Female Gaze: Women Directors + Women Cinematographers
23 Episodes
This sprawling selection of films both directed and shot by women testifies to an extraordinary tradition of female collaboration behind the camera. Spanning the last half century of cinema and including work by trailblazing director-cinematographer duos such as Chantal Akerman and Babette Mangolte (JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES; NEWS FROM HOME), Claire Denis and Agnès Godard (BEAU TRAVAIL, LET THE SUNSHINE IN), and Jane Campion and Sally Bongers (A GIRL’S OWN STORY, SWEETIE), as well as fruitful recent partnerships like Céline Sciamma and Crystel Fournier (TOMBOY, GIRLHOOD) and Josephine Decker and Ashley Connor (BUTTER ON THE LATCH, THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY), these extraordinary films reveal a vital legacy of visionary women seizing the tools of visual storytelling and opening up new possibilities for cinema.
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09:06Episode 1
Female Gaze: In Their Own Words
Episode 1
In this program, female directors, cinematographers, and actors discuss their work.
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01:56Episode 2
Female Gaze Teaser
Episode 2
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27:53Episode 3
Joyce at 34
Episode 3
Directed by Joyce Chopra and Claudia Weill • 1972 • United States
Starring Joyce ChopraIn feminist filmmaker Joyce Chopra’s JOYCE AT 34 (codirected with Claudia Weill, who would later direct the great unsung GIRLFRIENDS), Chopra examines the demands of juggling a baby and a professional career.
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30:07Episode 4
Girls at 12
Episode 4
Made by Joyce Chopra in 1975 for the Education Development Center in Newton, Massachusetts, as part of the program The Role of Women in American Society, GIRLS AT 12 looks at the lives of three girls growing up near Boston in order to show the complexities of becoming a teenager in the midseventi...
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1:19:29Episode 5
Daguerréotypes
Episode 5
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1975 • France
Starring Lucien Bossy, Léonce Debrossian, Marcelle DebrossianSpending most of her days at home following the birth of her son but curious as ever about the people and places that surrounded her, Agnès Varda found inspiration for DAGUERRÉOTYPES just outsid...
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Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Episode 6
Directed by Chantal Akerman • 1975 • Belgium
Starring Delphine Seyrig, Jan DecorteA singular work in film history, Chantal Akerman’s JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES meticulously details, with a sense of impending doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow, whose chores ...
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1:29:27Episode 7
News from Home
Episode 7
Directed by Chantal Akerman • 1976 • United States
Following her time living in New York in the early 1970s, Chantal Akerman returned to the city to create one of her most elegantly minimalist and profoundly affecting meditations on dislocation and estrangement. Over a series of exactingly compo...
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36:53Episode 8
Clorae and Albie
Episode 8
Made by Joyce Chopra in 1976 for the Education Development Center in Newton, Massachusetts, as part of the program The Role of Women in American Society, CLORAE AND ALBIE focuses on two young Black women who have been best friends since childhood but whose lives are taking different paths.
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Mur Murs
Episode 9
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1981 • France
After returning to Los Angeles from France in 1979, Agnès Varda created this kaleidoscopic documentary about the striking murals that decorate the city. Bursting with color and vitality, MUR MURS is as much an invigorating study of community and diversity ...
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26:36Episode 10
A Girl’s Own Story
Episode 10
Directed by Jane Campion • 1983 • Australia
This early short from director Jane Campion concerns a group of teenage girls in the 1960s.
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1:38:52Episode 11
Jane B. par Agnès V.
Episode 11
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1988 • France
Starring Jane Birkin, Agnès Varda, Charlotte GainsbourgThe interests, obsessions, and fantasies of two singular artists converge in this inspired collaboration between Agnès Varda and her longtime friend the actor Jane Birkin. Made over the course of a ye...
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Sweetie
Episode 12
Directed by Jane Campion • 1989 • New Zealand
Starring Genevieve Lemon, Karen Colston, Tom LycosThough she went on to create a string of brilliant films, Jane Campion will always be remembered for her stunning debut feature SWEETIE, which focuses on the hazardous relationship between the button...
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27:46Episode 13
Odds and Ends
Episode 13
Directed by Michelle Parkerson • 1993 • United States
In the year 2096, Black women warriors wage a battle against racial and gender annihilation. In this devastated universe, a fable unfolds on the interplanetary frontlines. Lieutenant Loz Wayard, a courageous young Amazon, learns the price of ...
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Angela
Episode 14
Directed by Rebecca Miller • 1995 • United States
Starring Miranda Rhyne, Charlotte Eve BlytheRebecca Miller’s spellbinding debut feature is a searing portrait of a ten-year-old girl (Miranda Rhyne) who—as her mentally ill mother’s sanity deteriorates—retreats into a disturbing imaginative univ...
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1:33:22Episode 15
Beau travail
Episode 15
Directed by Claire Denis • 1999 • France
Starring Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, Grégoire ColinWith her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd, Sailor,” Claire Denis firmly established herself as one of the great visual tone poets of our time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked ...
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Conversations with Intellectuals About Selena
Episode 16
Directed by Lourdes Portillo • 1999 • United States
Interrogating the Selena phenomenon, Lourdes Portillo brings together a group of Chicana cultural critics to talk about the Tejana music icon. Delving into their reactions to Selena’s groundbreaking rise, widespread influence, and tragic death,...
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1:58:41Episode 17
La captive
Episode 17
Directed by Chantal Akerman • 2000 • Belgium, France
Starring Sylvie Testud, Stanislas Merhar, Olivia BonamyAdapting the fifth volume of Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time,” Chantal Akerman transforms the material into a mesmerizing study of voyeurism, control, and sexual obsession centere...
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Tomboy
Episode 18
Directed by Céline Sciamma • 2011 • France
Starring Zoé Héran, Malonn Lévana, Jeanne DissonTOMBOY tells the story of ten-year-old Laure (played by the amazing Zoé Héran) who moves to the suburbs and decides to pass as a boy among the pack of neighborhood kids. As “Mickäel” she catches the atten...
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14:41Episode 20
Social Butterfly
Episode 20
Directed by Lauren Wolkstein • 2013 • France
Starring Anna Margaret Hollyman, Camille Claris, Ulysse GrosjeanA thirty-year-old American woman crashes a teenage party in the South of France, leading the guests to wonder who she is and what she is doing there.
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Girlhood
Episode 21
Directed by Céline Sciamma • 2014 • France
Starring Karidja Touré, Assa Sylla, Lindsay KaramohFed up with her abusive family situation, lack of school prospects, and the “boys’ law” in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes he...
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1:35:22Episode 22
Let the Sunshine In
Episode 22
Directed by Claire Denis • 2017 • France
Starring Juliette Binoche, Xavier Beauvois, Philippe KaterineTwo luminaries of French cinema, Claire Denis and Juliette Binoche, unite for the first time in this piercing look at the elusive nature of true love, and the extent to which we are willing to ...
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10:20Episode 23
I Dream You Dream of Me
Episode 23
Directed by Jennifer Reeder • 2018 • United States
Starring Angelica RossA lone woman marks her trail and sheds some excess baggage along the way in this feminist western-meets-horror fever dream.