I ♥ Female Directors

Dear Reader,

Every year there are studies and lists and think pieces about the lack of female directors working in television and film. And hey, we love studies and lists and think pieces as much as the next gal, but the numbers are soooo depressing and the problem is soooo entrenched and unchanging that reading about it starts to feel a lot like eating your vegetables if vegetables tasted like futility which they do.

We started iheartfemaledirectors.com because we think the biggest thing missing from the conversation about female directors is some good old-fashioned gushy fandom. We will not have achieved true equality until every film school student who ever jizzed himself talking about the exploration of violence and masculinity in Fight Club has also needed a change of pants after discussing the exploration of violence and masculinity in Beau Travail.

Yes, there are historically fewer female directors than male, but there have still been hundreds (thousands?) of great ones. And new female directors are being born and dismissed every minute! So while the major studios’ scientists toil away in their under-the-lot labs, manufacturing the single perfect, hireable female director*, we’ll be swooning over the ones who have already put amazing, love letter-worthy things into the world.  

So here’s our plan: every week we’ll put up a new love letter to a female director we’re obsessed with. And look, maybe that won't solve all of sexism in Hollywood. But it might get you to watch an Agnes Varda movie, and isn't that a close second?

Love,
Annabel, Laura & Charley

 

*Criteria:
• Experienced (but also fresh!)
• Works Constantly (but is always available)
• Commanding (but not emasculating)
• Will represent the wokeness and feminism of the studio (but won’t complain about institutionalized sexism)
• Has a unique voice (but wants to direct mediocre tentpoles)
• A visionary (but takes all notes)

Dear Dee Rees,

Of all the movies coming out this year, there isn't one I'm more excited about than Mudbound. And this is a year with no shortage of great movies. But none of the directors of these other films made Pariah, a movie I love so much you've earned an evergreen "take all my money" from me for every subsequent movie you make. When I first saw Pariah as a short film, I was floored. And when you turned it into a feature, I was... what's a word that means floored but times ten? If there's one thing I'm confident in, it's that I've watched every movie ever made about teenage lesbians, and Pariah is quite possibly the best of all of them. It's so spot on about both the highs and the lows of coming out that I'm pretty sure you somehow gained access to the diary of every baby gay who's ever baby gayed as you were writing it. And you directed your lead actress Adepero Oyude to a performance so good that Meryl Streep shouted her out at the Oscars just cause. Yeah, that Meryl Streep.

Then with Bessie, your HBO biopic about Bessie Smith, you showed that a movie that should've been made years ago was worth the wait. And you won a DGA award in the process. If all this wasn't enough to make me a lifetime fan of yours, your next movie post-Mudbound is a horror movie about the domestic lives of black lesbians in rural America. So again, take my money. All of it.

Laura

 

Art by Bo (@bomonstre)

Art by Bo (@bomonstre)

Source: https://www.iheartfemaledirectors.com/dee-...