Female Gaze: Women Directors + Women Cinematographers
26 Episodes
This sprawling selection of films both directed and shot by women testifies to an extraordinary tradition of female collaboration behind the camera. Spanning the last half century of cinema and including work by trailblazing director-cinematographer duos such as Chantal Akerman and Babette Mangolte (JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES; NEWS FROM HOME), Claire Denis and Agnès Godard (BEAU TRAVAIL, LET THE SUNSHINE IN), and Jane Campion and Sally Bongers (A GIRL’S OWN STORY, SWEETIE), as well as fruitful recent partnerships like Céline Sciamma and Crystel Fournier (TOMBOY, GIRLHOOD) and Josephine Decker and Ashley Connor (BUTTER ON THE LATCH, THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY), these extraordinary films reveal a vital legacy of visionary women seizing the tools of visual storytelling and opening up new possibilities for cinema.
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09:06Episode 1
Female Gaze: In Their Own Words
Episode 1
In this program, female directors, cinematographers, and actors discuss their work.
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01:56Episode 2
Female Gaze Teaser
Episode 2
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27:53Episode 3
Joyce at 34
Episode 3
Directed by Joyce Chopra and Claudia Weill • 1972 • United States
Starring Joyce ChopraIn feminist filmmaker Joyce Chopra’s JOYCE AT 34 (codirected with Claudia Weill, who would later direct the great unsung GIRLFRIENDS), Chopra examines the demands of juggling a baby and a professional career.
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30:07Episode 4
Girls at 12
Episode 4
Made by Joyce Chopra in 1975 for the Education Development Center in Newton, Massachusetts, as part of the program The Role of Women in American Society, GIRLS AT 12 looks at the lives of three girls growing up near Boston in order to show the complexities of becoming a teenager in the midseventi...
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1:19:29Episode 5
Daguerréotypes
Episode 5
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1975 • France
Starring Lucien Bossy, Léonce Debrossian, Marcelle DebrossianSpending most of her days at home following the birth of her son but curious as ever about the people and places that surrounded her, Agnès Varda found inspiration for DAGUERRÉOTYPES just outsid...
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Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Episode 6
Directed by Chantal Akerman • 1975 • Belgium
Starring Delphine Seyrig, Jan DecorteA singular work in film history, Chantal Akerman’s JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES meticulously details, with a sense of impending doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow, whose chores ...
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1:29:20Episode 7
News from Home
Episode 7
Directed by Chantal Akerman • 1976 • United States
Letters from Chantal Akerman's mother are read over a series of elegantly composed shots of 1976 New York, where our (unseen) filmmaker and protagonist has relocated. Akerman's unforgettable time capsule of the city is also a gorgeous meditati...
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36:53Episode 8
Clorae and Albie
Episode 8
Made by Joyce Chopra in 1976 for the Education Development Center in Newton, Massachusetts, as part of the program The Role of Women in American Society, CLORAE AND ALBIE focuses on two young Black women who have been best friends since childhood but whose lives are taking different paths.
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Mur Murs
Episode 9
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1981 • France
After returning to Los Angeles from France in 1979, Agnès Varda created this kaleidoscopic documentary about the striking murals that decorate the city. Bursting with color and vitality, MUR MURS is as much an invigorating study of community and diversity ...
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26:36Episode 10
A Girl’s Own Story
Episode 10
Directed by Jane Campion • 1983 • Australia
This early short from director Jane Campion concerns a group of teenage girls in the 1960s.
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1:38:52Episode 11
Jane B. par Agnès V.
Episode 11
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1988 • France
Starring Jane Birkin, Agnès Varda, Charlotte GainsbourgThe interests, obsessions, and fantasies of two singular artists converge in this inspired collaboration between Agnès Varda and her longtime friend the actor Jane Birkin. Made over the course of a ye...
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Sweetie
Episode 12
Directed by Jane Campion • 1989 • New Zealand
Starring Genevieve Lemon, Karen Colston, Tom LycosThough she went on to create a string of brilliant films, Jane Campion will always be remembered for her stunning debut feature SWEETIE, which focuses on the hazardous relationship between the button...
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27:46Episode 13
Odds and Ends
Episode 13
Directed by Michelle Parkerson • 1993 • United States
In the year 2096, Black women warriors wage a battle against racial and gender annihilation. In this devastated universe, a fable unfolds on the interplanetary frontlines. Lieutenant Loz Wayard, a courageous young Amazon, learns the price of ...
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Angela
Episode 14
Directed by Rebecca Miller • 1995 • United States
Starring Miranda Rhyne, Charlotte Eve BlytheRebecca Miller’s spellbinding debut feature is a searing portrait of a ten-year-old girl (Miranda Rhyne) who—as her mentally ill mother’s sanity deteriorates—retreats into a disturbing imaginative univ...
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The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love
Episode 15
Directed by Maria Maggenti • 1995 • United States
Starring Laurel Holloman, Nicole Ari Parker, Maggie MooreBreaking new ground in queer representation when it was released in 1995, this tender and charming tale of first love traces the tentative relationship that develops between two high-schoo...
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1:33:22Episode 16
Beau travail
Episode 16
Directed by Claire Denis • 1999 • France
Starring Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, Grégoire ColinWith her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd, Sailor,” Claire Denis firmly established herself as one of the great visual tone poets of our time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked ...
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Conversations with Intellectuals About Selena
Episode 17
Directed by Lourdes Portillo • 1999 • United States
Interrogating the Selena phenomenon, Lourdes Portillo brings together a group of Chicana cultural critics to talk about the Tejana music icon. Delving into their reactions to Selena’s groundbreaking rise, widespread influence, and tragic death,...
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1:58:41Episode 18
La captive
Episode 18
Directed by Chantal Akerman • 2000 • Belgium, France
Starring Sylvie Testud, Stanislas Merhar, Olivia BonamyAdapting the fifth volume of Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time,” Chantal Akerman transforms the material into a mesmerizing study of voyeurism, control, and sexual obsession centere...
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54:21Episode 19
Shooting Women
Episode 19
Directed by Alexis Krasilovsky • 2008 • United States
Featuring more than fifty camerawomen from around the world, Alexis Krasilovsky’s SHOOTING WOMEN celebrates the amazing talent and unflinching spirit of image-making women from the sets of Hollywood and Bollywood to the war zones of Afghanist...
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Tomboy
Episode 20
Directed by Céline Sciamma • 2011 • France
Starring Zoé Héran, Malonn Lévana, Jeanne DissonTOMBOY tells the story of ten-year-old Laure (played by the amazing Zoé Héran) who moves to the suburbs and decides to pass as a boy among the pack of neighborhood kids. As “Mickäel” she catches the atten...
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14:41Episode 22
Social Butterfly
Episode 22
Directed by Lauren Wolkstein • 2013 • France
Starring Anna Margaret Hollyman, Camille Claris, Ulysse GrosjeanA thirty-year-old American woman crashes a teenage party in the South of France, leading the guests to wonder who she is and what she is doing there.
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Roberta
Episode 23
Directed by Caroline Monnet • 2014 • Canada
Starring Marie Brassard, Julien MorinHousewife and grandmother Roberta struggles to fit into the conformist society in which she lives and turns to amphetamines to cure her boredom in this short produced by Microclimat Films.
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1:35:22Episode 24
Let the Sunshine In
Episode 24
Directed by Claire Denis • 2017 • France
Starring Juliette Binoche, Xavier Beauvois, Philippe KaterineTwo luminaries of French cinema, Claire Denis and Juliette Binoche, unite for the first time in this piercing look at the elusive nature of true love, and the extent to which we are willing to ...