Film Fatales: Independent Women Directors

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Summary: REVIEW AS PUBLISHED IN IDFA MAGAZINE AMSTERDAM
Review: AT THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LENS

33 Female filmmakers portrayed and asked about their experiences in the film profession,which has been dominated by men for so long.

By Rob van Scheers

Towards the end of the film centennial women have managed to take up a position at the other side of the lens: no longer on screen only as actresses, but behind the camera, calling the shots. This generation in the post-feminist era is the subject of the book 'Film Fatales: Independent Women Directors'. Subdivided into four thematic sections (Documentary Film; Experimental Film; Narrative Film; Beyond the Director's Chair), the book has a pleasant, internationally oriented scope, also making it a crash course in 'female filmmakers from all corners of the world'.

Most people are more or less familiar with successful directors like Susan Seidelman (US), Mira Nair (India), Jane Campion (New Zealand), Marleen Gorris (the Netherlands) and Patricia Rozema (Canada). Other faces are introduced by Judith M. Redding and Victoria A. Brownworth for the first time to an audience which exceeds the specialised in-crowd. Because it is almost always interesting to listen to craftspeople talking passionately about their profession, the relative obscurity of a number of them is not necessarily a drawback in this volume.

PRAGMATIC

Because of the context of the book, the reader obviously starts looking for the female filmmakers'shared experiences, other than the perpetual budgetary problems that are generally applicable to the independent film scene. ('When does a documentary filmmaker know that she is in Hollywood?' the American filmmaker Jessica Lu asked rhetorically, when she was there in 1996 to pick up an Academy Award for her film 'Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien'. The answer: 'When her dress is more expensive than her film.') But just as a book about female authors or female (pop) musicians would result in a pandemonium of opinions, the female directors, both thematically and stylistically, appear to aim for a wide diversity. A sign of maturity, I would say,because unlike in the seventies, the filmmakers are no longer judged by the politically correct content of their utterances (and fortunately they are not steered in that direction by the interviewers).

The pioneer work is largely behind them. 'It's a good thing I was as naive as I was when I started,' Susan Seidelman (maker of films like 'Smithereens', 'Desperately Seeking Susan' and 'She-Devil') says looking back. 'I didn't realize how few women directors there were, how hard it was for women to do what men had been doing for years. (-) The good thing for me about the women's movement was I just thought I could do it, just go out and direct.' This is how pragmatic most of the filmmakers in this book turn out to be, an approach which has led to many a priceless piece of work in the past two decades.

FEMALE LENS?

Therefore, when reading this book, it is not easy to answer the question whether there is something like 'the female lens'. In her commercially not very successful film 'Grace of My Heart' (1996), highly appreciated by music lovers, Allison Anders told the dramatised life story of songwriter Carole King. It is not a 'women's film' by definition: it recounts an episode from the history of popular culture, with an extraordinarily talented woman as the main character. That female directors would like to approach eroticism on the screen differently from their male counterparts is neither a conclusion that can be drawn on the basis of this book: Lizzie Borden (of films like 'Born In Flames', 'Working Girls' and 'Let's Talk About Sex') perceives a 'very anti-sexual time' in our juncture, that goes beyond the fear of AIDS, and that has monopolised Hollywood. Her ambition: 'What I really want to do is show an erection on screen - to actually show a man getting an erection. That is something you never see, even in pornography. An erection has been used as an instrument of brutality toward women in movies - I'd like to turn that around - show it as sexual desire.' Other female directors (Mira Nair, Lourdes Portillo or Julie Dash) rather present ethnicity as their main theme, taking for granted relationships between men and men, women and women and women and men.

THE FIRST ACADEMY AWARD

Seen in this light, the fact that Dutch Marleen Gorris managed to acquire an Academy Award in 1996 as the first female director with 'Antonia' (American title: 'Antonia's Line', awarded in the category 'Best Foreign Language Film') must have been both encouraging and alarming. In many ways, 'Antonia' was pervaded with a typical 'seventies-women's-film' atmosphere, which is precisely the tone most younger female directors want to abandon. But it is true: to win the prize was a milestone. Because: of all the male film bastions ever to be demolished, Hollywood, long after the documentary world and the independent film, is the final headquarters that has to 'come round'. Judging from the extent of passion exposed in 'Film Fatales', this can only be a matter of time.

Rob van Scheers is author of 'PAUL VERHOEVEN' - the biography on the Dutch filmmaker, published by Faber&Faber in november 1997