The female gaze: 100 overlooked films directed by women

January 5, 2022 10:01 AM

The British Film Institute has compiled a list of 100 overlooked films directed by women: "In this list we aim to write women back into film history by championing 100 female-directed hidden gems that have been forgotten or unfairly overlooked – with contributions from Jane Campion, Greta Gerwig, Claire Denis, Isabelle Huppert, Agnès Varda, Tilda Swinton, our regular contributors listed below and many more special guests."
posted by carrienation (22 comments total)

Burying Leni Riefenstahl: one woman’s lifelong crusade against Hitler’s favorite film-maker
posted by robbyrobs at 10:07 AM on January 5, 2022 [7 favorites]

Besides the couple of Indian directors and films mentioned, I would like to add a few others well worth watching:

* Nandita Das: Manto
* Meera Nair: Salaam Bombay
* Shonali Bose: Margarita with a straw
* Kalpana Lajmi: Rudaali
* Sai Paranjpye: Sparsh

(And many others I am no doubt missing.)
posted by splitpeasoup at 10:36 AM on January 5, 2022 [5 favorites]

This is a great list!

In a bit of synchronicity, DirtyOldTown posted #55, Slumber Party Massacre, over on FanFare just a week ago.
posted by mstokes650 at 10:38 AM on January 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

Also available as a convenient Letterboxd list for those completists out there. Looking over the list right now, I've seen only 4 out of the 100 named movies, which tells me that I have some work to do.
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:40 AM on January 5, 2022 [5 favorites]

Looking forward to seeing these. (I expect to have snarky comments about any such list. But, in this case, it's 90% stuff I've never heard of before and 5% stuff I love. Thanks!)
posted by eotvos at 10:47 AM on January 5, 2022

Many thanks for posting this-- I just put a number of them on my lists to watch.
posted by travertina at 10:55 AM on January 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

Seen and recommend:
Merrily We Go To Hell (1932) - Dorothy Arzner, adult and devastating in the ways that only Pre-code can be

El Camino (1963) - Ana Mariscal, in a similar vein to her more well-known countryman Luis García Berlanga, an excellent sendup of parochial Catholicism and Francoism.

The Loveless (1981) - Kathryn Bigelow & Monty Montgomery, someone on Letterboxd reviewed this by saying "every frame looking like Norman Rockwell trying to gentrify Tom of Finland" and that is 100% correct

Losing Ground (1982) - Kathleen Collins, a tale of moderation and balance in relationships willing to play with mixed mediums of painting, dance, and film in interesting ways. Also very funny at times.

Looking forward to catching up with even more of these!
posted by JauntyFedora at 11:57 AM on January 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

This is a cool list! Disappointingly, many of the ones I'm interested in aren't available anywhere but I still added several to my various to-watch lists.
posted by edencosmic at 1:17 PM on January 5, 2022

edencosmic, empathy. I know that a list of previously-unconsidered film work is almost by definition going to be hard to follow through on, but it’s such a bummer to know I probably *won’t* be able to see so many of the films here that sound so incredible. Even more so when I could, if I was just willing to spend 200.00 on the rare DVD + shipping + a DVD player since I haven’t owned an optical drive since 2008. Bleargh.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 2:31 PM on January 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

Thank you, carrienation! I am relishing the descriptions of The Apple and the Carmen Miranda documentary and many others, and hope someday I’ll get to see them - and The Black Dog is on YouTube - and it’s an important, humbling moment to acknowledge that I Can’t Always Get What I Want, and to affirm that the beauty and power of art I never see still exists and makes its ripples in the world.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 2:35 PM on January 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

I’m always a little sad when Alice Wu’s Saving Face gets no love. It’s funny, touching, and bittersweet, watching as it’s characters navigate coming out, immigrant histories, surprising friendships, generational love and tension, and a very low-key (but high-stakes, for the characters) mystery.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:47 PM on January 5, 2022 [4 favorites]

related: Maggie Gyllenhaal (sp?) is getting a lot of props for her new olivia coleman vehicle 'the lost daughter'. but it sounds very...bleak.
posted by j_curiouser at 2:59 PM on January 5, 2022

It may seem strange to call a landmark of cinema like Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust (1991) forgotten or overlooked, but it's really hard to think of any other film of similar stature that is less widely known. Unfortunately the 2016 restored version isn't on Netflix anymore (in the US, at least), but you can rent it on several of the streaming services.

Claudia Weill's Girlfriends (1978) got an excellent blu-ray edition from Criterion last year. If you'd prefer streaming it's also available on the big services.

Happy to see Margarethe von Trotta's The German Sisters (aka Marianne and Juliane) on the list, but ideally it would include her entire 'Sisters' trilogy. I particularly love the first one: Sisters, or the Balance of Happiness (1979). Here it is on YouTube.
posted by theory at 3:52 PM on January 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

There's a lot I haven't seen, but all of the ones that I've seen on this list are excellent.

Ulrike Ottinger (Joan of Arc of Mongolia)
Doris Dörrie (Men)
posted by ovvl at 4:48 PM on January 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

I have not seen a single one of these! Thank you for posting- a lot to look forward to.
posted by emd3737 at 5:49 PM on January 5, 2022

Oooh a lovely 2022 project! I've only seen a couple of these, and the selection looks so diverse and interesting. I also want to highlight robbyrob's link to Burying Leni Riefenstahl above - that was a riveting read and worth an FPP of its own.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 6:32 PM on January 5, 2022

Yeah, this is a hard list to crack: I think I have seen six, and almost always in odd and memorable circumstances: Kissed was a 9:00 AM slot at TIFF after I’d been up all night; Proof I saw when I bought a ticket to a Roberto Benigni movie in Tel Aviv and realized belatedly that Italian dialogue with Hebrew subtitles was not going to work (the other way around would have been fine), so I popped into the other screen of the twin cinema and found an Australian gem I had never heard of before and have never been able to track down again.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:13 PM on January 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

If you're up for a real challenge, here's a Letterboxd list of over 7,000 films directed by women. Looks like I've watched 103 so far.
posted by octothorpe at 6:04 AM on January 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

if I missed it on the list, I'm sorry, but it looks like the creators of the list should be sorry: Antonia's Line (1996 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film), written and directed by Marleen Gorris. Thanks to this remarkable post I'm reminded of the film and determined to obtain it so I can watch it again, with good friends (one of whom is a grandmother to an Antonia).
posted by elkevelvet at 7:34 AM on January 6, 2022

Absent: The best vampire movie ever made - Near Dark directed by Kathryn Bigelow.
posted by hoodrich at 8:26 AM on January 6, 2022

Absent: The best vampire movie ever made - Near Dark directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

I think there is an unstated "1 film per director" limit and her first film The Loveless is already on the list
posted by JauntyFedora at 3:23 PM on January 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Just last night I watched La Pointe Courte, directed by Agnes Varda in 1955 (currently showing on The Criterion Channel), which many now say is really the first French New Wave film, and it made me wonder how she powered through... doing work that everyone here would have seen if it had been made by Godard or Truffaut...

It also made me think about how the 'female gaze' is more of an equal gaze, meaning that the world of La Pointe Courte is made up of men and women all going about their lives and given equal weight, whereas I often feel with the other auteurs of French New Wave that women are an exotic other whose habits are baffling.
posted by maggiemaggie at 6:15 PM on January 6, 2022