Directors

In Monday’s post I asked if you could name five women directors off the top of your head and encouraged you to share some favorite females behind the lens. And WOW, between us we came up with nearly 70!

Since there are few things I enjoy more than compiling research and sharing information (Heck, it’s one of the reasons why I’m a writer) I’ve put together a list of all the women directors you posted in the comments section, along with the title of one or two of their movies. I hope it will serve as a good reference resource for sister (and fellow) feminist film geeks.

I also wanted to re-raise a question I asked in that post that wasn’t addressed: Do you think women directors (and by extension women screenwriters) reflect women’s lives and handle women’s issues more authentically than men? More responsibly?

Sarah Mirk’s post last month, Beat the Majority - Name a Female Scientist, reminded me of an ad I saw several years ago for a Women in Film festival here in Seattle. In it, a dominatrix flanked by muscle men is asking a man in an interrogation chair if he can name five female directors – five female directors who weren’t actresses first. Of course, he can’t, and the dominatrix proceeds to list all the directors included in that year’s festival line-up. While many accomplished actresses have also directed – Barbara Streisand, Jodie Foster, Ida Lupino, Sofia Coppola, Penny Marshall, and Diane Keaton – to name but a few; it could be argued that it was their acting that helped them break into directing. This should in no way belittle any of their accomplishments, but what about women who set out to direct in the first place, without the benefit of already being recognized?