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 Susan Seidelman,

At some point in my youth, She-Devil played on a loop on Lifetime. It was one of my first exposures to dark comedy, the trickiest-but-most-satisfying-when-done-right genre. I loved the tufted pink satin world of Meryl Streep’s romance novelist as much I related to Roseanne Barr’s dark and dorky housewife. Later I saw Desperately Seeking Susan, a movie so dangerously cool I watched in on low volume while my parents slept. It’s a movie that defines the 80s, not just because it’s chock full of amnesia, rare Egyptian artifacts, and Madonna, but because it epitomizes what the decade (and Madonna) was all about: the thrill and pangs of reinvention.

And if anyone feels like Desperately Seeking Susan was too glossy a version of 1980s New York, they can just trot on over to your first film Smithereens, which captures the city in all its trash-filled-vacant-lots glory. It’s so good that it was the first American film ever to compete at Cannes but more importantly it features one of my top ten favorite comedy dialogue scenes ever. You know the one I’m talking about, right? It involves a man, a van, a hooker, and the tuna sandwich her mother made her. It’s the stuff of Apatow wet dreams, a comedy scene so grounded it gets funnier with every line.

And in case you ever doubt your place as the iconic New York director, Susan, I’ll remind you that you directed the pilot and two more episodes of Sex and the City’s first season. Here at iheartfemaledirectors.com Laura and I hold the humble and controversial opinion that season one of Sex and the City is its absolute best and frankly more interesting than what the show later became. But what do we know, we’re both Mirandas!

Annabel

Source: https://www.iheartfemaledirectors.com/susa...