Female Filmmakers

[Mise En Scene]

She's done only two shorts since "In the Cut." Here's to hoping she finds her muse (or rather, her muse seeks her out and talks some sense into her).

And, I see that the girl who played Louise in "Two Friends" hasn't acted in anything else. I thought she was terrific.

[Matt]

Since the last post in this thread 29 months ago, we've seen 5 films directed by women given spine numbers (including Marie Nyreröd's Bergman Island) plus two in the Eclipse line. That's not bad, but Criterion could still do better. Where is Claire Denis? Lucrecia Martel? The long-rumored Diane Kurys?

Of course, arguing for representation of any sort from Criterion is always a slippery slope. It's only a stone's throw from "Criterion needs more women directors" to " I AM OUTRAGED THAT CRITEIRON HAS NOT RELEASED ANY ABORIGINAL FILMS!!!1." I guess we'd all be better off learning that we get what we get.

[Jeff]

I wonder if the decision to license Monsoon Wedding wasn't influenced by the opportunity to get another female director in the collection. Of course if they were going to license a film by a female director from Focus, I would have much preferred Lost in Translation, but I'm sure Focus would be reluctant to part with it. Monsoon Wedding also kind of addresses the complaints about Criterion not paying attention to Indian cinema. Two birds, one middlebrow stone.

I would love to see a Cocktail Molotov disc finally see the light of day, but I would really hope they could pair it with Peppermint Soda, which I'm pretty sure is firmly in the hands of New Yorker.

[Matt]

I would really hope they could pair it with Peppermint Soda, which I'm pretty sure is firmly in the hands of New Yorker.

Well, possibly firmly in the hands of Technicolor as of this moment, who I'm sure would love to start seeing some sort of profit on these films.

[Jeff]

Well, possibly firmly in the hands of Technicolor as of this moment, who I'm sure would love to start seeing some sort of profit on these films.

Ah yes. I temporarily spaced the fact that the library had gone up for a very anti-climactic auction. This quote from the article you linked is very disconcerting:

...the last I heard is that the films up for grabs didn’t actually include the much-coveted Herzog, Godard and Sembene films that buyers were hoping for, hence everything is still in limbo as interested parties parse out which films are available and which films aren’t.

[scotty2]

I wonder whether the Allison Anders 1992 offering Gas Food Lodging is available from Sony. It has been out of print for years and Anders seems to have a good relationship with Criterion. I haven't seen Border Radio, but from what I've read I expect Gas Food Lodging would be better received. It is a modest film that fairly represents that period of American indie filmmaking.

[domino harvey]

After the sales for Border Radio, will never ever never ever never ever never ever never ever never ever never ever happen ever

[swo17]

After the sales for Border Radio

There were sales for Border Radio?

[scotty2]

Let me try this again: GFL is a much more mainstream (and yes, polished) film than Border Radio and received much wider distribution to markets all over the country. I don't see how BR's sales would have any impact on a decision to do GFL. And I'm guessing the print run for BR reflected clear calculations on its potential or lack thereof. CC does adjust for this. Now it sounds like I'm carrying a torch for Anders. Oh well.

[CSM126]

It doesn't matter how good their other films might be, if a director's first entry in the collection tanks, it makes it hard (financially speaking) for Criterion to justify releasing more of their movies. Why do you think they've only bothered to do one Naruse?

[scotty2]

It's funny how Naruse seems to lurk on so many threads around here. He's bound to turn up sooner or later . . . he and Rivette are the two sharpest axes around due to excessive grinding.

If Border Radio is such a killer, Anders wouldn't have had a career at all afterwards by the logic used above.

I would guess that more people went to the theater to see Gas Food Lodging in the Region 1 than have gone to a theater in Region 1 to see whatever Naruse No. 2 is supposed to be (and I'm not making a statement as to artistic worth). I should think that would weigh at least as heavily in the decision than how a co-directed, three-way, essentially no budget student film in b/w that didn't receive wide release in the first place did as a director's first release on Criterion. Either way, it is speculative.

We do have information from the source that CC doesn't print the same number of copies for every release, indicating that they do calculate on these matters. I haven't seen anything that suggests they make their decisions based on how a director's maiden voyage in the collection goes. It is a matter of deciding how many thousand copies to print once they decide they want to do a film and secure the rights (in context with other decisions about films that they expect to sell more or less of than the title in question, of course). That's how publishing goes. Not everything selected is expected to be a home run. A few need to be and they'll take as many as they can get, but not everything. Over and out on Allison A.

[Jeff]

Tina Hassannia on why there aren't more women directors represented by Criterion, and Peter Becker's thoughtful response.

[FrauBlucher]

Well done Mr Becker. Could only imagine how some other heads of boutique labels have handled this.

[tenia]

I forgot the original article pointed towards companies which have released movies written and/or directed by women, like Twilight Time which released... Sleepless in Seattle and Yentl. Which, ahem, aren't exactly movies I would trade against, say, a Bergman, a Truffaut or a Kurosawa.

[bottled spider]

(Incidentally, I was pleased to read in Becker's reply that Criterion's acquired Laurie Anderson's Heart of a Dog.)

[MichaelB]

I've tweeted the author to ask if she's aware of Second Run's output, since their catalogue was recently praised for having a greater proportion of female directors than anyone else's.

[ShellOilJunior]

Becker's response was very thoughtful and classy. I don't think Criterion owed anyone an explanation but they handled it well.

The author of the article seems to believe that cinephiles don't care about films made by women or rather, are not aware of the films so they have little to low interest in them. I think the opposite is true. I don't post as much as some on this site but I read a lot and have never gotten the impression people are close-minded.

[Cinephrenic]

Probably because there aren't many female directors. Why does it matter, anyhow?

[StevenJ0001]

Why does it matter, anyhow?

To quote Becker from his response: "It’s true that women have been consistently underrepresented in the film world, especially as directors, and that their work has often been under-appreciated and overlooked. We also recognize that by virtue of our position as the publisher of many of the greatest classics of world cinema, we have assumed a role in shaping the perceived canon of film culture, and with that position comes the opportunity and the responsibility to do whatever we can to correct for its historical blind spots."

Do you need any further explanation?

[tenia]

The author of the article seems to believe that cinephiles don't care about films made by women or rather, are not aware of the films so they have little to low interest in them. I think the opposite is true. I don't post as much as some on this site but I read a lot and have never gotten the impression people are close-minded.

My issue with the article is that what it says about the concerned people / forumers / customers is pretty cliché ("they mostly care about technical quality, must be white males who don't care about female directors !").
There's also an underlying issue which isn't tackled : how one might be looking at the movie released rather than if it's a male or a female which has directed (baring specific exceptions linked to extremely famous directors' corpus, like "ooh, a Bergman !"). For instance, I'm very happy Criterion is releasing Only Angels Have Wings, because I've been told it's a good movie. Sure, it's directed by a man, but that's actually NOT a criteria to me.
The article, in the end, point towards positive discrimination. We should rejoice to movies like Yentl being released but is that actually really a good movie ? A memorable one ? I'm not sure.

[swo17]

I'm going to consider Criterion behind the curve until they release at least five more Claire Denis movies, and a few Muratovas.

[Cinephrenic]

Seriously, unless a film has a feminist agenda, what exactly are we missing when there are hardly any female directors in the collection? There is a lack of black and gay directors too. The real question is why there are so few female directors in the industry. I think its a wider problem in society when it comes to women and minorities.

[MichaelB]

I remember a well-meaning but historically/culturally ignorant local film critic who would regularly berate the local cinema for not showing a perfect 50-50 split of films made by men and women. This was in 1986, when the total pool of female-directed features across the whole of cinema history was tiny and the percentage of those that was actually in 35mm British distribution was smaller still - for instance, even if they'd wanted to show some Vera Chytilova films I suspect the rights for Daisies had lapsed and that none of the others had ever been commercially released in the UK.

[TMDaines]

Exactly. So many people calling for greater representation, don't seem to understand the meaning of the word "representative". If, for example, only 1% of features were directed by women, Criterion would be representative with having only circa 1% of their feature film releases having been directed by women. Just because there is a variable with two options does not mean proportional representation of a sample would be 50/50.

[MichaelB]

Arrow Video was approached for comments on this piece, but they were on a hiding to nothing because they mostly cover 1960s to 1980s exploitation films, and the number of women working in the field back then can be counted on the fingers of one hand - Roberta Findlay, Stephanie Rothman, Doris Wishman... and who else?

Second Run has done an outstanding job when it comes to female representation, but their catalogue is explicitly dedicated to the unfairly marginalised so it would be rather horrifying if this wasn't the case!

As Peter Becker says, the most sensible approach given immovable historical realities and the fact that many boutique labels concentrate on pre-1990s material is not to fixate on the director and focus instead on significant female contributions elsewhere. For instance, Ester Krumbachová was undoubtedly one of the pivotal figures of the Czechoslovak New Wave, even if she only directed one extremely obscure film herself. Similarly, Ligia Branice, Marina Pierro and especially Dominique Ségrétin were absolutely crucial to the creative career of Walerian Borowczyk, while many of the ideas unthinkingly attributed to Robert Altman on The Long Goodbye were present in Leigh Brackett's script before he even came on board (and I was delighted to be able to emphasise this in the booklet). We also stressed the massive contribution made by Svetlana Karmalita to Hard to Be a God in both the booklet and extras.