Women Make Film
49 Episodes
Five years in the making, this epic journey through film history is made up of forty “chapters” narrated by Tilda Swinton, Jane Fonda, Adjoa Andoh, Sharmila Tagore, Kerry Fox, Thandie Newton, and Debra Winger. WOMEN MAKE FILM follows in the footsteps of Mark Cousins’s THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY to give us a guided tour of the art and craft of the movies. Using almost a thousand film extracts from thirteen decades and five continents, Cousins explores how films are made, shot, and edited; how stories are shaped; and how movies depict life, love, politics, humor, and death through the compelling lens of some of the world’s greatest directors—all of them women. The series is presented here along with a selection of women-directed films that appear in it.
-
Wings
Episode 1
Directed by Larisa Shepitko • 1966 • Soviet Union
For her first feature after graduating from the All-Russian State Institute for Cinematography (VGIK), Larisa Shepitko trained her lens on the fascinating Russian character actress Maya Bulgakova, who gives a marvelous performance as a once heroi...
-
Daisies
Episode 2
Directed by Věra Chytilová • 1966 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Ivana Karbanová, Jitka Cerhová, Marie ČeškováIf the entire world is bad, why shouldn’t we be? Adopting this insolent attitude as their guiding philosophy, a pair of hedonistic young women (Ivana Karbanová and Jitka Cerhová), both named...
-
Wanda
Episode 3
Directed by Barbara Loden • 1970 • United States
Starring Barbara Loden, Michael HigginsWith her first and only feature film—a hard-luck drama she wrote, directed, and starred in—Barbara Loden turned in a groundbreaking work of American independent cinema, bringing to life a kind of characte...
-
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Episode 4
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 ...
-
1:26:31Episode 5
Je tu il elle
Episode 5
Directed by Chantal Akerman • 1975 • France
Starring Chantal Akerman, Niels Arestrup, Claire WauthionChantal Akerman’s first narrative feature is a startlingly vulnerable exploration of alienation and the search for connection. In a performance at once daringly exposed and enigmatic, Akerman pl...
-
1:46:30Episode 6
Mikey and Nicky
Episode 6
Directed by Elaine May • 1976 • United States
Starring Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Ned BeattyElaine May crafted a gangster film like no other in the nocturnal odyssey MIKEY AND NICKY, capitalizing on the chemistry between frequent collaborators John Cassavetes and Peter Falk by casting them to...
-
1:44:42Episode 7
Harlan County USA
Episode 7
Directed by Barbara Kopple • 1976 • United States
Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award-winning HARLAN COUNTY USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners’ strike in a small Kentucky town. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners’ sometimes violent struggles with strikeb...
-
2:01:58Episode 8
One Sings, the Other Doesn't
Episode 8
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1977 • France
Starring Valérie Mairesse, Thérèse Liotard, Ali RaffiIn the early 1960s in Paris, two young women become friends. Pomme is an aspiring singer. Suzanne is a pregnant country girl unable to support a third child. Pomme lends Suzanne the money for an illegal...
-
1:49:41Episode 9
The Ascent
Episode 9
Directed by Larisa Shepitko • 1977 • Soviet Union
Starring Boris Plotnikov, Vladimir Gostyukhin, Sergei YakovlevThe crowning triumph of a career cut tragically short, the final film from Larisa Shepitko won the Golden Bear at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival and went on to be hailed as one of the ...
-
2:08:18Episode 10
Les rendez-vous d'Anna
Episode 10
Directed by Chantal Akerman • 1978 • France
Starring Aurore Clément, Helmut Griem, Magali NoëlChantal Akerman’s narrative follow-up to her international breakthrough, JEANNE DIELMAN, is a penetrating portrait of a woman’s soul-deep malaise and a mesmerizing odyssey through a haunted Europe. Whi...
-
08:54Episode 11
An Exercise in Discipline: Peel
Episode 11
Directed by Jane Campion • 1982 • Australia
This short, concerning a father disciplining his son whilst on a road trip, went on to win the Short Film Palme d'Or at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival and effectively launched director Jane Campion's feature-filmmaking career.
-
1:20:39Episode 12
Born in Flames
Episode 12
Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1983 • United States
Starring Honey, Adele Bertei, Jean SatterfieldThe film that rocked the foundations of the 1980s underground, this postpunk provocation is a DIY fantasia of female rebellion set in America ten years after a social-democratic cultural revolution. W...
-
Vagabond
Episode 13
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1985 • France
Starring Sandrine Bonnaire, Macha Méril, Stéphane FreissSandrine Bonnaire won the Best Actress César for her portrayal of the defiant young drifter Mona, found frozen to death in a ditch at the beginning of VAGABOND. Agnès Varda pieces together Mona’s sto...
-
1:31:40Episode 14
Desert Hearts
Episode 14
Directed by Donna Deitch • 1985 • United States
Starring Helen Shaver, Patricia CharbonneauDonna Deitch's swooning and sensual first narrative feature, DESERT HEARTS, was groundbreaking upon its release in 1985: a love story about two women, made entirely independently, on a shoestring budget, ...
-
Sweetie
Episode 15
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...
-
2:38:19Episode 16
An Angel at My Table
Episode 16
Directed by Jane Campion • 1990 • New Zealand
Starring Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh, Karen FergussonWith AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE, Academy Award–winning filmmaker Jane Campion brought to the screen the harrowing autobiography of Janet Frame, New Zealand’s most distinguished author. Three actors in turn ...
-
1:25:03Episode 17
The Watermelon Woman
Episode 17
Directed by Cheryl Dunye • 1996 • United States
Starring Cheryl Dunye, Guinevere Turner, Valarie WalkerThe wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye s...
-
1:33:22Episode 18
Beau travail
Episode 18
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 ...
-
1:58:41Episode 19
La captive
Episode 19
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...
-
Fat Girl
Episode 20
Directed by Catherine Breillat • 2001 • France, Italy
Starring Anaïs Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero de RienzoTwelve-year-old Anaïs is fat. Her sister, fifteen-year-old Elena, is a beauty. While the girls are on vacation with their parents, Anaïs tags along as Elena explores the dreary seaside ...
-
1:40:56Episode 21
La Ciénaga
Episode 21
Directed by Lucrecia Martel • 2001 • Argentina, Spain
Starring Martín Adjemián, Diego Baenas, Leonora BalcarceThe release of Lucrecia Martel’s LA CIÉNAGA heralded the arrival of an astonishingly vital and original voice in Argentine cinema. With a radical and disturbing take on narrative, beaut...
-
Tomboy
Episode 22
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...
-
44:59Episode 23
A Thousand Suns
Episode 23
Directed by Mati Diop • 2013 • France, Senegal
Starring Magaye Niang, Wasis DiopForty years after her uncle Djibril Diop Mambéty's landmark of Senegalese cinema TOUKI BOUKI, Mati Diop revisits its lead actor, Magaye Niang, to explore the legacy of a film that continues to loom large.
-
1:15:38Episode 24
Heart of a Dog
Episode 24
Directed by Laurie Anderson • 2015 • United States
HEART OF A DOG marks the first feature film in thirty years by multimedia artist Laurie Anderson. A cinematic tone poem that flows from a sustained meditation on death and other forms of absence, the film seamlessly weaves together thoughts on...