5 feminist film directors that you should know

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With regard to the death of Agnès Varda, and to pay tribute to her, we present other feminist film directors who are proof of the legacy left by the Belgian

On March 29, Agnès Varda died at 90 years old. The director born in Belgium is a very important name for French cinema, especially for what critics call the new wave, or the Nouvelle Vague. Her work is subtle yet clear, political without being obvious. She influenced her contemporaries such as Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, other greats of French cinema, during the fifties in his conception of cinematographic direction as a form of freedom and transgression of rules.

Leer en español: 5 directoras de cine feministas que debes conocer

She is also a precursor of feminist cinema and promoted the entry of women into the industry. She was self-critical and self-reflective. She made fiction and documentary and played to blur the boundaries between one genre and another. She talked about herself and invented herself. She created a universe around her and told the stories of others. Her work consists of fifteen feature films. She worked almost until her death. In 2017, the year in which he launched Faces and Places, with 88 years, he received the honorary Oscar for his career. Today we honor her by introducing you to other feminist directors who demonstrate the influence of Varda in the film industry.

Chantal Akerman

Also Belgian and also feminist. Akerman's work is characterized by being minimalist and by pursuing an aesthetic simplicity that goes hand in hand with his interest in the everyday. Her films have almost no editing work or camera movement. They show a genuine enthusiasm for the feminine and the anxieties of daily life. Her masterpiece is Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), a film that follows Jeanne Dielman, her protagonist, in her daily life. Akerman managed to make a feminist cinema not only from its themes but from its form and its format since it explored other narrative forms different from conventional ones throughout its career and also made its way into French cinema.

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Barbara Hammer

Another big loss last month. This Californian director was one of the first to refer to lesbianism in her work. Terrifyingly self-reflexive and autobiographical as Varda, Barbara Hammer reflects in her work on how little her teachers and mentors talked about relationships between women. Her experimental cinema asks itself and the female body at a time when little was said about it. Like Varda, she also blurred the lines that divided the biographical and documentary genre of fiction and saw herself reflected in her work. Her films and short films are more than all contemplative at the beginning of his career and then become more narrative — anyway, a very political artist and activist.

Vera Chytilová

A big one of the Czech cinema. Forerunner in the seventies of the cinema movement of the new wave in his country. Like Akerman and Hammer, Chytilová also experiments with form and narrative and not only with themes. Her feminist film is transgressor in the sense that he does not tell his stories in the same preconceived way in which men have told stories in movies since its inception. Her best-known film is Sedmikrásky or Las margaritas, which shows two young girls who have decided to be as corrupt as the society. This surrealist film has no beginning or end and is in search of its cinematographic language; it goes out of any convention. The Czech communist government censored it after the invasion of the USSR. Now it is remembered as one of the most important works of Czech cinema.

Also read: How is the female inclusion behind the screen in Hollywood?

Jane Campion

The most contemporary of this list, Jane Campion is a New Zealand director who is interested in telling stories of women who explore their femininity and sexuality. She is interested in the period dramas in which women must travel. She is one of the only four film directors who has ever been nominated for an Oscar for Best Direction. She directed the films The Portrait of a Lady and The Piano. Although not as experimental as his other colleagues on this list, Campion's interest in freely showing the sexual awakening of a woman is undoubtedly a feminist bet.

LatinAmerican Post | Juliana Rodríguez Pabón

Translated from "5 directoras de cine feministas que debes conocer"