Original: International Women’s Film Exhibition with Small Mountain and One Mountain.
Editor’s note:Indiewire, a well-known film website, launched a heavyweight list of 100 films directed by the best female directors in film history this year. There are directors such as Agnès Varda, Kelly Reichardt, Lynne Ramsay and kathryn bigelow that we are familiar with, and directors such as Barbara Lohden and karyn kusama that we are not familiar with. We translated this list with the intention of introducing these female directors and their works to more people. These outstanding films may have been neglected by film history, fans or film critics, and it is time to salvage them and re-evaluate their value.
Since the appearance of movies, women have made movies. While the Lumiere brothers shocked the audience with their incredible performance of the running train, Alice Guy Black developed her own technology with a brand-new art form. While D.W. Griffith guided the groundbreaking technological progress and set up his own studio to carry out his work, Lois Weber was actually doing the same thing. In the golden age of Hollywood, Dorothy Azner, Dorothy Davenport, Tracy Sawders and many other women were making their own films there. Women making movies is not even a really weakened trend, because it has never been a trend; For a long time, women as film producers have only been part of the norm.
However, around the time of the appearance of talking movies, women’s participation in making movies began to decline. The decline of this figure in the last decade is even difficult to measure. According to the latest celluloid ceiling report of the Center for Women’s Television and Film Research at San Diego State University, the proportion of women directors in the 250 top-grossing films dropped from 11% to 8% in 2018. The percentage of women directing films in the top 100 and 500 films is declining-only 4 of the top 100 films directed by women (down by 4 percentage points) and 15% of the top 500 films (down by 3 percentage points). Although women such as Debra Glunk, Chloe Zhao, Mariel Ehlers, Tamara Jenkins and Lucilia Martelle released highly acclaimed films in 2018, women actually completely left the nomination for best director at the Academy Awards again.
But the treasure of women’s films is real and has a deep accumulation for decades. Therefore, the staff of independent films have put forward this list of the 100 greatest films directed by women in history to praise the films directed by women who have started to create works since the film began to exist and have always left a unique mark in the film culture. Our writers and editors selected 200 films, and then voted on the shortlist to determine the final ranking.
We hope this list captures the extensiveness and diversity created by women behind the camera, and reminds people that female directors have deeply imprinted their marks in every decade, every genre and every kind of film, and they will continue to do so.
100
American Psycho
Mary harron 2000
Director mary harron always tells stories in a unique way: in such a thriller film adapted from Brett Easton Ellis’ novel, there is a sense of delicacy that cannot be ignored, which is completely different from the sensational impact of the original. The novel reflects the cruelty and loneliness of the upper class unabashedly, and the film also reproduces the picture of a man with tendon meat throwing his "prey" directly behind the spiral staircase. However, similar to "I killed andy warhol", the director’s handling of details is the biggest attraction. Because of his attention to details, the protagonist Yuppie Patrick Bateman’s Reagan-era lifestyle has been shaped extremely plump, from customized business cards to self-care-cold glue eye patches, herbal creams, showing off plastic products when eating out, A record full of songs by Phil Collins and Huey Lewis & the News … The director has a deep understanding of the trajectory of our lives: we only show our "human design" or what we want others to think. What will life be like if we don’t follow our own script?
99
Frozen
Jennifer lee, chris buck 2013
Jennifer Lee became the chief creative officer of Disney Animation Company and the most powerful woman in the animation industry. In 2012, she established her position in the field of animation through the script adaptation of wreck-it ralph. In "Frozen", Vanellope, who was hilarious and independent, was portrayed as a princess with subversive spirit, and dairy queen, a troublemaker written by co-director Chris Buck, was turned into a warm and intelligent new woman. The film revolves around the warm affection between two sisters Anna (kristen bell) and Aisha (Idina Kim Mentzel). The film won the best animated feature film and the best original song at the 86th Oscar in one fell swoop. Its hand-drawn animation tradition is not inferior to CG animation at all. It can be said that it is a gorgeous turn of Disney Animation Company and has become the princess fairy tale with the most female awakening consciousness in history. Jennifer lee has begun to make Frozen II, which will surely present us with a more breakthrough and inclusive story.
98
I Am Not a Witch
Rungano Gnoni 2018
Zambian-Welsh director Rungano Gnoni’s satire "I am not a witch" revolves around the story of a young girl who was sentenced to life imprisonment by the state witch barracks. The director once regarded the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos whom he admired as his artistic spiritual mentor, and the films often reflected the widespread misogyny in Zambia. The film took six weeks to shoot in the Zambian capital of Lusaka (Lusaka) in the autumn of 2016, and a large number of non-professional actors were used, among which Margaret Mulubwa, the little hero who was only nine years old, gave a stunning performance. The film was shortlisted for Cannes Film Festival, which is only a few in Zambia’s film history. This historic moment made the Zambian President specially publish an official newspaper to praise it. Relevant film policies have also been introduced to promote the film to play an active role in shaping the image of South Africa. The director obviously has a lot to express in this debut, and indeed, this amazing work of magical realism is very beautiful.
97
they
Anahita Ghazvinizadeh 2017
It is inconceivable that a work can be shown in the Cannes Film Festival before the age of 30, but it is not surprising to know that director Abbas Kiarostami and producer Jane Campion. In her first feature film, Iranian director Anahita Ghazvinizadeh accurately discussed the still complicated and vague topic: children’s gender identity with a sense of art and empathy. The director kept the physiological gender of the protagonist J, but it was blurred, and his sister and boyfriend around him were quite accepted and understood. The film was shot almost in Chicago, and some paragraphs were shot in Persia, reflecting a contemporary international culture. Although J’s journey is very specific, the story is universal.
96
The Secret Garden
Agnieszka holland 1993
The talented director Holland always aims at the characters who are put in strange environments and fight against them unremittingly. The protagonist is a wanderer, and the simple story of a 10-year-old orphan girl returning to her parents’ hometown in England has been rewritten into a fable about loneliness and friendship by her, which has aroused people’s resonance. Who else is a first-class director and a frequent visitor to the film festival who can make such an easy transition to shooting G films? This well-received family film gave birth to Alfonso Caron’s Little Princess and Baby-all G films, which are related to her other films, but different from others. This is a good example of "great directors working seamlessly with big-name production companies", followed by a number of front-line bosses: Roger Deakins, the D.P, including the producer of Harry Potter, and Maggie Smith.
95
Rambling Rose
Martha coolidge, 1991
The film is adapted from a Georgian novel by Calder Willingham, the co-writer of the film The Graduate, during the Depression. Laura Dern’s beautiful family nanny makes hilyer’s father (Robert Duvall) and son (Lukas Haas) "upset", just like other men she approaches. Because of her successful performance as the charming and frivolous rose, Dunn was nominated for the first Oscar, still with her mother Diane Ladd. As Martha coolidge’s seventh feature film, the film has been highly praised by critics (not to mention the box office), and because it "accurately captures the temperament of the characters in the love drama, the tone of the comedy, and the key theme, it shows a superb production level." Won the independent spirit award for best director.
94
Monsoon Wedding
Mira nair 2001
Mira nair studied at Harvard, and her works are exciting, energetic and unique, such as Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (desire and wisdom), Mississippi Masala (Mississippi style painting) and Monsoon Wedding (monsoon wedding banquet). In 1988, she was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for her debut novel Monsoon Wedding. The Mississippi amorous feelings painting is her second feature film, starring Denzel Washington (Denzel Hayes Washington Jr.) and Sarita Choudhury (Sarita Choudhury), and it is also an art film. More than ten years later, Nair returned to China with the monsoon wedding to attend the film festival. In this family drama, Nair weaved many love stories together until Aditi (Vasundhara Das) and Hemant (Parvin Dabas), a Texas immigrant, held a traditional Indian wedding, which reached its climax. However, the bride didn’t know about it until a few weeks before the wedding, and broke up with an old man, but she was only with him because of impulse before marriage. He forgave her when she confessed all this to her fiance. Nair skillfully used hand-held photography to cover minor plots and rich ethnic decorations, and there was no urine in the whole process. The audience waited and applauded for the final wedding!
93
The Breadwinner
Nora Tome 2017
This is the Irish director’s first animated feature film. Nora Tome, director of Cartoon Salon Company, told a powerful story about political oppression from a keen and hopeful perspective, which won GKids the tenth nomination. Adapted from Deborah Ellis’s best-selling novel of the same name, "The breadwinner" revolves around an 11-year-old Afghan girl who pretends to be a boy to help her family survive under the threat of the Taliban after her father is imprisoned because of her political dissent. In the new field of drama, Tome skillfully reconciled the relationship between individuals and politics with a naturalistic enthusiasm. She also made this chaotic event more topical, especially related to the present-the rise and fall of the Taliban and the desire of ISIS. But she rightly focused on how Parvana (voiced by Canadian rookie Saara Chaudry) bravely went through this difficulty with her family.
92
Nitrate Kisses
Barbara Hammer 1992
Barbara Hammer is the most prolific and world-renowned lesbian filmmaker, but many fans, even those who are deep fans, have never heard of it. The word "experimental film" may not be clear to outsiders. Her films are always dotted with provocative frolicking, and her works explore lesbian sex and subculture. Her first feature film, Kiss of Nitrate, is a good example. A film archive masterpiece, he interweaves the lens of the 1933 gay film Lot in Sodom with interviews with gay and heterosexual couples and pictures of LGBT history, and creates a 63-minute meditation on gay history and sex. Hammer’s influence, as well as the behavior of excavating and reappearing gay history, can be felt in countless gay movies, the most famous of which is Cheryl Dunye’s Looking for Watermelon Woman.
91
shocking
Ida lupino 1950
Concise and refined, full of tension and full of aftertaste, ida lupino can fully explore the anxiety and various psychological states of the characters with only the lens. Compared with her independent black-themed films, "Horrible" has a wider scope. "Rape" is the theme of this film, which was a taboo topic in the 1950s, but her handling method is so straightforward. The film spans between the city and the suburbs, making the character’s situation social. As far as the theme is concerned, "Horrible" is undoubtedly ahead of the times at that time. The handling of climax scenes and chase scenes shows the director’s extraordinary visual manipulation skills, which leaves a deep impression on people and lingers for a long time.
90
35 glasses of rum
Claire danes 2008
Deni has paid solemn tribute to Ozu countless times in his works. In the early stage of shooting, Deni gave up following the Japanese still lens flexibly, allowing photographer Agnes Godard (Agnes Ge Daer) to freely grasp the loose relationship between his father and his mature young daughter. Alex Descas (Alex Descas), Deni’s usual male host, is the best choice to play the widowed father. The father and daughter reached an agreement-when he married a German woman, the daughter started a new life-because the father also realized that his whole life could not be separated from the job that he might lose in his early years because of compulsory retirement. Deni’s social and historical vision in the film is sharp, but there is no meaning of preaching and forced acceptance. There is a dancing scene in the film, and the background music is "Nightshift" by the Commodores. The mood is so sad, sensual, bitter and sweet, and the film ends in the silent and swaying bodies of four people. This may be the kind of "purest" that Deni pursues!
eighty-nine
Blood corpse night
Kathryn bigelow 1987
Kathryn Bigelow couldn’t get western funding for her revisionists, so she took advantage of the wave of vampire movies in the 1980s to make this unique hybrid film. This is a romantic and sad story of blood type in a small town in the Midwest. The night of blood corpse is a complicated love story, with vampires Mae (Jenny Wright) A and Caleb (Adrian Pasdar)-on an eventful night, she fell in love with the boy who took a bite. Because there is no violent "gene" in the boy’s blood, she has "fallen" for him. However, Bigelow’s wandering vampires are violent to off the charts, and the scene in the bar section is not romantic except bloody. All these brought the audience to another world in the soundtrack of the popular orange dream orchestra in the late 1980s. For those fans who want Bigelow not to give up shooting genre films, this film just tells everyone that her genre films are no less than those of the past.
88
Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance
Alanis Obomsawin 1993
The Oka crisis in 1990 lasted for 78 days, resulting in two deaths and leaving endless disputes between the Mohawk people and the Canadian government. In the film, Alanis Obomsawin vividly recorded this incident. The film was produced by the National Film Committee (the full version of the film can still be seen at present). Due to the harsh shooting environment, the director recorded his own audio, which hindered the spread of the film. In non-fiction films, it is rare to see a documentary historical film made in such an extreme environment.
87
souvenir
Joanna Hogg 2019
Joanna Hogg won the Sundance Grand Jury Award without controversy, especially for a work of conscience like "souvenir". The British director is a genius once in 30 years, and his works emphasize the plot and atmosphere. However, the elliptical and semi-autobiographical exploration of creative understanding gives the film an epic weight. The background of the film is set in the early 1980s, and the lens has a vague feeling of veils like The Phantom Sewer. The name of the film comes from an oil painting by French painter jean honore fragonard in the 18th century. Hogg’s most touching film to date tells the fateful love story between a young female directors and a sad old man, Tom Burke, who has discovered her potential.
The film is not only a warm self-portrait, but also a perspective of the past years: there is always a time in life, as if any small vibration can affect the ending, and a short encounter may change your life, especially when you are desperate, it is easier to believe the guidance of a passer-by. Such a work is enough to show that the director is a master from the beginning.
86
passenger
Allison anders 1992
The Traveler is a feature film written and directed by allison anders as a sophomore. This exquisite and fully observed film is adapted from Richard Peck’s young adult novel Don’t Look and It Won’t Hurt. The novel is about Nora(Brooke Adams), who works as a waitress in the retail store of New Mexico Station, raising two daughters Trudi (Ione Skye) and shade (Fairuza Balk). She dated a man (Robert Knepper) and got pregnant again. She decided to move away and give birth to it, and the daughter Shade tried her best to fix up her mother and her boyfriend (Chris Mulkey) who had been dating and broke up. Traveler swept Sundance Film Festival and Berlin Film Festival, which opened Anders’ road to directing, and actress Fairuza Balk also won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Actress.
eighty-five
Something’s Gotta Give
Nancy meyers 2003
Love is compromise is undoubtedly nancy meyers’s best and Nancy’s work. At first glance, it is a romantic comedy that laughs and laughs, expressing the writer and director’s lust for the life of the rich, but this is indeed one of the reasons why the film has achieved such good results. (Part of the reason is the chemical reaction of nuclear explosion between Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton. And Keanu Reeves (Keanu Reeves) as the muscular male doctor of Hamptons. Well, it also includes the scene of Nicholson’s fake hip. )
Director Nancy used a lot of metaphors in this film: luxurious kitchens, rich people who are separated from each other, and a large section combined Billy Wilder humor with the wisdom of someone who knows why a 60-year-old woman also needs sex. From beginning to end, the story of love is a compromise, which takes place in a dreamland where "love is the most extravagant thing a person can pay, so making love for half your life is the first step to find true happiness". Nancy obviously didn’t stop there, but you have to taste the meaning. When Nicholson and Keaton looked at each other and said, "Erica, no one is good enough for you," everything went without saying!
84
One way or another
Sarah Gomez 1978
Sarah Gomez is a pioneer of Cuban films and the first female filmmaker to work under the supervision of Cuba’s post-revolutionary film bureau. The 16 mm "This or That" is her only feature film, the first one directed by a Cuban woman, and one of the few works directed by Afro-Cuban. The film is a semi-recorded love story, which started in a community in the marginal area of Africa and Cuba after the 1959 revolution. It criticizes the revolution through the standpoint of Cubans of African descent and shows how the prejudice formed by race, class and gender hinders the creation of a more harmonious and equal society. Unfortunately, the director died in the course of the film, only 31 years old, and didn’t have a chance to see the film. The film is quite provocative in both form and subject, and it was completed with the help of colleagues a few years later.
83
Crossing Delancey
Joan Micklin Silver 1988
From Nebraska to new york, Silver began her career as a feature film director based on the real life of Jewish immigrants in Lower Manhattan in the 19th century. Starring Oscar nominee Carol Kane, Hester Street has injected the latest extreme romance into new york’s Jewish culture since the 1980s. Another film, Across Delancy, stars Amy Owen, who plays Isabel Grossman, a 30-year-old Upper West Side yuppie, a bookstore clerk who is immersed in the literary world all the time. She likes to visit her grandmother, Reiz Bozyk, on the Lower East Side. This elder insists on arranging a matchmaker for her older granddaughter to solve her lifelong events. When Isabel got along with her neighbor (Peter Riegert) who inherited her father’s pickle shop for a long time, she became more and more attracted by his charm, but his career discouraged her. Sam doesn’t intend to stop chasing when the person he loves dodges.
82
Appropriate Behavior
Desiree Akhavan 2014
The film roughly reflects the process of the director’s sexual identity, the frankness of feelings, and the sharpness of revealing desire. Akawan wrote, directed and acted, and in the film, Shirin, a girl who regained her single status. Her beloved ex-girlfriend keeps appearing in the movies, and the family is scared by her sexual orientation, which leads to a strange teaching job.
By the way, it is also interesting that the director always pushes the character to one end and then makes her suddenly enlightened at the other end (the film contains perhaps the most uncomfortable threesome in modern movies). From all aspects, the film is original and vivid, and it is important to express that "being yourself" is not easy, but it is also the most worthwhile.
81
After the wedding
Susanne bier 2006
Danish director susanne bier has a great influence. A Better World has won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and the recent Blindfold has once again caused a sensation in the international film world. Her Danish film is the most eye-catching, comparable to Lars Vontyre and unique. Like many female directors, Bill pays more attention to the family, but after the wedding, it is quite subversive. Mads Micol plays the director of the orphanage and meets an old friend unexpectedly when raising funds for the orphanage. The common parent-child theme in female directors’ works is pushed to the foreground here, and at the same time, we can feel that Bill’s steady and skillful techniques have overturned the stereotypes of Danish films.
80
girlfriend
Claudia Weill 1978
Claudia Weill, an American independent producer, first entered the vibrant TV industry and directed some very popular reality shows. It was these shows that ushered in the so-called "golden age" of the TV industry, and then turned to movies. In 1978, the narrative novel "Girlfriend" was released, which showed the bitterness and joy brought by the profound friendship between city girl to both sides with great precision. Not all directors could do it. The two aspiring "new york drifters" gradually drifted apart because of their interests, emotions, or just pursuing differences. It sounds like a story that happened to you and me, but the ending did not give the audience a clear destination and purpose-although the director was absolutely capable of doing so, that kind of anxiety and a little heartbreak died for a long time.
79
Boys Don’t Cry
Kimberly Pierce, 1999
Neo-queer movies are in the ascendant, and boys dont cry can be said at the right time. This movie is adapted from the true story of Brandon Teena, although the ending is a bit cruel. At the end of the film, Brandon shared her love news with us, and a large wave of friends accepted and supported her new gender. With a gentle and firm tone, the film severely criticizes a world that can’t accept Brandon’s freedom to choose his own gender. Hilary Swan (Hilary Swank) can’t be said to be the best choice to play Brandon. Her careful handling and her tomboy temperament seem a little unacceptable to mainstream audiences. Pierce’s reconciliation between the new queer and the audience, not only wants to break the stereotype, but also pursues the authenticity of expressing trans-sexual love in the modern context, which is the dilemma, while subculture is secondary.
seventy-eight
The Connection
Shirley Clarke 1961
Shirley Clarke was one of the greatest American directors in 1960s and 1970s, but the importance of his works was greatly underestimated. Her documentaries, such as Ornette: Made in America and The Portrait of Jason, show her unique and meticulous vision of excavating the forgotten great characters in American history. In 1961, her debut novel "Drug Head" showed great movie ambition: immediately, it was a slow-burning room, a ready-made thriller, and a jazz musician paced back and forth in the room, waiting for his wife to give birth, and suddenly found the camera. The plot changed suddenly, and the man took drugs to persuade the director to smoke with them. Forty years earlier than blair witch project, kral had mastered how to capture this confusing sense of reality with the first non-fiction film, and its purpose was not only to create fear. Yaotou is a fascinating social realistic thriller about being trapped by "addiction" and its influence on the avant-garde culture shrouded in despair.
77
Enough Said
Nicole holofcener 2013
Nicole Halofenser’s films tend to focus on women full of contradictions, but the men in the films are also not so easy. Needless to say is the first work of her studio and the last screen work of the late james gandolfini. In Needless to Say, Harold Finser seems to have returned to her 1996 debut, Good Marriage and Confidant. Conflicting schedules and poor judgment always threaten an embarrassing relationship. Needless to say, although the film revolves around a single mother and a neurotic masseuse Eva (Julia Louis Dreyfus), it also highlights the influence of Eva’s imaginary confusion on the kind suitor Albert (james gandolfini). Albert doesn’t know that his ex-wife Marianne (catherine keener) is Eva’s client, and Eva has been entertaining Marianne and secretly asking her about her shortcomings. It is worth mentioning that this embarrassing scene may provide enough material for an episode of "Suppress Your Enthusiasm", but Harold Finser’s humble script makes the plot find a more subtle balance between simple humor and melancholy. In short, this is the charm of Harlow Finser’s films, and Needless to say is the perfect display of her excellent works.
76
Antonia’s Line
Marleen Gorris 1995
Marleen Gorris’s Antonia Family is the first (three so far) Oscar-winning foreign language film directed by female directors, and also the most successful subtitle film in the United States in 1996 (adjusted box office exceeded 8.5 million US dollars). Marleen Gorris is a staunch feminist. Her decades-long description of a typical Dutch village in matriarchal society after World War II in The Antonia Family shows her feminist tendency, but it is also mixed with joy and sadness, humor and anger, because female directors think that weakening the theme can make their films more acceptable to people. The Antonia Family is both enjoyable and impactful. It simply praises the strength of women who don’t live in the city and have little education. Grice had previously attracted attention because of her debut "The Question of Silence", which had a limited release, but was regarded as an important film in the early 1980s. She went on to shoot Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway with vanessa redgrave.
75
thirteen years old
Catherine hardwicke 2003
At Sundance Film Festival in 2003, catherine hardwicke won the Best Director Award for his tough style in Thirteen. The film stars Evan Rachel Wood, and Evan plays Tracy, who meets a popular girl (Nicky Reed) at school, and then starts to dabble in sex, drugs and parties, which has done great damage to her relationship with her mother (Holly Hunter, nominated for an Oscar). Almost all of hardwick’s films were shot with hand-held cameras. She released the anger of the characters through the real visual techniques of the film, and turned the narrative into an emotional roller coaster from the inside. Few adult movies can sell like Thirteen.
74
High Art
Lisa cholodenko 1998
Lisa cholodenko’s feature-length debut is as charming and mature as any of her later works, and it is completely integrated into a toxic relationship, which also makes people feel divorced from reality. This is a tricky movie, but it never tries to escape the audience, but gradually guides the audience from one stop to the next until everything becomes so clear and unavoidable. With enlightening Radha Louise Mitchell as the protagonist, she is a young man in her twenties, groping her way forward in this world, while airlie Shadi in the second act is her unexpected inspiration and mentor, which finally leads her into a completely different world. This is a clever movie. It doesn’t shy away from pornography, but it is also intoxicated with reason and emotion.
73
Love and basketball
Na Prince-Buys Wood 2000
In Love and Basketball, everything is fair, but it doesn’t make things easier-on or off the court. This film is Gina Prince-Buys Wood’s first directorial work, and she is also the screenwriter of this film. Sanaa lathan and Ou Ma epps play a pair of neighbors who live in Los Angeles. Their love for basketball is just like their love for each other. Generally speaking, for directors, basketball is more difficult to romanticize than baseball or even football, but Prince Buys Wood’s basketball dream is easy to get lost: sexy and charming, which is the hopeful first scene in beyond the lights.
seventy-two
Rolando
Sally Potter
Tilda Swinton had been working in the film circle for nearly ten years before taking Orlando, but Sally Potter’s comprehensive adaptation of Adeline Virginia Woolf’s works, which tells the story of a young aristocrat who never grows old according to the queen’s orders, suddenly becomes a woman hundreds of years later, has made her screen image deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
By asking the actors to take a step back from the story (talk to the audience directly) and guide the story with their heart, Potter found a way to bring out the basic characteristics that Swinton showed for the first time in his cooperation with director Derek Jarman. Her film captures the duality of the actors. It is sexual, but never materialized; Greed, but never despair; Deep as an arrow, but never lose the temptation on the surface. (If the protagonist of a movie was born in the 17th century and found himself lying in bed with billy zane at the turn of the century, how can you describe the movie? ) Different from Woolf’s novels, Porter’s version provides an explanation for Orlando’s eternal youth, but this strange and charming fable is one of the few movies that really makes people feel eternal.
71
Wendy And Lucy
Kelly Reichardt 2008
Kelly Reichardt’s works always show certain skills, and she can keenly capture the privacy and pain of the working class. Although later works such as Some Woman (a triple story told with some outstanding actresses) and Mick’s Shortcut (a great success) continue to maintain this style, her first cooperation with the star michelle williams has made her feel deeply.
The film premiered at Cannes Film Festival, and Williams played Wendy in the title, a young woman who longed for a better life, but almost lost everything-her beloved dog Lucy. Richard never indulges in the fear or shame of her characters, and her profound humanistic concern makes Wendy’s plight even more noticeable. This small-scale feature film pays great attention to emotion and heart. It subverts any disturbing feeling of "poverty pornography" and instead focuses more on realism. Every part of the film is carefully produced.
70
person of the lowest social status
Di reece 2011
This film set in Brooklyn was released long ago, but with the vigorous development of director di reece’s career, her excellent debut was paid due attention. Dalit is full of repressed sexual impulses and finally released. The film focuses on a young man named Ai Likai (Adeppo Oduye), who has embarked on the road of homosexual and masculine gender expression. In the film, we can see that on the train back to Brooklyn, Ai Likai quietly took off her baseball cap and T-shirt and put on a girl sweater to dispel her parents’ suspicions (her parents are played by Kim Wayans and Charles Parnell respectively).
When she first felt the sting of love, we seemed to be integrated with her. In Bina’s sparkling eyes (Asha Davis), Eric saw his charm for the first time. Dalit shows the process of first love and self-awareness through rich and saturated colors and tones. This kind of rich and saturated color tone application has become the usual expression in the movies in the following years.
sixty-nine
portrait of jason
Shirley Clarke 1967
Jason Holiday is the protagonist in Shirley Clarke’s The Portrait of Jason. The Portrait of Jason was restored in 1967 by Oscar Film Archive and Milestone Film. As a landmark nonfiction film, The Portrait of Jason focuses on Jason Holiday (real name: Aaron Payne), who is a dazzling gay cabaret performer. One night in Chelsea Hotel, new york, Holiday told his life story and talked about various topics-racial discrimination, homophobia, domestic violence, show business, drugs, sex, prostitution, law and so on. As time went on, he became more and more carried away, and his disclosure became more and more explicit, and his story reached its peak in a state of emotional fragility. The film depicts a charming portrait of a complex man, and the stories he tells always arouse people’s joy or sadness. This is a fascinating must-see film, which the late Ingmar Bergman called "the most extraordinary film I have ever seen in my life". In 2012, this cross-border work was restored and reissued.
sixty-eight
Cameraperson
Kirsten Johnson 2016
Kirsten Johnson called the film "My Memories" at the beginning of The Man with the Camera, but what is certain is that there has never been a memory video like this film. "The Man with the Camera" pieced together Johnson’s 25 years’ working experience as a documentary photographer, and showed us the people and places shot by Johnson in different careers from a free perspective. More importantly, the 24 projects shown here have not been further created as the original materials. This is a collage portrayal of life. Johnson witnessed many things: a Nigerian childbirth center, a detention center for Al Qaeda prisoners, michael moore’s antics and so on. "The man with the camera" is a fascinating incarnation of life itself. Even if the director doesn’t make the next step to make the film have his own style, the lens of Johnson’s mother with Alzheimer’s disease adds extra bitterness to the film. The Man with the Camera not only shows the complexity of the world around us, but also shows its universal vulnerability.
67
Morvern Callar
Lynne Ramsay 2002
It’s very difficult to choose the most popular Lynne Ramsay movie. Even though she only made four movies, morvern callar still stands out from the rest compared with Mousetrap and You’re Never Here, which was released last year. Ratter and You’re Never Here both present unique new dimensions. In morvern callar, samantha morton plays a young Scottish woman whose boyfriend committed suicide, and she is dealing with the aftermath. However, this unexpected event revealed her little-known side-she spread her boyfriend’s unpublished novels as her own works and went to Spain for a holiday. Ramsey and Morton agree that morvern callar is not as fascinating as it sounds, but morvern callar is as intoxicating as it was when it was first shown in 2002.
66
Girlfight
Karyn kusama 2000
If the main achievement of karyn kusama’s maiden work "Girls Punch" in 2000 is to introduce michelle rodriguez to the world for the first time, then this work should be celebrated. The film’s portrayal of Brooklyn young boxers is consistent with Rodriguez’s cold screen image, showing her extraordinary vitality and attitude. The film tells the story of the moody Diana guzman from the constant skirmishes in high school to the new way she found in the gym to vent her anger-boxing. In order to enter the boxing world, the relationship between Diana and Adrian (Santiago Douglas) is becoming increasingly tense. Diana and Adrian became rivals in a fierce confrontation. Kuusama’s intense and naturalistic film style guided these decisive battles with a strong emotion from the heart, and described a young woman’s battle in a man’s world as a story of ultimate success. His description of the intense and fierce fighting in the boxing ring still resonated nearly 20 years after its release.
65
A New Leaf
Elaine may 1971
Elaine may’s directorial debut is depressing and even reprehensible. But at the same time, it is also fascinating and positive. Walter matthau plays a gentleman in the traditional sense of the Old World-he has money, so he doesn’t want to work. He wants to drive his sports car all his life, give orders to his housekeeper and completely escape from the real world. When all his money was spent, he decided to marry a rich bride. A millionaire gardener played by elaine may became his target. He is going to marry her, then kill her and take her money. He is hateful-but, although he still sticks to his plan, he finally protects her from all the bad guys in life, who are bleeding her dry. At first, he was only rich for himself, but when he was protecting her from bad people, he fell in love with her. She can’t cope with life even more than he can. In the process of protecting her, he has developed the skills of dealing with people. It is a self-fulfilling romance, and it is the most romantic movie. Funny, sweet and a little sad, this is elaine may’s classic.
64
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Marielle heller 2018
After three years, after becoming popular with the unforgettable The Diary of a Teenage Girl, marielle heller took this very attractive true story "Can you forgive me? "(co-written by nicole holofcener, who is also female directors) returns to the big screen. This comedy is adapted from the crazy behavior of writer and forger Lee Ethel in real life. melissa mccarthy plays Lee and Richard E. Grant plays her good friend (and her partner in crime) Jack Hawke.
This film can also be said to be a love letter to old new york, a complicated story of a female character, a theft thriller, or a story about the destructive power of loneliness and failure. The risk of forgery is small, but it is also crucial, because the only problem is Li’s livelihood-but Heller believes that this is not only her work and financial problems, but also her self-awareness. What could be more important than this? The content of the film is bittersweet, interesting and even a little scary, but it is also true.
63
Real women are tangible
Patricia Cardoso 2002
The work "Real Women Have Curves", which won the Sundance Film Festival and was directed by Patricia Cardoso, is a favorite work in the best sense. The main character of this film, America Ferrera, is an 18-year-old girl trapped by tradition (working in a sewing factory in Los Angeles and supporting her family) and her own personal ambition (leaving Los Angeles to go to new york for college). Cardoso’s relaxed directing style invites the audience to explore the Latin American culture and themes in the film with open arms. At the same time, it also conveys that family and self-love should not be bound by dogma. Every character is real (especially Lupe Ontiveros as the matriarch of the family), and these characters present extremely charming authenticity in the traditional narrative style.
62
Bend It Like Beckham
Gurinder Chadha 2003
Although David Beckham is no longer a former football star and has long been eclipsed by Messi and Ronaldo, "Bend It Like Beckham" is still as passionate and exciting as when Beckham scored at Old Trafford. Directed by director Gurinder Chadha (whose previous work "Bhaji on the Beach" is also worth digging, and the director’s work "Blinded by the Light" is very popular at Sundance Film Festival), this work deeply explores Punjab in England while maintaining a relaxed atmosphere and keeping the audience in a good impression. Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley are good teammates, even a perfect cast. Even though they and their director ensured that "I Love Beckham" was never a trivial matter, they still kept the performance efficient. As an Indian expatriate who grew up in London, Chadha found pain and beauty in the process of her heroine trying to please her traditional parents and forging her own another identity.
61
restructure
Zheng Minghe 1983
Trinh T. Minh-ha’s first film is a shocking video essay about rural women in Senegal. This film avoids the traditional ethnographic documentary technique, but shoots scenes about the daily life of these rural women; Give up the use of preset narration, but let women tell their own stories. In addition, filming gives up the typical feature of observation film shooting-long lens, and sometimes completely separates audio and video from sound. As its title implies, this film is a more disjointed structure. For Zheng Minghe from Vietnam, it is very important to avoid the alienation that often plagues ethnographic films. In a sense, "reassembly" not only shows the characteristics of a certain kind of film, but also criticizes western prejudice and documentary dogma as a film criticism. Fundamentally, this is a very exciting experiment that needs to be watched many times, and the audience has also been challenged by this experiment.
60
grow up
Penny marshall 1988
Penny Marshall left an unparalleled legacy after her death at the end of last year. She became famous in "Laverne＆Shirley" and started the second act of her happy life behind the camera. "Big" is the first film directed by a woman, which grossed more than $100 million (the final box office income was $151.1 million). This is a very important thing for Hollywood decision makers at that time and the childhood memories of so many audiences. Anyone who can resist the temptation after seeing Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia on the electric piano mat of FAO Schwartz should get a terrible fortune from Zoltar, but Marshall will not allow such a result. As Growing Up shows us, she is a "too kind" filmmaker, so that the audience can’t get a happy ending.
59
My Brilliant Career
Gillian armstrong 1979
After screening the gorgeous feminist feature film My Brilliant Career at Cannes Film Festival and New York Film Festival, Melbourne filmmaker Gillian Armstrong began her long-term directing career ("High Tide", "Mrs. Soffel"), Little Women (. The film was adapted from the classic works at the turn of the century by the writer Miles Franklin, and was nominated for the best costume design at the Oscar. Judy Davis is also famous for this film. She won the Best Actress Award of the British Film Academy (BAFTA) for her role as the young and ambitious writer Sybylla Melvyn in the film. Judy turned down her two suitors (who can give up young Sam Neil? ), and then started her independent life in New South Wales. "I won’t apologize for being conceited," she declared, "because I am!"
58
Zola Neil Heston’s Early Ethnographic Films
1920s-30s
Since the 1920s, Zora Neal Hurston has been a pioneer in many fields, including film production, which has helped the rapid development. It can be said that Zora Neal Hurston is the first African-American female filmmaker. In 1928, during an ethnographic study in the southern countryside, Heston made more than a dozen films as a way to protect the cultural heritage of African-Americans in the south. The surviving scrolls include grainy black-and-white scenes that capture children’s play ("Children’s Game", 1928), Baptism in the river ("Baptism", 1929), and Logging camp ("Logging", 1928). And the scene about Cudjo Lewis (80-year-old), the last survivor of the slave ship Crotti, who finally arrived in the United States (1859), which is also the theme of Heston’s "Barracoon". The book was published 87 years after its completion. Although these video clips are accompanied by soul music and blues music, they have no subtitles. As the cornerstone of visual anthropology, Heston’s films provide very rare examples about the daily life of ordinary black people in the south at that time.
57
Little Women
Gillian armstrong 1994
Louisa May Alcott’s novel published in 1868 has long been a popular film material (Greta Gerwig is directing the sixth film to be released in 2019), and this film is meticulously produced and has become the fifth iteration of the classic. Directed by gillian armstrong, the film features an all-star cast including Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, Susan Sarandon, Kirsten Dunst and Christian Bale. As a feature film produced in 1994, this film tells the story of the March sisters who grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, during the American Civil War: beautiful Meg, irascible Joe, kind Beth and affectionate Amy. Because their father went to the battlefield to fight, the girls worked hard under the guidance of their determined mother Marmee. The conflict between sisters’ external obligations and their inner personal desires makes a charming children’s story upgrade to the core of feminist films.
fifty-six
Cashmere Mafia
Céline Sciamma 2014
Céline Sciamma’s "Girls’ Gang" is one of the best growth films for teenagers in the past decade. In this film, Karidja Touré plays a young woman. In order to escape from her bad personal life, she joined a girl gang outside Paris. The team gave her a sense of self-worth. At the same time, Xi Anma shows the growth of this role in the way of near-Hitchcock. In order to avoid treating it as a single neat narrative, Xi Anma used the inspiration gained from relevant experiences to describe every development of these characters from the shallow to the deep. From the girl with a knife in her kitchen in her pocket to several scenes, she joined the girl gang and sang Rihanna’s Diamonds together. These steady images made the traditional characters reappear in a fresh and exciting way.
55
You Were Never Really Here
Lynne Ramsay 2018
Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Here is an extraordinary postmodern action film. This film can not only be used as a personality study of human violence caused by psychology, but also as a touchstone for the audience’s desire for violence in action movies. The perfect Joaquin Phoenix plays a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and is assigned to rescue a young girl from a high-end prostitution ring. Ramsey thought about the nature of violence. She eliminated the violence in the image through challenging directing scrutiny, but strengthened the emotional torture between Joe and the audience. You’ve never been here is 89 points long. Although there is almost no horror and grotesque, most viewers think it is one of the most violent movies they have seen in ten years. Ramsey knocked you down by editing and directing.
54
The Savages
Tamara Jenkins 2007
Tamara Jenkins directed only three feature films in twenty years, but each film left its mark and made the audience expect more. As a talented director of three feature films (others are Slums of Beverly Hills and Private Life last year) and an original (and single-player) screenwriter, The Savages show that Jenkins can capture the unique things in family life that are ignored but resonate. In this film, she relates the complexities of two strong-willed and long-separated brothers and sisters in order to find a common position in caring for their father. She also received performances from Laura Linney (whose performance and the script of this film were nominated for the Oscar that year) and Philip Seymour Hoffman, which were almost the best performances in their careers. One of the hallmarks of Jenkins’ works is that although she has always insisted on creating contemporary family narratives, she has deeply studied different situations and relationships and found that each fact transcends many cliches that appear in similar stories.
53
Paris Is Burning
Jenny Livingstone 1990
Over the years, Jennie Livingston’s popular documentary has been experiencing a series of storms of criticism and controversy, but its influence has remained undiminished. The film was filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s and released in 1990. This film introduces drag queens and transgender women who have brought drag dancing shows in new york into the whole culture and changed their cultural structure forever. In Livingstone’s films, the characters are well dressed and the real lives of nine drag queens are shown. They live at their own frequency, higher than life itself. At that time, the film was praised for involving the intersection of race, class and sex, but Livingstone’s white identity eventually became the focus of many film critics’ questioning. Although this film was listed in the National Film Registry in 2016, feminist philosophers such as Bell Hooks and Judith Butler have begun to discuss this topic. The dance floor culture and its undeniable power to become a hot spot on the screen have inspired other projects, including Kiki in 2016 and the TV series Pose produced by American FX TV. However, the enduring popularity of Paris is ensuring communication with these projects.
fifty-two
breathe
Melanie laurent 2014
From the turbulent first scene of her film to its Palme d ‘Or-level long shot and the shocking ending, the second feature film of the versatile Mélanie Laurent came out surprisingly. Breathing is a shrewdly designed thriller about teenagers’ insecurity, sexual psychological violence and growth turbulence. This film tells a twisted story about the delicate friendship between girls and someone’s adolescent’s longing for choking memories. There is an inseparable intimacy between a timid child from a single-parent family (Joséphine Japy) and a mysterious new girl in school (unforgettable Lou de Laâge). At the same time, the way this relationship broke down is equally real. Do people feel free because of passion, or are they imprisoned by their own desires? This is a difficult question to answer, but in previous movies, it is rare to ask this question with such relish.
51
Mabel’s Blunder
Mabel Normand 1914
From the very beginning, Mabel Normand challenged the heroine of Ice Muscle jade bone created by David Griffith and the fragile beauty depicted in the portraits of "Gibson Girls" at that time. She is the head of Mack Sennett’s chaotic studio "The Troupe", and she is good at throwing pies, exercising, playing tricks and thinking endless new ideas. The studio is normand’s spiritual pillar to some extent, so it makes sense for Sennett to allow normand to start making his own films-especially when another spiritual pillar may be losing her (which he will eventually do), just like Chaplin and Arbuckle, to move to a bigger studio. The change of the director’s role leads to normand’s films becoming more Mabel, including a more direct view of the film from her own perspective. In Mabel’s Mistakes, normand accepted a false identity premise and pushed it off the cliff into a kind of gender-distorted joy. In the hands of normand, this farce gained the freedom to destroy the social shackles.
Author | Christian Blauvelt, Eric Kohn, Anne Thompson, Kate Erbrand, David Ehrlich, Chris O ‘Falt, Judedry, Tom Brueggemann, Bill Desowitz, Tambay Obenson, Michael Nordine, Zack Sharf.
Translator | Li Zhuyu Hu Huahui Peng Yuanlong Lin Zhiyi Tang Yuqi Feng Yuan Bai Jinming
Proofreading | Lu Huixin You Yuqi Ren Yiru
Typesetting | Gu Fangqi
Editor | Huang Zhouying
Original link: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/02/female-directors-best-movies-directed-by-women-1202045399/
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Original title: "[The Second Series] The Ranking of the 100 Greatest Women Directed Movies in Film History (I)"
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Epidermis; epidermis![[dms]](https://baidubox-emoji.cdn.bcebos.com/imgs/%5Bdms%5D.png?r=2025100817 "[dms]")
Skin, dermis
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Offset n. offset n. offset n.![[tmsferk]](https://baidubox-emoji.cdn.bcebos.com/imgs/%5Btmsferk%5D.png?r=2025100817 "[tmsferk]")
Atmospheric adj. atmospheric
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Very small; Insignificant (informal)
