As told through clips from 183 female directors, this epic history of the cinema focuses on women’s integral role in the development of film art. Using almost a thousand film extracts from thirteen decades and five continents, Mark Cousins asks how films are made, shot and edited; how stories are shaped and how movies depict life, love, politics, humour and death, all through the compelling lens of some of the world’s greatest filmmakers – all of them women.
Women Make Film, 女性电影人：一部贯穿电影史的新公路影片
As a film about film this is an easy win. If you are interested in cinema and its history then of course watching a ton of clips from interesting and diverse films is going to be fun. But there are a few problems and, more concerning, I haven't seen them discussed much.
Watching the documentary was a pleasure and I found myself noting directors and films to investigate further. Though not as many as I expected. Over 80% of the directors and films were familiar to me so I was disappointed not to be learning more. But that's perhaps unfair as I've been exposed to women directors for longer than some other viewers for whom this will provide a more…
Look here everybody! Mark discovered women! How incredible! Why won't this kind englishman lift these unseen creatures from the depths of struggle, however will we know that a WOMAN can make a MOVIE if Mark doesn't take two shifts to inform us of the 100 most retroactively acclaimed films by women. Who needs to go support female filmmakers when Mark can unearth them from the depths of (the) Amazon!
So true of us when sixteen chapters in, both me and Adjoa Andoh screamed "Finally!" when Queen Catherine Breillat finally got mentioned in this.
Mostly run out of words when I'm done watching these long form films, but I gotta say, when it comes to insights on filmmaking, this is even better than Cousins' own magnum opus The Story of film: An Odyssey and the two Scorsese essay films I've seen.
Even at fourteen hours, this isn't comprehensive history. And there is no way fourteen hours could comprehensively cover thirteen decades of film history. There are a lot of important female filmmakers who deserve a more in-depth analysis on their style and importance in film history. But at the same…
👩🏼🦳 14 episodes
🧑🏻🦰 840 minutes
👩🏾🦱 304 films
👱🏽♀️183 directors
A comprehensive study of the contribution of women directors through the history of film that somehow manages to only just scrape the surface. I found this entirely engrossing, and as a lifelong lover of film now have a confession to make. I've only seen 37 from the 304 films covered. I had no idea the imbalance was so great and really need to do something about that.
Full list of films covered in the series
I'm 2 episodes into this film school, which so far has been beautifully narrated by the eerie tones of Tilda Swinton. It's unfortunate that the base content was so evidently written by a guy…
I heard Tilda Swinton say that women have made “some of the best films” 14 times, and I wouldn’t mind hearing it another 40,000 times.
This was beautiful. There’s a world of film out there ripe for discovery, and even at 14 hours, I think Cousins just scratches the surface.
I didn’t want to go into this trashing Women Make Film despite having seen some critical reviews, I was genuinely interested in learning more about female directors but the way this is made is just didn't do anything for me. The longer Women Make Film goes on the more I was wondering who this documentary is for. If you’re new to film I feel like the approach of introducing directors by taking apart scenes and analysing every shot is probably too technical, but if you watch a lot of movies by female directors the omissions are so glaring that it’s at times hard to enjoy the movie. So ultimately I can only assume that the target audience is film buffs…
All the critiques I'm reading on this are valid, but I got to take in 14 hours over impressive cinema made by women and it was just plain therapeutic. There is a moment where Jupiter Ascending is compared to North by Northwest and the last clip is Beyonce smashing the camera. What a splendid trip.
I AM FREEEE! i've been watching this at a glacial pace since it aired on tcm in late 2020 and while it's been on criterion channel and i've only just now finished. which is to say it's not, like, the most riveting thing ever made but i do appreciate a lot of things about it—namely that it's not at all a statement of "women make movies like this" (the kind of analysis that always comes off as gross gender essentialist bullshit to me) so much as "here are the various ways this theme or idea or technique is conveyed in films, and every example we're presenting is by a woman." and you can look at that and be like, well…
Mark Cousins made that which is probably my favourite documentary about filmmaking "The Story of Film: An Odyssey". It was detailed, about form, technique, artistic movements, the films that made cinema what it is. Here comes another epic documentary, this time about the cinema made by women.
What do I take from this? First of all, it was very weird to hear these women narrate as everything about them screamed Mark Cousins. Tilda Swinton was speaking, but the way she spoke wasn't her, it was Mark. Now that I've adressed that, the best part of this documentary is that it introduces a lot of filmmakers and films to people who don't know them. However, there is a problem with the…
Kind of insane how a 14 hour documentary on female directors can be this obsessed with the notion of male genius.
At the very start, Mark Cousins notes that it is strange that we say Lynchian and not Muratovian. And I agree that it is! So I started counting the number of times he cited male philosophers, painters, writers, etc. However, it proved to be an exhausting exercise, so I switched to writing down the women instead. This is the complete list of female philosophers, painters, writers, etc that are cited and are not involved in the production of the film discussed in that segment:
After 14 hours, hundreds of films and countless lessons learned, Women Make Film positions itself as one of the most essential documentaries about cinema ever made. Mark Cousins' monumental work is a necessary corrective to decades of forgotten history but more than that, a joyous and moving experience.
Acting as a companion to his Story Of Film by dividing into thematic chapters rather than a more straightforward timeline, he positions the work of these directors at the forefront. Traditional stars like Chantal Akerman, Agnes Varda and Claire Denis are presented alongside directors new to me like Yuliya Solntseva, Kira Muratova and Ildikó Enyedi. Their work has been forgotten and is hard to access, but I hope Cousins' film helps these…
Made itself clear early on for what it was setting out to do - act as a film school of sorts through the lens of female directors, in a sense normalizing their presence in film. Though not a direct critique on the film industry's patriarchy, as that could be a full-fledged documentary all in itself, its value lays in not only highlighting many overlooked directors throughout the decades, but also covering the main elements of film that would be heard in any other male-dominated discussion. Camera techniques, tone, genres, themes, acting, etc.
For that, as someone aspiring to one day make film themselves, this monumental undertaking of a series was beyond inspirational or educational, but in a way life changing, as hyperbolic as that may sound. The impact of film cannot be understated. Thank you.
