Contemporary Women Filmmakers

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Contemporary Women Filmmakers

• Some Key Examples
• Susanne Bier
• Jane Campion
• Nora Ephron

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Susanne Bier

• Susanne Bier (1960- ) is a Danish film director.
  She studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts
  Design in Jerusalem and also studied architecture
  in London before attending film school at the
  National Film School of Denmark (a 1987
  graduate). Since 1990, her feature films have
  gained increasing attention both in Denmark and
  internationally.

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Susanne Bier

• The cinema of Denmark has a long and highly
  respected history, from the films of Carl Theodor
  Dreyer (1889-1968 considered to be one of the
  greatest directors of all time e.g., The Passion
  of Joan of Arc, 1928 Vampyr, 1932) to the works
  of contemporary masters Gabriel Axel (e.g.,
  Babettes Feast, 1987), Bille August (e.g., Pelle
  the Conqueror, 1988), Thomas Vinterberg (e.g.,
  The Celebration/Festen, 1998), and Lars von Trier
  (e.g., Breaking the Waves, 1996 Dancer in the
  Dark, 2000 Dogville, 2003 Melancholia, 2011).
  Note that among these important Danish directors,
  Susanne Bier is the sole female.

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Susanne Bier

• After the Wedding (2006) was nominated for an
  Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but
  lost to the German film The Lives of Others.
  After the Wedding garnered a number of other
  international awards, however.
• Other Bier films of note are The One and Only
  (1999), Open Hearts (2002), and Brothers (2004).
  Her only U.S.-based film to date, Things We Lost
  in the Fire (2008), starring Halle Berry and
  Benicio del Toro, received mixed critical
  reviews. Her 2011 film, In a Better World,
  received the Academy Award for Best Foreign
  Language Film.

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Susanne Bier

• Like many of Biers films, After the Wedding was
  produced by the Danish film company Zentropa,
  founded in 1992 by Danish National Film School
  grads Lars von Trier and Peter Aalbaek Jensen. In
  an ethnographic study of Zentropa conducted over
  a ten-year period, scholar Jesper Strandgaard
  (2011) concluded that the company uses a
  prototypical auteur model for productioni.e.,
  a director-centered model characterized by
  artistically driven logic. This is as opposed to
  the more typically American high concept model
  for production, which is market driven,
  producer-centered, and employs integrated
  professionals who tend to work within the
  conventions of the film industry.
• Zentropa principal Lars von Trier and fellow
  National Film School of Denmark graduate Thomas
  Vinterberg in 1995 organized a collective of film
  directors called Dogme 95. The group issued a
  10-point Vow of Chastity aimed at refuting the
  auteur approach to filmmaking and infusing
  contemporary cinema with new life. (See Appendix
  below for the full Vow of Chastity.) Biers 2002
  film, Open Hearts, was made under the Dogme 95
  requirements (it is also known as Dogme 28).

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Susanne Bier

• Susanne Biers films have been variously
  described as
• Celebrating the unpredictability of life
  (Thompson, 2007)
• Kitchen-sink realism (Sauntved, 2011)
• Using clichés to force us to challenge those
  short-cut judgments and ill-conceived assumptions
  we too often use to gauge the world around us
  (Chahine, 2007)
• Featuring happy, comfortable characters who
  are jolted by events of unfathomable sadness
  (Gold, 2007)
• Demonstrating a strong ability to empathize with
  others (although Bier herself has had a
  privileged life) (Gold, 2007)
• Having a recurring focus on the family, with an
  idealized good family (Marklund, 2008)
• Including some consideration of Third World
  issues
• Often including the loss of a parent by a child
• Heavy use of elliptical (jump) cutting, hand-held
  camera, long takes, and super-tight CUs

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Susanne Bier

• Biers films have generally been overshadowed
  internationally by those of her countryman Lars
  von Trier (Sauntved, 2011). Critics and film
  festival programmers have found her work too
  commercial or insufficiently artistic. It
  should be noted that her film In a Better World
  (2011), which won both an Academy Award and a
  Golden Globe, was rejected by the Cannes Film
  Festival. (Note the recent controversy over the
  lack of females at Cannes!)

8
Jane Campion

• Jane Campion (1954- ) is an Australian-born New
  Zealand screenwriter, producer, and director.
  Her most famous film is The Piano (1993), which
  won a great many awards, including Best Origin
  Screenplay Academy Award and the Palm DOr at
  Cannes.

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Jane Campion

• Jane Campions films without exception focus on
  female characters who push the boundaries of what
  society sees as acceptable behavior for women.
  Some are based on real people, such as Janet
  Frame, a New Zealand author whose life story is
  told in the biopic Angel at my Table. Bright Star
  explores the relationship between 19th-century
  British poet John Keats and his muse Fanny
  Brawne. Other female protagonists are purely
  fictional, as with Sweetie, which looks at two
  sisters, one of whom suffers from serious
  psychological disorders. For The Piano, Campion
  has explored the fictional life of an
  arranged-marriage bride, mute by choice, and her
  quest for identity and independence in colonial
  New Zealand.

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Jane Campion

• A Cleveland State University masters thesis by
  Patrika Janstova, completed in 2007,
  systematically content analyzed all of Jane
  Campions films, comparing their content and form
  to that of a matched set of other films in order
  to test auteur theory. The thesis found that
  Campions films are significantly more likely to
  (a) present a female point of view, (b) include
  characters that exhibit a psychological disorder,
  appear to be lonely, and are not happy, (c)
  depict characters traveling, notably to other
  countries, and (d) include characters who must
  deal with a variety of family issues and
  dysfunctions. It seems clear that these thematic
  motifs are present in The Piano.
• Patrika Janstovas thesis also found Jane
  Campions films to be significantly different
  from the films of others in terms of film
  production techniques. It was found that
  Campions films are significantly more likely to
  (a) incorporate closeups of the extremities of
  the human body (i.e., arms, hands, legs, feet),
  as well as tight closeups of touching, (b) use
  extreme closeup images of mirrors and windows,
  (c) use a handheld camera, (d) use slow motion,
  and (e) use color filters.

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Nora Ephron

• Nora Ephron (1941-2012) was a journalist,
  playwright, novelist, producer, screenwriter, and
  director. She was one of the most prominent
  female talents ever to work in American film.

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Nora Ephron

• Nora Ephron was the eldest of four daughters born
  to screenwriters Henry and Phoebe Ephron (Belles
  on Their Toes, Carousel, Desk Set, Theres No
  Business Like Show Business, Take Her Shes Mine
  (loosely based on the letters Nora sent home from
  college)). Growing up in Beverly Hills, Nora had
  contact with many great Hollywood writers of the
  1940s and 1950s (e.g., Charles Brackett, Julius
  Epstein). At then all-female Wellesley, she
  encountered many young women seeking their MRS
  degree she later claimed that her alma mater had
  turned out a generation of docile women. She
  chose a career track, working as a journalist for
  The New York Post and Esquire, and eventually
  transitioned into novels and screenplays. All
  four of the daughters of Henry and Phoebe Ephron
  became successful writers.
• Noras mother Phoebe Ephron is oft-quoted as
  saying, everything is copy. Even on her
  deathbed, Phoebe reportedly told her daughter,
  Take notes, Nora, take notes.

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Nora Ephron

• Nora Ephron wrote the roman à clef Heartburn in
  1983, a novelization of her volatile second
  marriage to Carl Bernstein of Washington
  Post/Watergate fame. The novel was adapted for
  film in 1986, with friend and frequent
  collaborator Mike Nichols directing.
• Some other Ephron films you might recognize are
  Silkwood (1983 Screenwriter), When Harry Met
  Sally (1989 Producer and Screenwriter), My Blue
  Heaven (1990 Producer and Screenwriter),
  Sleepless in Seattle (1993 Director and
  Screenwriter), Michael (1996 Producer, Director,
  and Screenwriter), Youve Got Mail (1998
  Producer, Director, and Screenwriter), and Julie
  and Julia (2009 Producer, Director, and
  Screenwriter).

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Nora Ephron

• Ephron was one of the most important female
  creative talents in American film. Think of other
  female writers in American cinema Early
  Hollywood screenwriters Anita Loos and Frances
  Marion mid-century screenwriters Jay Presson
  Allen, Leigh Brackett, Betty Comden, Ruth Gordon,
  Sally Benson, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala contemporary
  writers Diablo Cody, Allison Anders, Sofia
  Coppolla, Nancy Meyers
• Ephron also distinguished herself as one of
  Americas most prominent female directors. How
  does her work compare to that of other female
  directors? In post-silent Hollywood there were
  essentially only two prior to the 1970s, Dorothy
  Arzner and Ida Lupino. Later came Penelope
  Spheeris, Penny Marshall, Amy Heckerling,
  Gurinder Chadha, Jane Campion, Kathryn Bigelow,
  Agnieszka Holland, Betty Thomas, Mira Nair

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Nora Ephron

• Nora Ephron has often been noted for her
  devastating wit, and even compared to the
  legendary Dorothy Parker.
• In Tom Brokaws book Boom Voices of the Sixties,
  he refers to Ephron as a sharp-eyed observer or
  her life and times. . . a muse and a gold
  standard of smart thinking.
• From Jack Harts book Storycraft Nora Ephron,
  one of the most self-reflective practitioners of
  the narrative craft, said that reporters were
  the kind of people who seemed most comfortable on
  the sidelines, hanging back with a certain kind
  of detachment while they watched others play the
  game of life. I always seem to find myself at a
  perfectly wonderful event, she wrote, where
  everyone else is having a marvelous time,
  laughing merrily, eating, drinking, having sex in
  the back room, and I am standing on the side
  taking notes on it all.

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