Jenna Ricker – Bitch Flicks

Women Directors Week: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Women Directors Theme Week here.

Women with a Camera: How Women Directors Can Change the Cinematic Landscape by Emanuela Betti

What I saw… was the problem women have faced for centuries: the popularity of woman as art subject, not as creator. What critics and award judges seem to love are not so much women’s stories, but women’s stories told by men. Stories in which women’s agency is strictly and safely in the hands of a male auteurs. … We need more women filmmakers — not as a way to fill quotas, but because women’s stories are different, unique, and need to be told.

Why Eve’s Bayou Is a Great American Art Film by Amirah Mercer

The story of a family burdened by salacious and supernatural secrets in 1962 Louisiana, the movie has become one of the finer American films in the Southern gothic tradition; but with a Black director and an all-Black cast, Eve’s Bayou has been unceremoniously booted from its deserving recognition as the fantastic, moody art film it is.

Leigh Janiak’s Honeymoon as Feminist Horror by Dawn Keetley

The film thus brilliantly puts the everyday (marriage) on a continuum with the horrifying (possession?), connecting the problem of Bea’s troubled self-expression and containment, now that she’s married, to the later seemingly supernatural plot. … Are the seemingly supernatural elements of the plot symbolic of Bea’s struggles with intimacy and the weighty expectations of married domestic life (sex, cooking, and reproduction)? Janiak’s expert writing and directing definitely leaves open this possible subtext of the film…

When Love Looks Like Me: How Gina Prince-Bythewood Brought Real Love to the Big Screen by Shannon Miller

Gina Prince-Bythewood’s choice to center these themes around a young Black couple shouldn’t feel as revolutionary as it does. But when you consider that “universal” is too often conflated with “white,” Love & Basketball feels like such a turning point in the romance genre. It was certainly a turning point for me because, for a moment, Black love and romance, as told by Hollywood, weren’t mutually exclusive.

Sofia Coppola as Auteur: Historical Femininity and Agency in Marie Antoinette by Marlana Eck

Sofia Coppola’s film conveys, to me, a range of feminist concerns through history. Concerns of how much agency, even in a culture of affluence, women can wield given that so much of women’s lives are dictated by the structures of patriarchy.

The Gender Trap and Women Directors by Jenna Ricker

But, when was the last time ANYONE sat down to write a story, or direct a project and asked themselves — Is this story masculine or feminine? Exactly none, I suspect. … Storytellers tell stories, audiences engage, the formula is quite simple. But, it only works one way — male filmmakers are able to make any film they want without biased-loaded gender questions, whereas women filmmakers always face more scrutiny and criticism.

Individuality in Lucia Puenzo’s XXY, The Fish Child, and The German Doctor by Sara Century

In the end, it is this focus on individuality that is the most striking common theme of Lucia Puenzo’s works. Each of her characters undergoes intense scrutiny from outside forces, be it Alex in ‘XXY’ for their gender, Lala in ‘The Fish Child’ for her infatuation with Ailin, or Lilith from ‘The German Doctor,’ who is quite literally forced into a physical transformation by a Nazi.

Andrea Arnold: A Voice for the Working Class Women of Britain by Sophie Hall

British director/screenwriter Andrea Arnold has three short films and three feature films under her belt, and four out of six of those center on working class people. … [The characters in Fish Tank, Wasp, Red Road, and Wuthering Heights] venture off away from the preconceived notions they have been given, away from the stereotypes forced upon them, and the boxes society has trapped them in.

Susanne Bier’s Living, Breathing Body of Work by Sonia Lupher

Women consistently make good films around the world, even if we have to look outside Hollywood to find them. Susanne Bier is one powerful example. Her vivid, probing explorations into family dynamics and tenuous relationships are fiercely suggestive marks of a female auteur that deserves recognition.

No Apologies: The Ambition of Gillian Armstrong and My Brilliant Career by Rebecca Hirsch Garcia

However, Armstrong also doesn’t mock Sybylla’s ambition or treat it as a joke. In Armstrong’s world, the fact that Sybylla has desires and wants outside of marriage and men is treated seriously because Sybylla takes it seriously. She never needs to prove herself worthy enough for her desires. … [She is] a woman who bravely acts according to her own desires, someone willing to risk everything in order to have what she wants and who recognizes that men and romance are not the sum total of her world.

OMG a Vagina: The Struggle for Artistic The Struggle for Feminine Artistic Integrity in Kimberly Peirce’s Carrie by Horrorella

Carrie is a terrifying and compelling story, but there is certainly something to be gained and perhaps a certain truth to be found in watching the pain of her journey into womanhood as told by a woman director. … But even in the face of these small victories, we have to wonder how the film would have been different had Peirce been allowed to tell this story without being inhibited by the fear and discomfort of the male voices around her.

Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark: Busting Stereotypes and Drawing Blood by Lee Jutton

Both brutally violent and shockingly sexy, Near Dark’s influence can be felt nearly thirty years later on a new crop of unusual vampire dramas that simultaneously embrace and reject the conventions of the genre. … Yet among all these films about outsiders, Near Dark will always have a special place in my heart for being the one to show me that as a filmmaker, I was not alone in the world after all.

Fangirls, It’s Time to #AskForMore by Alyssa Franke

In the battle to address the staggering gender gap in women directing for film and television, there is one huge untapped resource — the passion and organizing power of fangirls.

Euzhan Palcy’s A Dry White Season: Black Lives in a White Season by Shara D. Taylor

It is doubtful that anyone else could have made A Dry White Season as poignantly relevant as Euzhan Palcy did. Her eye for the upending effects of apartheid on Black families brings their grievances to bear. … The meaning behind Palcy’s work resounds clearly: Black lives matter in 1976 South Africa as they do in 2016 America.

Why Desperately Seeking Susan Is One of My Favorite Films by Alex Kittle

The character was created to be an icon, a model for Roberta and other women like her, an image to hold in our heads of what life could be like if we just unleashed our inner pop star. But she’s also real enough that it feels like you might spot her in a hip nightclub, dancing uninhibited and having more fun than anyone else there just because she’s being herself.

Movie You Need to Be Talking About: Advantageous by Candice Frederick

Directed and co-written by Jennifer Phang, Advantageous is a surprisingly touching and purposeful film that revitalizes certain elements of the sci-fi genre while presenting two powerful voices in women filmmakers: Jennifer Phang and Jacqueline Kim.

Concussion: When Queer Marriage in the Suburbs Isn’t Enough by Ren Jender

The queer women we see in sexual situations in Concussion are not cut from the same Playboy-ready cloth as the two women in Blue is the Warmest Color: one client is fat, another is an obvious real-life survivor of breast cancer and some of her clients, like Eleanor herself, are nowhere near their 20s anymore.

I’m a Lilly – And You’re Probably One Too: All Women Face Gender Discrimination by Rachel Feldman

Another obstacle to getting Ledbetter made is the industry’s perception of my value as the film’s director. There are certainly a handful of women directors whose identities are well known, but generally, even colleagues in our industry, when asked, can only name a handful of female directors. Of course, there are thousands of amazingly talented women directing; in fact there are 1,350 experienced women directors in our Guild, but for the vast majority of us our credits are devalued and we struggle to be seen and heard – just like Lilly.

Making a Murderer, Fantastic Lies, and the Uneasy Exculpation Narratives by Women Directors by Eva Phillips

What is most remarkable and perhaps most subversively compelling about both ‘Making a Murderer’ and ‘Fantastic Lies,’ and about the intentions and directorial choices of their respective creators, is that neither documentary endeavor chronicles the sagas of particularly defensible — or even, to some, at all likable — men.

Lena Dunham and the Creator’s “Less-Than-Perfect” Body On-Screen by Sarah Halle Corey

Every time someone calls to question the fact that Lena Dunham parades her rolls of fat in front of her audience, we need to examine why they’re questioning it. Is it because they’re wondering how it serves the narrative of ‘Girls’? Or is it because they’re balking at “less-than-perfection” (according to normative societal conventions) in the female form?

Female Becomingness Through Maya Deren’s Lens in Meshes of the Afternoon by Allie Gemmill

Her most famous work, Meshes of the Afternoon becomes, in this way, a reading of a woman working with and against herself through splitting into multiple iterations of herself. Most importantly, the film unpacks the notion that not only is the dream-landscape of a woman complex, it is bound tightly to her, defining who she is and guiding her constantly through the world like a compass.

Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy: Heartbreak in a Panning Shot by ThoughtPusher

Through the course of the film, Kelly Reichardt’s pacing is so deliberate that even the most ordinary moments seem intensely significant. Reichardt’s framing traps Wendy in shots as much as her broken-down car and lack of money trap her in the town.

Sofia Coppola and The Silent Woman by Paulette Reynolds

Many films touch upon the theme of female isolation, but I remain fascinated with Sofia Coppola’s three major cinematic creations that explore the world of The Silent Woman: The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, and Marie Antoinette (2006). Each film delves into this enigma, forming a multifaceted frame of reference for a shared understanding.

The Anti-Celebrity Cinema of Mary Harron: I Shot Andy Warhol, The Notorious Bettie Page, and The Anna Nicole Story by Elizabeth Kiy

I’ve always thought Mary Harron’s work was the perfect example of why we need female directors. I think the films she produces provide a perspective we would never see in a world unilaterally controlled by male filmmakers. Harron appears to specialize in off-beat character studies of the types of people a male director may not gravitate towards, nor treat with appropriate gravitas. She treats us to humanizing takes on sex workers and sex symbols, angry lesbians and radical feminism and makes them hard to turn away from.

How Women Directors Turn Narrative on Its Head by Laura Power

Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl), Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know), and the women directors of Jane the Virgin are infusing elements of whimsy into their work in strikingly different ways, but to similar effect. The styles they’re using affect the audience’s relationship with their stories and with the characters themselves by giving the viewer an insight that traditional narratives don’t provide.

Wadjda: Empowering Voices and Challenging Patriarchy by Sarah Mason

Haifaa al-Mansour casts an eye onto the complexity of navigating an autocratic patriarchal society in Wadjda. This bold voice from Saudi Arabia continues to empower voices globally.

Mary Harron’s American Psycho: Rogue Feminism by Dr. Stefan Sereda

American Psycho fails the Bechdel Test. … The script, co-written by Guinevere Turner and Mary Harron, eschews any appeal to women’s empowerment. … When the leading man isn’t laughing at remarks from serial killers about decapitating girls, he’s coming after sex workers with chainsaws (at least in his head). Yet American Psycho espouses a feminist perspective that fillets the values held by capitalist men.

21 Short Films by Women Directors by Film School Shorts

For Women’s History Month, we’ve put together a playlist of 21 of those films for your viewing pleasure. As you’ll see, no two of these shorts are alike. They deal with topics like autism, racism, sexism, losing a loved one and trying to fit in and find yourself at any age.

Evolution in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Chicken With Plums by Colleen Clemens

In a similar way to Marji (Persepolis), Nasser (Chicken with Plums) must be sent far away to have his journey of becoming. There is something in him — talent — that requires he must go beyond his home. But whereas in Marji’s case she must go away to protect herself, Nasser must go away so he can grow, get bigger and fuller and richer.

Vintage Viewing: Alice Guy-Blaché, Gender-Bending Pioneer by Brigit McCone

When was the last time we watched vintage female-authored films and discussed their art or meaning? Bitch Flicks presents Vintage Viewing — a monthly feature for viewing and discussing the films of cinema’s female pioneers. Where better to start than history’s first film director, Alice Guy-Blaché?

The Gender Trap and Women Directors

This guest post written by Jenna Ricker appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

“Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female — whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.” – Simone de Beauvoir

There I was, waiting to be introduced at my first film festival for my first feature film. My stomach was all butterflies. Not sweet lilting flappers, but juiced up buggers pinging around at breakneck speed, swirling with worry about whether the audience would like my movie, or walk out, or worse… what if someone had smuggled in a tomato?

As I stood there trying to play it cool, the festival programmer began talking about my film — a coming of age drama about a young boy who, while searching for his absentee mother, re-connects with his older half-brother— in a way I hadn’t anticipated. While I know he meant to be flattering, I was struck by how many times I heard a variation of this phrase: How did she write and direct this masculine story so well as a woman?

The butterflies, struck dumb by confusion, stopped swirling. I didn’t know I’d written a masculine story. I’d heard of chick-flicks, which I imagined to be movies that chickens watched in the comfort of their coops, but was ‘masculine’ a legit genre? I rattled the usual suspects off in my head — comedy, drama, thriller, horror, masculine, feminine — hold up, what?

Cut to a few years later. I’ve got the same butterflies as I wait to be introduced at a different festival for the premiere of my second feature film — this one a noir-inspired mystery about a conspiracy to control a revolutionary design by inventor, Nikola Tesla. The festival programmer passionately described the film, talked beautifully about our wonderful cast and then with a nod in my direction said — When you meet this director you won’t believe she made such a dark, masculine film. My butterflies gave me a swift kick in the gut.

Here’s the thing — all of the festival programmers who described my films as ‘masculine’ genuinely liked and celebrated my work. They were wonderfully gracious, and no doubt intended to be complimentary, and I’m eternally grateful that they saw something they appreciated and wanted to include in their festivals. But, it got me to thinking.

What makes a story masculine or feminine?

I did some research, reading articles and excerpts that addressed gender identity, feminist literature, sexuality, but I came up short on finding research on assigning gender to stories. What I did discover is that over 80 languages have nouns, verbs and adjectives that are deemed masculine or feminine. Are you suddenly having flashbacks to freshman year Spanish?

In our current political climate it might be easy to forget that words have meanings, however, in these languages gender is inextricably tied to the cultural interpretation. As Mark Twain noted in A Tramp Abroad, “In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has… A tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female… tomcats included.” While English doesn’t officially have ‘gender-words’, it does have gender-connotations. Take pronouns, for example. I say doctor, you say? He. I say nurse, you say? She. (If you didn’t, congratulations, you’re one in a million.) Language is powerful, like stories, and it would appear our socialization subconsciously compels us to assign gender to both. What’s that about?

There are ‘female-driven’ stories, like Silkwood, and there are ‘male-driven’ stories, like Tootsie; stories driven by the main characters’ gender AND their storyline, which is distinct from ascribing a gender to a story. What the festival programmers didn’t realize, because it’s something that runs deep inside us all, was that their need to label the story by gender was tied wholly to the fact that a woman had directed it. Do you think anyone said to Sydney Pollack, “How did you direct such a feminine film?” when The Way We Were hit theaters. Was James L. Brooks inundated with questions like, “How did you understand such feminine characters?” when he helmed Terms of Endearment? Yeah, I doubt it, too.

But, when was the last time ANYONE sat down to write a story, or direct a project and asked themselves — Is this story masculine or feminine? Exactly none, I suspect. Why is every-day filmmaking ‘for the boys’ cast through an entirely different lens when it comes to the women? Kathryn Bigelow’s Hurt Locker was powerfully executed, and I guarantee the phrase, “Can you believe a woman directed it?” was used by many while exiting the theaters. But did those same folks walk out of The Hours wondering how Stephen Daldry managed to pull it off? Storytellers tell stories, audiences engage, the formula is quite simple. But, it only works one way — male filmmakers are able to make any film they want without biased-loaded gender questions, whereas women filmmakers always face more scrutiny and criticism.

A couple of yeas ago I was on a ‘Women in the Director’s Chair’ panel with these inspiring women filmmakers and we were discussing this need to place gender on story solely when the storyteller was female. Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone, Stray Dog) shared that it had been suggested to her that maybe the way to combat this was to use a male nom-de-plume, or try submitting a script with just one’s initials to see if that changed the reaction or greased the wheels. But, as we all surmised, then what? You’re sitting across from a producer who thought you were a man, and now you’re having an awkward ‘gotcha moment’? And, besides, who wants to pretend to be someone else when it’s already hard enough being yourself in this industry.

This is not just a nuisance but a symptom of a much larger problem: Women writers and directors are already hindered by gender labels miles from the finish line. Other marginalized writers and directors are impeded as much, if not more, when it comes to storytelling. As difficult as it is for all women filmmakers, it’s even more difficult for women of color, LBTQ women and women with disabilities. And, while making a movie is incredibly hard for anybody — it takes ridiculous amounts of stamina and unwavering focus, no matter your gender — when a woman wants to tell a story, her obstacle course is often fraught with more walls to scale, barbed-wire to beat, and fire pits to leap over.

And one of the biggest obstacles, in my opinion, is this need to label a woman’s storytelling as either masculine or feminine. This is yet another Catch-22 for a woman director. You want to tell a story about a World War II battlefield? The gatekeepers will decide that’s probably better told by a man. You want to tell a story about a World War II nursing station? Okay, but the gatekeepers will tell you that no one is going to watch it because it’s about women. This denotes that the first story is masculine and the second feminine, regardless of the actual subject matter. And so it goes…

Ironically, what is more likely to happen is a male director being celebrated for telling female-driven fare. You know, those big ‘chick flicks’ of the that last few years — Bridesmaids, Sisters, Trainwreck, Crazy, Stupid, Love, and the coming Ghostbusters reboot — all directed by men. This means three things, as far as I can guess: 1.That women in leading roles means chicken-coop watching is going to be huge, 2. These films made heaps of money at the box-office, but there is no trickle-up-effect from female-driven stories to female-helmed stories, and 3. If you’re subscribing to this notion that stories are either female or male, then why aren’t women directing these films? I’m not subscribing to this notion, nor taking the Paul Feig’s or Judd Apatow’s to task. I love that they’re casting women in numbers, and clearly making movies that excite them, and further, I don’t blame them for the asinine term ‘chick-flick’ either, but if I ever meet the coiner of that phrase in a dark alley…

Look, this is not ground-breaking territory I’m covering, just another voice in the chorus of frustration at our industries’ blatant gender parities. So what do we do about it? Well, if it were that simple we would’ve leveled the playing field and gotten on with storytelling already. But, getting on with storytelling is helping. As Melissa Silverstein wrote in an IndieWire article “Embracing the Female Gaze“:

“There are women all across this industry taking hammers each and every day to bang away at the glass ceiling that creates this deep inequality in storytelling. Women are picking up hammers by making their own films in any way they can by creating and participating in female film groups and helping each other, as well as using social media to spread the word about the desire for change.”

To push the needle, women have to keep finding a way outside the system to make movies that challenge the status quo. Hiring women in key roles on crews changes the landscape of a production, and starts to chip away at the ‘boys club’ until a woman’s credits start to pile up next to her male counterparts and the excuse of ‘no experience’ becomes a non-starter. More media outlets that create more opportunities for work to be seen is another potential game changer. What other ways can we start to erode at the gender story trap? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Jenna Ricker is a writer/director based in New York City. She received the Mira Nair Award for Rising Female Filmmaker for her first film, Ben’s Plan. Her second feature film The American Side premieres in theaters April 22nd.

First image photo credit: Frank Barrera; second image photo credit: Ginny Stewart.