/?p=80368

[womenfilmdirectors]

The Black Femme Supremacy Film Festival

Nia Hampton is the one who organized the the Black Femme Supremacy Film Festival, which is an event held specifically for black women directors to showcase their films. Usually it takes place in her hometown of Baltimore, but because of the pandemic the festival will be held virtually. Because of it’s access to other cities, Hampton hopes several people will tune in. 

“I hope the people of Houston get a taste of what black femme filmmakers are made of,” says Hampton. “I hope they enjoy the screening. I hope they come and ask questions and see that, you know, we’re out here, we’re doing it and, literally, nothing can stop us.”  - Nia Hampton 

Still from “A Black Girl’s Country” short film from the Black Femme Supremacy Film Festival. 

Source:

https://preview.houstonchronicle.com/movies-tv/taste-test-fest-offers-showcase-for-black-women-15262939

[womenfilmdirectors]

Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Never Rarely Sometimes Always, directed by Eliza Hittman centers on Autumn a 17-year-old living in a dysfunctional home life and finds herself pregnant. Her attempt to get an abortion is a journey that takes her from Pennsylvania to New York City. Once there, she is penniless and exhausted. This movie seems to be Hittman’s breakthrough. Reviews are already talking Oscar possibilities. Hittman describes the story as “everyday lives and everyday struggles.” Yet the secret of its success is the story it doesn’t tell: how the protagonist became pregnant in the first place. 

I am excited for this film, because it deals with a topic that is sensitive to women and is looked at as wrong from several people. It’s nice to see movies that demonstrate women in a vulnerable state, going through a process that only we can relate to.

Source: 

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/may/16/womens-stories-are-seen-as-niche-eliza-hittman-on-her-timely-new-film-never-rarely-sometimes-always

[womenfilmdirectors]

Spain’s lost film

If it weren’t for this corona virus lock down a film made by a mystery filmmaker wouldn’t have been discovered. “Mallorca” an eight-minute, black-and-white documentary style directed by Maria Forteza was donated to the national film archive in 1982 by a man who ran a furniture storage business. The man’s brother (a film producer) then passed it onto Filmoteca Española. For 38 years “Mallorca” was sitting in a collection of archives mistaken for a silent film made by a male director. During the lock down, members of Filmoteca finally took the time to examine the pool of film. 

Surprised to see that the film was a recording of Spain in the 1900′s, Filmoteca realized this was a important historical visual of their country. Some were shocked to see the name of a women appear as director, and others like Marta Selva (retired professor of cinema) was excited to see a fascinating film discovery in the hands of a Spanish woman. 

The film consists of Spanish scenery like old buildings, monks, people strolling around, cattle, and more. Filmoteca believes Maria Forteza could possibly be if not the first, one of the first Spanish female filmmakers. 

Still from “Mallorca”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/06/short-film-discovery-may-be-first-spanish-talkie-made-by-woman-maria-forteza

[womenfilmdirectors]

Fashion to the big screen

In cinema, something that gets overlooked but makes the films what they are by its contributions, is costume design. Sure most people don’t pay attention to what the characters are wearing, but in a way that it is a good thing; if the costumes were wrongly selected, then the whole movie would feel off and people would notice the costumes and not pay attention to the movie itself. But because these costumes are accurate to the story, they are silently rewarded by the viewers. Four directors that were able to capture their visions with the help of costume design are Greta Gerwig, Autumn de Wilde, Celine Sciamma, and Lorene Scafaria.

In “Little Women” Gerwig made sure each of the March sisters wardrobes reflected their personalities. “Jo March” who is more of a tomboy than her sisters, wears tailered jackets and waistcoats. This shows how she refuses to follow the gender norms of her time revealing she is independent. “Amy March” who is the vain one out of the sisters, got the most decorative dresses. Considering she moved to Paris to practice her painting with her wealthy Aunt, these opulent dresses demonstrate her differences with Jo.

Jo March

Amy March

In Autumn de Wilde’s “Emma” the attire of the characters matched the period they were living in. De Wilde has made fashion contributions to brands like Prada and Rodarte, so it’s no suprise that she was able to capture the lavish essence of the film. “Emma” the main character wears feathers, ribbons, bows, and embroideries, while her two friends “Harriet” and “Miss Bates” wear repetitive outfits. Without specific costume contrast, we wouldn’t know the difference of their classes.

Emma

Set in France, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” has a serene look that was captured by Celine Sciamma. The movie is about two women that fall in love and their costumes symbolize that. For example, both characters wear similar dresses through the entire film which subtly entails that they are emotionally intertwined. In movies, there is little space for the characters thoughts, so what talented directors do, is use symbolism within the spectacle. That is something that Sciamma was able to explore nicely.

Adèle and Noémie

Unlike the rest of these movies, “Hustlers” is not a period film. It is set in contemporary 2008, and we can tell by what the characters are wearing. Loraine Scafaria made sure to incorporate UGG boots, Apple Bottom jeans, Coach, Guess, Louis Vuitton, and tracksuits. A movie about strippers turned theives, the fancy early 2000 outfits were needed to highlight the characters desires for money. In the movie, “Romona” uses her big furry coat to wrap herself and her friend “Destiny” up from the cold. This jacket was most likely bought from their stolen money, but still was used to show how they care about each other. This is a detail that Scafaria hid, but if watched closely one can tell that these characters are more than gold diggers.

Romona and Destiny

Overall, these four directors used the power of costume design to help tell their stories and did it in a way that we could all enjoy as audience members.

Source:

https://www.harpersbazaar.com.sg/fashion/female-film-makers-oscar-winning-fashion/

[womenfilmdirectors]

Greta Gerwig, and why she changed the ending

“Little Women (2019)”, is an adapted film based on the novel by Luisa May Alcott. In the book and the 20 other productions, the ending deals with the main character “Jo” falling in love. This isn’t the ending that Alcott wanted, but is the only one that would allow her work to be published. In Gerwig’s ending, Jo also falls in love. However, it is revealed that this “ending” is only a debate between Jo and the publisher. They argue back and forth about it, and eventually Jo accepts in exchange for greater percentage of the net profits and also owning the copyright of her book. In real life, Alcott also maintained copyright. 

“The structure truly came out of wanting to introduce this layer of authorship everywhere in it, how we author our own lives even if we’re not writers and how we kind of tell and retell the story of how we became who we are.” - Greta Gerwig 

Jo March in “Little Women”

Source:

https://collider.com/little-women-ending-explained-book-changes/

[womenfilmdirectors]

Movies about men, made by women

    Ana Kokkinos is expressive of her passion for telling male stories. Most women directors of course want to tell stories about women, but for Kokkinos this is different. Assumptions exist about every topic including this one; it’s easy for people to assume that women can’t tell male-centered stories. But we can’t see our own faces. Perhaps male stories are in good hands of people who aren’t them. In her movie Head On, Kokkinos explores the life of a gay Greek-Australian teenager, it is an “evocative depiction of queer identity and masculinity in crisis.” She believes that women are capable of being in charge of stories dealing with toxic masculinity, or a man’s vulnerability. 

    Shahrbanoo Sadat shares a similar opinion. She doesn’t care if a movie is about a man or a woman, only that the person behind the camera is trying to show the world from a feminine point of view. 

    I think women are the more progressive and open-minded gender. So I agree with both Kokkinos and Sadat. Perhaps it is the maternal instinct that makes women this way, but women are capable of understanding male vulnerability because there was a time in which women were vulnerable themselves and their only purpose was to love. Majority of male stories made by men showcase the male character’s in positions of power. It is not often when male made movies about male’s are about their emotions. On the other hand, there are several movies that are, and they are lovely. 

The idea of women making movies about men, is out of empathy. 

Head On (1998), directed by Anna Kikkonos

Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/19/what-do-female-film-makers-have-to-say-about-male-stories-barbican-her-lens-his-story

[womenfilmdirectors]

Tanya Saracho’s Vida

From Sinaloa, Mexico, Tanya Saracho came to Los Angeles after living in Chicago where she wrote and directed 14 plays. She was offered a job in screenwriting as the “diversity hire” at the Lifetime network for “Looking.” She eventually wrote on the shows titled “Girls,”  and “How to Get Away With Murder” both of which are from HBO.  

   Even though she had a professional and successful career in theatre, she still doubted her skills when it came to TV. However, when she was offered a position as showrunner for STARZ’S “Vida”, a show about two girls from East L.A., of course she had to accept. It was a story she felt she was the one to tell, because it dealt with people of her community, her culture. She was in charge of everything from budget to which directors worked on what episodes. So she hired only Latina directors for the first season of “Vida.” Most of the crew on the show was Latinx, queer, and/or female-identifying. 

   All lot of the directors she hired, were directing for the first time. So Saracho never hesitated to spend more time guiding them, since she was once in that position herself. From “Vida,” directors Catalina Aguilar Mastretta, Jenée LaMarque, Gandja Monteiro, Nancy C. Mejía were able to get their feet into the industry and went off to work on their own stuff. 

   It’s important to have Latinx’s in this industry. Not only Latinx’s but people from every culture. There are dreams everywhere, but Hollywood would never know because as Saracho explained, “when they haven’t found the people, it’s because they haven’t looked.

Tanya Saracho in the middle, accompanied with the two main leads Melissa Barerra and Mishel Prada. 

Source:

https://www.vulture.com/2019/06/vida-season-2-tanya-saracho-latina-directors.html

[womenfilmdirectors]

Cathy Yan on Harley Quinn’s portrayal in Birds of Prey

   Harley Quinn’s character had major development in the new movie Birds of Prey, and it is due to spectacular rising director Cathy Yan. In Suicide Squad 2016 the camera followed Margot Robbie’s body and her character was always surrounded by men calling her “pretty,” “dollface,” or just staring up and down at her, feeding the male gaze.

(Image from Suicide Squad 2016)

   Cathy Yan wanted to take a different approach with Harley Quinn, focusing on her ability to fight, her emotions, and her cleverness. She is a villain but a hero in her own world, and Birds of Prey really showcases that.

   In an interview with NPR, Yan was asked how she took Harley’s character from being the Joker’s hot, crazy girlfriend to an empowered woman. This was Yan’s response:   

“ Well, I think because she has to figure out who she is when she's alone, when she's no longer the girlfriend. And I think that great existential question is sort of the question of the movie. It's a movie about identity and about all of these women finding themselves, finding their strength.”

(Image from Birds of Prey 2020)

    In this new movie, Harley Quinn explores her life as an independent woman. Meanwhile in Suicide Squad, she is constantly relying on the Joker’s savior.  Margot Robbie revealed in her Vogue interview that this movie is “definitely less male gaze-y.” I can confirm this for myself since I’ve seen it, and left the theater pleasantly satisfied, and empowered. We can finally see Harley cry over something other than her boyfriend and see her work as a team with other female comic book characters.

   Most of these other characters, don’t have superpowers, so Yan took this to her advantage by adding lot’s of “hand-to-hand” violence. Meaning, they had to use their “physical strength as real women to fight these guys.”

   Overall, this goes to show that movies with complex female characters are better off in the hands of female directors.

(Image from Birds of Prey 2020)

Sources used for reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awVCAgqNAZQ

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/07/803907496/in-birds-of-prey-director-cathy-yan-gives-harley-quinn-her-own-feature

https://www.vogue.com/article/margot-robbie-cover-july-2019

[womenfilmdirectors]

What does it FEEL like to be a FEMALE director?

   Lulu Wang has never not been a female. So she can’t compare what it’s like to what it isn’t. She explained this in an episode of “The Hollywood Reporter’s: Directors Roundtable.” 

   Hollywood is changing because now there are female director’s telling their stories from their own perspectives.This changes the effectiveness of a movie on the audience. People watching will feel different if a story is being told from the person it happened to. Wang explored this idea to the rest of the directors sitting at the table alongside her, and went on to bring up the question that people have asked her a couple of times, “what does it feel like to be a female director?” Greta Gerwig who is another rising film-maker looks at her as she said that, shrugged and said “I don’t know.” Neither Wang or Gerwig could answer that question because like Wang explained: “I’ve never been anything else in my life, I can’t compare the two.” 

   Why is it that female directors are being asked what it feels like to be something because they are women? A woman isn’t something BECAUSE she is a woman, she IS something and simply happens to be a woman. 

   Besides this conversation, Martin Scorsese (also at the table) brought up an excellent idea, “I wish sometimes they’d take credits off a picture.” This may sound odd, considering that part of movie-making is people knowing it was you that made it happen, however Scorsese arranged these words to mean: if we didn’t know who made the movie, then we’d all give everything a chance. We wouldn’t bother to know which stellar filmmaker made the thing, we’d just watch it and appreciate it for what it is. “I looked at ‘Archipelago,’ Joanna Hogg’s film. I had no idea it was directed by a woman.. I fell in love with it... I didn’t know.” 

  In a perfect world, the line between male director and female director would be blurred. However another part of film-making is to create fictional perfect worlds. Even if the life of the character in the story is full of flaws, the author spends so much time sculpting those flaws, making sure they are rich with emotion. A film-maker’s dedication to storytelling will always reflect into the heart of the viewer, regardless if the film-maker is female or not. 

Link to “The Directors Roundtable:”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iLtjMwkOlg&t=3147s

[womenfilmdirectors]

An introduction to female directors: A brief biography of Alice Guy-Blaché

“In charge of her own universe,” Alice Guy-Blaché made over 1,000 films throughout 1896 to 1919. She is credited to be the first female director and for other contributions in the film industry. Her movie, “The Cabbage Fairy” is known to be the first narrative fiction film, which is the style of film most celebrated to this day. She also brought to light parts of film making such as split screen, color tinting, working with animals, and special effects. After working at one of the oldest film companies in the world, Gaumont Film Company in France, she later moved to the United States and started her own company titled Solax Studios in New Jersey. Even in such a close-minded time she was involved with feminism, making movies that showcased female goals, desires, and determination. It started when the Lumiere Brothers (the first filmmakers) showcased their films in theaters and Blaché believed she could do a better job. Unfortunately her work was overlooked and taken credit of by her unfaithful husband. Her career slowly slipped out of her hands as time progressed into the 1920′s when the film industry grew huge and lavish. It became difficult for women to make movies because the industry had become male-dominated. Eventually, she wound up in Switzerland during the second world war and there is where she began to write her memoir. Blaché attempted to look for her films, but most of them were lost. Regardless, she continued to persevere. She gave interviews in which she would speak on her achievements and gained little recognition. In 2018 Pamela Green released a documentary titled “Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché” which remembers Blaché’s pioneering career. In her memoir she wrote regarding her life,“It is a failure; is it a success? I don’t know.” Although uncertain if her career was fulfilling at the edge of her lifeline, her invention of the narrative is the style of film winning Oscars every year. She will always be the first female film-maker and that is a successful statement on it’s own. 

Websites used for reference:

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20181019-the-worlds-first-female-film-director

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/obituaries/alice-guy-blache-overlooked.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/alice-guy-blanche-female-filmmaker-women-feminism-a9097896.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/forgot-alice-guy-blache-cinemas-first-female-director/

[womenfilmdirectors]

Media 10

This is my blog for Media 10, for the topic of women directors.