Review by Miranda Barnewall
Tackling a subject as broad as “women filmmakers” is a huge untaking, to say the least. There are thirteen decades and six filmmaking continents to take into account. Plus, given that history has been unkind to many of these films, gaining access to them can be difficult. Yet, it has been done – and done very well!. Mark Cousins’s fourteen hour documentary (yes, you read that right) Women Make Film sets out to ask and answer the question, “How do women direct their movies?” and each of its forty chapters covers a different filmic or narrative topic.
It is made explicitly clear at the beginning of the documentary that Women Make Film is not. It is not a comprehensive overview of the history of female filmmakers, it is not about the female filmmakers’ personal lives and struggles, nor it is not how female filmmakers’ styles differ from those of men. Instead, it is simply about the films. Its path is not linear with a clear destination, but rather a road trip that meanders and weaves, often much more interested in the side-road forgotten amusements (i.e. little known films and/or directors) that people often pass by than the popular attractions (i.e. well known movies and/or directors).
The production style is simple, consistent, and uncomplicated in the best way. Each chapter begins with simple black text of the chapter set against scratched celluloid with a projector humming in the background. The chapters bookend one another with P.O.V. shots of a car driving on a road. The various narrators who join us in the car either take the wheel or sit next to us in the back seat. The complexity in this documentary is reserved for the multiple film clips and the context and analysis that goes along with them.
In the first episode, the route for this trip is laid out for us: forty questions are asked, giving us the forty chapters that comprise the documentary. These questions range from filmic elements, such as “How does a director open a movie?” to the film’s content, like “How does she depict an adult-child relationship?” These questions are answered with brief scenes from movies showing a variety of ways how a given director depicts work life or how she creates tension. In addition to being a road movie, the documentary acts as a personal film school, and our narrators serve as the passionate and knowledgeable professors. The narrators often comment on and question things happening within the frame. They ask the kinds of questions that directors ask when creating a shot, as well as those an engaged viewer asks when watching that shot. It’s bound to make a fairly passive movie watcher a more active and engaged movie watcher once they finish the documentary.
Sometimes a tidbit about the filmmaker is provided that begs you to seek out more information, whether it’s, “What?! I need to learn more about that director.” or “I need to see that movie ASAP.” This is what, in my mind, Cousins does best. It’s clear by that selected information he chooses to share, he is urging us to seek out these directors and their histories on our own. For example, Wanda Jakubowska, the director of The Last Stage, shot her film on location at Auschwitz four months after being a prisoner there herself. That was simply mind blowing to me. Sometimes it’s simply a clip from the movie that does the trick of sparking the viewer’s curiosity. Chapters one and seventeen feature clips of the short animation piece by The Black Dog (1987, Alison De Vere). The animation style, the opening shot, and the dog’s stance was enough to pique my interest. After finishing those chapters, I immediately searched for the film and found it, along with some of De Vere’s other work, on YouTube.
The Black Dog (1987) by Alison De Vere
As aforementioned, the documentary covers a wide range of continents and decades. Films all across the range of genre are included: horror, drama, comedy, documentary, action, avant-garde, animation, and even some TV episodes. This documentary is not limited to the high-brow, either. It is not unusual to see a clip from Point Break (1991, Katheryn Bigelow), right after a clip from Love Letter (1953, Kinuyo Tanaka). There are some particular films and directors that we often revisit. The ones that come immediately to mind include Céline Sciamma, Yuliya Solntseva, Edith Carlmar, and Kinuyo Tanaka, along with at least five others. Not all well-known features directed by women are mentioned or shown; one notable omission is Daughters of the Dust. Yet this doesn’t diminish the quality or feat of the documentary. Instead, it allows space for the lesser known works.
Before the road movie begins, Tilda Swinton remarks upon how many films by women have been forgotten due to sexism throughout film history. Hearing the words, “have been forgotten” immediately brings out the film archivist in me. How many copies of these movies are out there? Have we lost some films for good because of their omission in film history? People need to know about films and their significance before there is a demand for preservation. This is something that Cousins seems to be aware of given some of the films he chooses to show such as The She-Wolf (1951, Maria Plyta). In the chapter on memory, while we are being shown the intricate way the film depicts memory, our narrator tells us that some of the jumpiness is due to unintentional splices in the composite print. In addition to the jumpiness, the image itself is pretty contrasty, which is when the blacks are so dark and whites are so bright that the fine detail in the image is lost. Again, this elicits more questions. Do the original negatives exist? Is there a duplicate negative out there? Or is this print one of the few prints left out there?
The Sealed Soil (1977) by Marva Nabili
Another example of Cousins showing lesser known titles is his inclusion of the Iranian film The Sealed Soil (1977, Marva Nabili). Filmed a few years before the Iranian Revolution, The Sealed Soil is one of the few feature length films directed by an Iranian woman – and it has never been shown in her country. Given that the clip is taken from a tape source, it brings me to question how this film was made, where the original elements are, how Cousins got access to the film, and how we can continue to seek this material. As of now, I see that roughly 150 people on Letterboxd have watched this movie, and the only physical copy you can get of this movie in America is on VHS tape. Let’s hope that the exposure of these films brings about a surge of interest in these films and for their availability and, one day, preservation.
Read Miranda’s coverage of the Wexner Cinema Revival, a Festival of Film Restoration
If you have seen Mark Cousins’s previous documentary, The Story of Film, be prepared for a different sort of experience. While I did like Cousins’ narration in The Story of Film, Cousins made a smart choice in not narrating at all in Women Make Film. Some narrators are well known, such as Tilda Swinton and Jane Fonda, but others I was not familiar with, such as Sharmila Tagore and Kerry Fox. It is refreshing and exciting to travel with these narrators. This is a documentary about women who make films, after all.
It is the journey that counts here, not the destination. The number of films and directors you’re exposed to is absolutely worth the gas you put in the tank (i.e. time you spend watching the documentary). While it is the end of the documentary, it is just the beginning of the journey for me. I have jotted down a number of films and directors that piqued my interest, some of them mentioned above. I highly encourage you to go on this road trip, too, and now is the perfect time. Each Tuesday night from September until December 1st, TCM will be airing an episode of Women Make Film along with films that compliment the episode’s explored chapters. If you prefer to watch the episodes on your own time, TCM offers a blu-ray of the documentary for a steal at $20.
In her writeup of 2015 and #AYearWithWomen, Maraya E. Gates says,
“One (male) director [on Twitter] in particular told me it should be about skill and skill alone. While I agree I want my directors to have technical skills, what women (and minorities) bring to the art of cinema is a different life experience and world views. That is something that cannot be taught. That is something we need more of in our cinemas.”
Having watched fourteen hours of clips of films directed by women, I can tell you that I have seen just a glimpse of that different life experience and world view. Whether it be the way she decides to track the camera along with the two young girls dancing to the radio (The Girls 1968, Mai Zetterling) or the way she holds her attention onto the patterns of the veils in front of the main character (One Sings, the Other Doesn’t 1977, Agnes Varda), the experience I can relate to is there and something I want more and more. If nothing else, Women Make Film urges you to go on your own journey of films directed by women, and that’s a journey I’m very excited to take.