Bethany Ainsworth-Coles

The Strange Case of the Hidden Female Director

What links the following films? ‘City of God,’ ‘Turbo Kid,’ ‘Slumdog Millionaire,’ ‘The Act of Killing’ and ‘Moomins on the Riviera.’ They all have women directors in their directorial teams. … Why did many of us think the movies were directed by men? If they received awards recognition, why were the men the only ones awarded?

This guest post written by Bethany Ainsworth-Coles is an edited version of a post that originally appeared at Tonight We Are Dinosaurs. It is cross-posted with permission.

What links the following films?

City of God, Turbo Kid, Slumdog Millionaire, The Act of Killing and Moomins on the Riviera. Got it? They all have women directors in their directorial teams. This leads to some big questions. Why didn’t we know these female directors were on the team? Why did many of us think the movies were directed by men? If they received awards recognition, why were the men the only ones awarded? Can these films be considered for the #52FilmsByWomen challenge? What happened to these women directors and why were they forgotten?

To answer these questions I needed to write more questions.

Of our original list of films, we need to split them into two sections.

Team 1:

Slumdog Millionaire directed by Danny Boyle and co-directed by Loveleen Tandan
The Act of Killing directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, co-directed by Christine Cynn, and co-directed by Anonymous
City of God directed by Fernando Meirelles and co-directed by Kátia Lund
Moomins in the Riviera directed by Xavier Picard and co-directed by Hanna Hemillä.

But then we are left with just Turbo Kid and I wanted the categories to be even. So let’s add a few more titles to Team 2.

Team 2:

Turbo Kid directed by RKSS (François Simard, Anouk Whisell, and Yoann-Karl Whisell). RKSS is the super funky cool name of radical directorial cool cats Road Kill Super Stars.
Little Miss Sunshine directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Ruby Sparks directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Nim’s Island directed by Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin

Now with this in place we can start working this out.

So what’s the difference between the films in Team 1 and Team 2?

Co-Directors vs Teams.

Team 1 you may notice uses co-directors instead of directorial teams. Often this is due to eligibility in festivals, competitions, and associations. The Directors Guild of America (DGA) will not allow more than one director to direct a film as they have a one director per film policy. However, there are some notable exceptions for a “bona fide team,” including the Coen’s, Wachowski’s, and Valerie Faris & Jonathan Dayton, who we will get to later. The DGA also makes exceptions for “multi-storied” films and multilingual films. This DGA’s policy led to Robert Rodriguez dropping out of the DGA to make Sin City as they would not make an exception and allow co-directing credits for Frank Miller due to lack of experience.

Notably, the DGA does not recognize co-directors. At all. Sometimes filmmakers get around this by putting the co-director somewhere else in the credits as well and giving them another title, such as a producer. As mentioned earlier, the rule is sometimes let through for teams but not very often.

The Academy Awards also do not recognize co-directors with regards to award nominations.

What does that mean for the co-directors?

Mostly this means that people don’t know about them. Although sometimes, certain awards and competitions do give them recognition, such as the AFI Audience Award and Washington DC Area Film Critics Association who gave recognition to both Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund for City of God. Sadly, these awards and competitions that recognize co-directors are few and far between. Meirelles went on to make The Constant Gardner and Blindness. Lund directed some TV, including the series (fdp) and City of Men (where she once again collaborated with Meirelles). She is only just back to filmmaking; this time with new documentary Miratus.

Okay, so you’ve talked about Lund. Where are the other women co-directors now? Do they have other movies that I can support?

Loveleen Tandan, the co-director of Slumdog Millionaire, was awarded alongside Danny Boyle with the New York Film Critics Online Award for Best Director. Currently on her IMDB page, there are no new credits since Slumdog Millionaire other than a Thanks in short film The Road Home from 2010.

The Act of Killing co-director Christine Cynn collaborated again with Joshua Oppenheimer on The Look of Silence, this time as an additional Camera and she was credited with a Very Special Thanks. Cynn recently directed and co-produced the upcoming documentary Shooting Ourselves.

Hanna Hemillä was credited not just as co-director (and sometimes director) but as a writer and producer of Moomins on the Riviera. She has quite the catalog of work, especially as a producer, and undoubtedly she will continue to make more films.

So can we count Team 1 and Team 2 movies for the #52FilmsByWomen challenge?

I’d argue yes. These films are directed by a woman. There may be a man on the directorial team but I don’t think that should take away from the women directors’ work. I think it’s very important to give them recognition for the work they did, especially as many organizations won’t. So tell people, write about them. Don’t forget the female co-directors and teams and find others that have been forgotten and if you like the movie sing their praises and follow their career!

Recommended reading:
Why Not Quit the Director’s Guild? by Daniel Engber at Slate
What the Hell is a Co-Director Anyway? by Melissa Silverstein at The Huffington Post
And the Winner Isn’t… by Alex Bellos at The Guardian
DGA page 14 Section 1-301. Definition of Employees Recognised

*Thank you to Disqus user Dodo for the inspiration behind this post.

Bethany Ainsworth-Coles is a writer from England who enjoys overanalyzing things and watching movies. She can be found over at her blog Tonight We Are Dinosaurs or on Twitter @wierdbuthatsok.

‘St. Trinian’s’: Girlish Wiles and Cunning Friendships

This guest post by Bethany Ainsworth-Coles appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

SPOILERS AHEAD

St. Trinian’s is a British comedy legend. In the series of films, a rabble of girls are taught by a selection of oddities and petty criminals, brewing vodka, and doing what they do best. Of course what they do best is illegal, but that’s what these girls are meant to do. In 2007, the films were resurrected with St. Trinian’s, which like so much media directed toward girls, was panned by critics. However, what it is at its heart is girls banding together to save their school with their teachers and winning. It doesn’t matter how they dress, what group they belong to, or their age.

Now the school itself run by the fantastic Miss Camilla Fritton (played by Rupert Everett) and its group of misfit teaching staff includes the big drinker Matron (Celia Imrie) as Camilla’s best friend and confidante. Their friendship is lovely as it is framed not just as two old women best friends. They aren’t the standard old ladies of film past; they are hard drinking, pill-poppers who look after each other, such as turning up to support Camilla when her dog is killed.

Matron and Miss Fritton judging people

The friendships throughout the film defy the general limits that films put on girls’ cinema. The groups (e.g. the emos, posh tottiess, chavs, geeks, etc.) frequently band together. When word gets round that the school needs money, all the girls band together to save it by robbing the national gallery of “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” Isn’t that great? Girls banding together to perform a successful heist with cover, dynamite, and some seriously fantastic dancing is just one of the reasons this film deserves more love. The girls work together–every group from the feral first years to the hippie girl (Juno Temple), and even the school secretary joins in.

The girls working together

Whilst most of the groups already know and tolerate each other, Taylor (a chav as played by Kathryn Drysdale) and Andrea (an emo as played by Paloma Faith–yes that Paloma Faith) become friends through circumstance. Whilst they despise each other since they are from different social circles, when the geeks choose them as the two other girls to actually steal the picture, they slowly become friends. Yes, it’s that trope again, but this time it really works. Their relationship is integral–even though Andrea inadvertently strands the head girl on the other side with the picture–she and Taylor both celebrate when they win. Realistically, they don’t become best friends either but they grow a new tolerance for each other that is certainly an admirable thing to show in a film for girls.

Whilst they work outside their groups, the groups are shown as equally important. Unlike films that actively scathe group systems (e.g. Mean Girls), St. Trinian’s endorses it. This is especially seen with the posh totties’ Chelsea, Chloe, and Peaches (Tamsin Egerton, Antonia Bernath, and Amara Karan). At face value, they seem like spoiled rich girls; however, they are actually bright charming women who simply enjoy their lifestyles and how they look. They win the quiz through Chloe’s intelligence, not through looks. Also they are pretty strong women who take no prisoners, especially dealing with creepy men taking their trousers down in their dorm room. Of course, everyone knows the only way to deal with that is to chuck that nasty piece of work out of the window and into the fountain below.

Now another interesting friendship is between Camilla and the head girl, Kelly (Gemma Arterton). Camilla doesn’t treat her as someone lesser but treats her as an equal and gives her tasks that she knows will be good for Kelly. However when Kelly can’t finish the heist, instead of letting the girl take the fall, she gets out a grappling hook, zips over, and saves her. It’s not seen as a weakness of Kelly’s either; her needing help is a positive. She can rely on Camilla to save her just like she can rely on her school.

Now whilst this seems like an odd collection of friendships, it is an important selection of lessons. It fosters the idea that girls working together will always be better than scheming men, and will always sort things out even if they do need help. Girls are fearless: willing to steal, blow up iron bars, fight back against creeps, and speak out. And most importantly, it’s OK to make mistakes. The girls also enjoy themselves doing it. What’s better than spending an evening repainting their spiv’s car whilst nattering on to their mates? Nothing apart from convincing the general public your school is exceptional. Which it is in a way. The girls enjoy being themselves, modifying their uniforms to match their personalities, and embracing being girls. There are no uniform codes, no rules against makeup, they brew vodka in science, and aren’t frowned upon for that. They may not be the demure schoolgirls people expect, but they sure are the best.

Like all good films for girls, it suffered like all good films for women, and was panned by male critics who didn’t understand why girls could be so fantastic.

A tense moment for everyone

The soundtrack for St. Trinian’s even consists of mainly girls. It features everyone from the Noisettes, Lady Sovereign, and Girls Aloud does the theme song. This entire film celebrates female friendships and girls in general. Isn’t that fabulous? It is a film with genuine adventure, laughs that don’t depend on mocking the girls but laughing with them. In fact, all the men are pointless and ripe for being used for their cause. This cast of male characters includes Stephen Fry, the Bursar (Toby Jones), the spiv Flash Harry (Russell Brand), Fritton’s own brother (Everett Still), and Geoffrey Thwaites (Colin Firth), who is Camilla’s vague love interest–and antagonist–who is exposed at the end in more ways than one.

In St. Trinian’s, girls are the most important. Their friendships are valued above anything else because without them their scheming wouldn’t work and then they would be in normal schools… and who wants that?

Bethany Ainsworth-Coles is a young writer from England who enjoys over analyzing things and watching films. She tweets over at https://twitter.com/wierdbuthatsok

Death by Stereo: Innocence Lost in ‘The Lost Boys’

‘The Lost Boys’ is a classic 1980s vampire flick directed by Joel Schumacher. It is as famous for its soundtrack as it is for its content. The entire film in fact is exemplified in its main theme–“Cry Little Sister,” by G Tom Mac–from the typical horror themed sections to its classic 80s rock moments down to its choral moments. These sections sum up the film almost perfectly.

This guest post by Bethany Ainsworth-Coles appears as part of our theme week on Movie Soundtracks.

Spoilers Ahead

The Lost Boys is a classic 1980s vampire flick directed by Joel Schumacher. It is as famous for its soundtrack as it is for its content. The entire film in fact is exemplified in its main theme–“Cry Little Sister,” by G Tom Mac–from the typical horror themed sections to its classic 80s rock moments down to its choral moments. These sections sum up the film almost perfectly.

The film itself seems pretty simple; Lucy (and her two sons Michael [Jason Patric] and Sam [Corey Haim] move to Santa Carla to live with Lucy’s dad in Santa Carla. However, Michael falls in with a bad crowd and is seduced into being a vampire by David (Keifer Sutherland), the pack’s leader. There is of course more to it than this (a pair of vampire hunters, a small child, and a generic love interest), but that’s the main gist.

“Cry Little Sister” links to this film perfectly, the way only the best movie themes do. I’m organizing this article in three subtitled sections, which employ quotes from “Cry Little Sister” in relation to parts in the film.

“Love Is With Your Brother”–Homoeroticism and Forgotten Women

In an article about The Lost Boys it would be a travesty to dare forget the amounts of male bonding and homoerotic tension. The vampires and their culture in particular is shown in this light with the androgynous (and gorgeous) David, the supposed leader of the gang as they steal and kill people to feed. He also seduces Michael into drinking the blood, thus beginning his transformation into a vampire. This is an interesting twist on the female seductress trope as seen in most vampire movies. This twist is best summed up Jeff Allard in his review: “Typically (especially today in our Twilight world), either Michael or David would’ve been written as a girl but in The Lost Boys you’ve got a male bringing another male into the fold.”

This is certainly true if we look at typical vampire stories–e.g. Edward turns Bella in Twilight, Dracula turns Lucy Westernra in Dracula, etc. The victim is often the woman and is seen as weak and inferior; by subverting this, Schumacher includes not only an equal playing field but also huge amounts of sexual tension. Especially as in most vampire novels, films etc. the transformation into vampire is often treated incredibly sexually. While this isn’t the first time a man has turned a man into vampire (Anne Rice’s Interview With a Vampire, which is also homoerotic) it is a very interesting occurrence that should not be avoided. David even takes him to his first feed on human blood.

The women throughout this are mainly forgotten and depicted in two major roles: the sister or the mother. All the boys share a bond shown throughout the film. Through the vampires themselves, who are the “sons” of Max (Edward Hermann), to the actual brothers of The Frogs (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander) and of course are main brothers Sam and Michael. Most of the story revolves around Michael’s betrayal of Sam from trying to attack him when the first gets too great. Sam chooses to help him and save him from the Frogs’ vampire killing obsession. This is shown equally in the song “Cry Little Sister” with “love is with your brother,” which repeated several times throughout the song, reinforcing its importance in the piece.

“The Masquerade, Strangers Will Come”–Broken Families

Whilst brotherhood may be a strong point in the film, families themselves are not shown to be as sturdy. Lucy has had a messy divorce, which is the reason she and her boys have moved to Santa Carla. They themselves despite their non-functional new lives get along well and cracks only appear when Lucy dates Max and Michael becomes half vampire. However, this family is not the most interesting of the families. It’s not even the Frog family, who we only see very briefly as a whole unit.

It has to be Max and the boys. Max is the head vampire but has lost control of his boys and is longing to find them a mother, a role he thinks Lucy would be just perfect for. He does genuinely love his boys though, especially when as he walks into the house the final time he sees David’s body.

However, this twisted family image also encapsulates the portrayal of women. During this film, both Star and Lucy take on maternal roles. Lucy, of course, is already a mother, and Star looks after Laddy (the child half vampire). They are both shown to be manipulated by the vampires into becoming family members and helping the group.

“Thou Shall Not Fall”–Innocence Lost

“Cry Little Sister” features a large section of choral vocals repeating religious-type phrases sung by what sounds like children. These are used to great effect during the final scene, where David is impaled and killed by Michael. During this section, once he is impaled, his face slowly regresses back to a child and how he was before he was turned into a vampire thus showing him as an innocent young boy rather than a dead monster. David’s death accompanied by “Cry Little Sister’s” faded choral section singing “thou shall not die” gives the audience just a glimpse of who he was before Max transformed him, probably like Michael against his will. The audience is presented with the horrible truth that David and all the vampires were just missing children shunned by their leader. In death for both David and Marko (Alex Winter, who is the first to be killed and youngest of the boys) they are taken back to being lost children.

“Cry Little Sister” is the perfect song for a fantastic horror movie. Whilst the movie certainly isn’t flawless, it really is an excellent take on the vampire genre (plus who in their right mind doesn’t like teen vampire with cool hair, leather jackets and motorbikes who lives in an abandoned hotel?). They are living the twisted teenage dream and the soundtrack portrays that perfectly.

Recommended reading: Boomer Beefcake and Bonding’s analysis of subtext in The Lost Boys

Bethany Ainsworth-Coles is a young writer from England who enjoys overanalyzing things and watching films. She tweets over at https://twitter.com/wierdbuthatsok.