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December 19, 2017

52 Films

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I didn't sign the pledge. I just watched movies. Mostly DVD and streaming films from Netflix, end of year screeners intended for award consideration, and a couple films in theaters, as well a couple in my collection. After a while, I had to remember to update the list. And I stopped counting after I hit the magic number. This was around September. I have seen a few more films by female filmmakers since then. These are the films I counted in the chronology of when they were viewed.

1. Always Shine (Sophia Takal - 2016)
2. The Love Witch (Anna Biller - 2016)
3. Black Women in Medicine (Crystal Emery - 2016)
4. The Gold Diggers (Sally Potter - 1983)
5. Puppylove (Delphine Lehericey - 2013)
6. Nuit #1 (Anne Emond - 2011)
7. Hooligan Sparrow (Wang Nanfu - 2016)
8. Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson - 2016)
9. Mujer Lobo (Tamae Garateguy - 2013)
10. Dearest Sister (Mattie Do - 2016)
11. Blood Punch (Madellaine Paxson - 2013)
12. Hannah Arendt (Margarethe von Trotta - 2012)
13. 13th (Ava DuVernay - 2016)
14. Zero Motivation (Talya Lavie - 2014)
15. After Sex (Brigitte Rouan - 1997)
16, Portrait of a Garden (Rosie Stapel - 2015)
17. The Lure (Agnieszka Smoczynska - 2015)
18, Some Girl(s) (Daisy von Scherler Mayer - 2013)
19. Adore (Anne Fontaine - 2013)
20. The To Do List (Maggie Carey - 2013)
21. Breaking the Girls (Jamie Babbit - 2013)
22. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade - 2016)
23. The Dressmaker (Jocelyn Moorhouse - 2015)
24. Sunlight, Jr. (Laurie Collyer - 2013)
25. A Case of You (Kat Coiro - 2013)
26. Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Love - 2016)
27. What Happened, Miss Simone (Liz Garbus - 2015)
28. Wadjda (Haifaa al-Mansour - 2012)
29. Say aah . . . (Axelle Ropert - 2013)
30. A French Gigolo (Josiane Balasko - 2008)
31. The Wolfpack (Crystal Moselle - 2015)
32. Sunshine Superman (Marah Strauch - 2015)
33. The Second Mother (Anna Muylaert - 2015)
34. Empire of Silver (Christina Yao - 2009)
35. What's in the Darkness (Wang Yuchin - 2016)
36. Being Good (Mipo O - 2015)
37. Elvis & Nixon (Liza Johnson - 2016)
38. Father of My Children (Mia Hansen-Love - 2009)
39. A Beautiful Now (Daniela Amalia - 2016)
40. Never Fear (Ida Lupino - 1949)
41. The Leveling (Hope Dickson Leach - 2016)
42. The Unlikely Girl (Wei Ling Chang - 2012)
43. If You Don't, I Will (Sophie Fillieres - 2014)
44. Sophie and the Rising Sun (Maggie Greenwald - 2016)
45. Janis: Little Girl Blue (Amy J. Berg - 2015)
46. Pure (Lisa Langseth - 2010)
47. LOL (Lisa Azuelos - 2008)
48. A Place on Earth (Fabienne Godet - 2013)
49. On My Way (Emmanuelle Bercot - 2013)
50. Mundane History (Anocha Suwichakornpong - 2009)
51. By the Time it Gets Dark (Anocha Suwichakornpong - 2016)
52. Sex in the Comics (Joelle Oosterlinck - 2012)

Simply having a large number of French films made a difference. France seems to be one of the few countries where female directors have actual careers rather that battling for years to make another movie. As far as some of the titles go, if you send me a screener, even one that has no chance of making the best of year lists, much less any kind of award, I'll watch it eventually.

I'm not going to call myself a feminist because I'm not sure what that's suppose to mean when a guy calls himself that. But I did put my money where my mouth is by supporting a crowdfunding campaign of one the filmmakers here. Mattie Do's video was so funny, talking about her need to buy fake blood for her second horror movie, that I contributed $100.00. That was in 2013. What none of us imagined at that time was that the film, Dearest Sister would play at several film festivals, be part of the programming of the online movie channel Shudder, or most amazingly, be the first film ever from Laos to compete for the Foreign Language Film Oscar. This was also the second film that I ever helped in the crowdfunding stage. I contributed a modest $10.00 to help produce a movie so strange in description that also turned out quite well. That was A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Bragging? Maybe. Participating in crowdfunding just seems like a good idea to show some concrete support, especially for newer filmmakers.

I also want to mention, for those unfamiliar, that Shudder has a section listing all of their available features and shorts directed by women. And sometimes you have to remind people, especially fanboys, that the template for many horror movies was established in a novel by a British teenage girl in the early 19th Century.

I'm illustrating this post with a poster from a film directed by Ida Lupino, who for a while was the only working female director in Hollywood. I got to see the Museum of Modern Art's 35mm print of Never Fear at a modestly attended screening. This was in conjunction with a book tour by Therese Gresham and Julie Grossman, the authors of the book, Ida Lupino, Director - Her Art and Resilience in Times of Transition. Get the book - it covers Lupino's work both in film and television.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at December 19, 2017 08:36 AM