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52 Films by Women Vol 2. 8. THE BYE BYE MAN (Director: Stacy Title)

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  Some interesting statistics about director Stacy Title: she is the youngest woman ever to have been nominated for an Oscar for best live action short ( Down on the Waterfront , 1993). Her films are regularly written with or by her husband, Jonathan Penner, who also frequently acts in them. Her first movie, The Last Supper (1995) was a black comedy about liberals becoming as extreme as the right wing bigots they despise. In spite of a cast that included Cameron Diaz and Ron Perlman, it only made less than half-a-million at the box office - but neither Diaz nor Perlman had above the title status at the time. Her follow-up, Let the Devil Wear Black (1999) was a loose re-working of William Shakespeare’s timeless tragedy, Hamlet . Penner was cast as the Prince of Denmark, well, a graduate student. Mother was played by Jacqueline Bisset. The few reviews of this on the website ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ don’t bear repeating; the kindest one says ‘I’ll watch anything with Mary-Louise Parker’. Ti...
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52 Films by Women Vol 2. 7. THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN (Director: Kelly Fremon Craig)

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  The Edge of Seventeen is a painful reminder that when you are a teenager, you are very far from the best version of yourself. You are governed by insecurities, lash out for a ripple of attention, over-dramatise, I say again, OVER dramatise, and believe wholeheartedly that the impact you have on others is as nothing to the impact others have on you. Oh, and you cannot communicate. Everything turns out wrong. Words congeal, get ahead of themselves, barely hint at subtlety and nuance. Being a teenager is embarrassing – unless, that is, you have some genetic advantage, some shortcut to popularity. This is to say that The Edge of Seventeen , pitched midway between a studio (Hollywood sentimentality) and an independent feature (gritty, with an unlikable protagonist) is probably the most vivid and wince-worthy depiction of teen girlhood since Welcome to the Dollhouse . The difference between writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig’s film and Todd Solondz’s calling card debut is that...
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52 Films by Women Vol 2. 6. THE DREAMED ONES (Die Geträumten) (Director: Ruth Beckermann)

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  Two young performers, an actor (Laurence Jupp) and an actress (Anna Plaschg), read the letters of Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann in ‘ The Dreamed Ones’ , a mock fly-on-the-wall look at the making of an audio track by Austrian filmmaker Ruth Beckermann (‘ Those Who Go Those Who Stay ’, ‘ American Passages ’). The location is the Funkhaus, a recording studio in the centre of Vienna. As well as reading the letters, the couple roll and smoke cigarettes (her cigarette is too thin and chokes the flavour, his needs trimming at the end). They sit in on an orchestral rehearsal and lounge around in the studio. At one point, they reflect on why some of Ingeborg’s letters were never sent. At another, the actress shows the actor her square tattoo. This is the opposite of documentary – we only see pictures of the poets at the end. It is less about a definitive portrait of the on-off couple than a defining one, as if the whole of Celan and Bachmann’s personal and professional lives were a t...
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52 Films by Women Vol 2. 5. THROUGH THE WALL (Laavor et hakir) (Director: Rama Burshtein)

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  Romantic love is an arrogant folly. I’m not sure I want to believe this, but it is probably true. The idea of soul mates is absurd. Relationships develop through a mixture of desire, compatibility and an assessment of your life partner’s skill set. There is a reason I spend Christmas Day in the kitchen – so that my family can hog the TV. The Israeli comedy ‘ Through the Wall ’ (Laavor et hakir) written and directed by Rama Burshtein is about a thirty-something woman, Michal (Noa Koller) who is abandoned by her fiancé in the early stages of planning their wedding. Unperturbed, Michal books the hall anyway. She will marry on the 8 th day of Hanukah. There is the small matter of finding a new groom and hoping that he accepts his bride-to-be’s petting zoo business, but if it is God’s will, then Michal will be married. Divine approval might be requested, but Michal has to do the hard work herself, engaging a matchmaker to arrange a series of dates. None of them goes particularly ...
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52 Films by Women Vol 2. 4. EMA (Mother) (Director: Kadri Kðusaar)

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  On its own, directing is not the pinnacle of a career in the film industry. For men, it is being a producer-director, having total control of the final film. You start off with a hit movie or two as a director (sometimes as a director-for-hire) and then move into production. With a slate of films in development and properties (scripts, stories) that you have acquired, you can go from one film to the next without necessarily being ‘hot’ (i.e. in demand). Being ‘just’ a film director depends on success. If you have made a hit film in a certain genre, you might get hired for a similar sort of movie. But then after a hot streak, you might find yourself waiting years to get a movie made. The film industry is a fickle business. The way to tackle it is in the Steven Spielberg-Steven Soderbergh route, with bursts of films pumped out, one after another. Both have on occasion released two films in a single year. But there are few woman producer-directors. Barbra Streisand comes to mind but...
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52 Films by Women Vol 2. 3. THE INCIDENT (Director: Jane Linfoot)

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  ‘The Incident’ is the feature debut of Jane Linfoot whose reputation as a director to watch has been established through four short films: ‘Creep’ (2005), ‘Youth’ (2007), ‘On Your Own’ (2010) and ‘Sea View’, a twenty-four minute short film nominated for a BAFTA in 2014. You can liken her steady rise to that of another Jane – Jane Campion. ‘Sea View’ explores the relationship between a teenage girl and an older man, which is also the starting point of ‘The Incident’. Stopping his car outside a pizza place somewhere in Huddersfield, Joe (Tom Hughes, currently basking in the attention given to the BBC TV series ‘Victoria’ in which he plays Prince Albert) attracts the attention of disaffected teen Lily (Tasha Connor), who throws her hair this way and that and salivates on Joe’s hand. If I were Joe, I’d clear off right there without picking up my pizza – that’s why you order in. Joe does something that Joe shouldn’t do, namely invite Lily in to perform an act which requires a cash-p...
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52 Films by Women Vol 2. 2. QUEEN OF KATWE (Director: Mira Nair)

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  The poor box office numbers for ‘ Queen of Katwe ’ ($8.7 million worldwide gross to 25 October 2016 against an estimated $15 million production budget) doesn’t tell the whole story. Chess movies are not box office. Here are some comparators.   ‘ Searching for Bobby Fischer ’ (1993) written and directed by Steven Zaillian grossed $7.2 million on its release in 1993. It is the top grossing chess-based movie when adjusted for inflation.   ‘ Pawn Sacrifice ’ (2014) directed by Edward Zwick grossed $5.6 million from a $19 million budget. ‘ The Luzhin Defence ’ (2000) directed by Marleen Gorris and starring John Turturro and Emily Watson grossed $1 million dollars on its US release in 2001. Before you ask, although it begins like one, Ingmar Bergman’s ‘ The Seventh Seal ’ (1957) is not a chess movie. You might be better off making a film about ‘Monopoly’ (I believe it’s in development). Then there are mainstream Hollywood films with an all African (as opposed to A...
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