By the time sound arrived in the US in 1927 and the years immediately after, women's roles behind the camera were largely limited to scriptwriters, costume designers, set decorators, make-up artists, and the like.
Specifically, Mulvey explained that mainstream or Hollywood films are unable to provide the experience of contradiction, reinforcing anti-realism and, this is where the avant-garde cinema is useful for women and feminism because they share "a common interest in the politics of images and problems of aesthetic language.
We accompany Molly on what turns out to be her last day on the job, understanding her professional interactions with her "johns" through her perspective, a completely original point of view, since, until Borden's film, sex workers had largely been depicted stereotypically.
The story's sympathetic, well-rounded character and situation humanizes sex work, and the film itself combats the anti-pornography stance touted by many second-wave feminists, which Borden rejects as repressive.
Neema Barnette (Civil Brand), Maya Angelou (Down in the Delta), Kasi Lemmons (Eve's Bayou), Cheryl Dunye (My Baby's Daddy), Stephanie Allain (Biker Boyz), Tracey Edmonds (Soul Food), Frances-Anne Solomon (A Winter Tale) and Dianne Houston (City of Angels), Leslie Harris (Just Another Girl on the IRT) are among these filmmakers.
[51] To date, Nnegest Likké is the first African American woman to write, direct and act in a full-length movie released by a major studio, Phat Girlz (2006) starring Jimmy Jean-Louis and Mo'Nique.
[53] Her ongoing success in the film industry gave her the potential and opportunity to form her own production studio in order to create and enhance educational videos and television for young children.
[53] The Cameroonian journalist Thérèse Sita-Bella directed a 1963 documentary, Tam-Tam à Paris, and Sarah Maldoror, a French filmmaker of Guadeloupean descent, shot the feature-film Sambizanga in Angola in 1972.
Cameroonian-Belgian Rosine Mbakam, who directed two feature-length documentaries, The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman (2016) and Chez Jolie Coiffure (2018), has been described as "one of the foremost filmmakers of creative nonfiction working right now.
[56] Mainstream cinema in India basically consists of the "Masala Movies", which includes several genres such as comedy, action, revenge, tragedy, romance combined to create an entire film.
Some of her other well-known works include her elemental trilogy: Earth (1996), Fire (1998), Water (2005), where dominant masculine values and practices of oppression and exploitation of women are challenged in this compelling three part series.
Currently, the best-known women filmmaker of Japan may be Naomi Kawase; 2007 she won the Grand Prix in Cannes, while Memoirs of a Fig Tree, the directorial debut of well-known actress Kaori Momoi, was released in 2006.
[85] The phenomenal growth of 'women's cinema' not only meant that there would be an infinite expansion in the list of female names as filmmakers or creators; in reality, it created a daunting cinematic genre by objectifying women as well as displacing them within the film industry.
The women: struggling artist Elizabeth (Rosario Sagrav), Jane (Renée Coleman), who's looking for her brother, and Serena (Gabriela Roel), a widow who just arrived in town with her family in tow.
Other notable film directors from Belgium include Lydia Chagoll, Marion Hänsel, Anne Lévy-Morelle, Nadine Monfils, Yolande Moreau, Nathalie Teirlinck, Fien Troch, Chris Vermorcken and Laura Wandel.
[91] Among the best known French women film makers are Agnès Varda, Claire Denis, Alice Guy-Blaché, Germaine Dulac, Jacqueline Audry, Catherine Breillat, Nelly Kaplan and Diane Kurys.
The brothers were mostly interested in shooting films which would show what the cameras can capture on a technical level and not what they can express in a deeper extent; for example having repetitive and monotonous shots of trains or the military marching.
Noteworthy women filmmakers to emerge from the 1970s include Catherine Breillat, Diane Kurys, Nelly Kaplan, Coline Serreau, Nadine Trintignant, Marion Sarraut, Rachel Weinberg, Véra Belmont, Josée Dayan, Liliane de Kermadec, Sarah Maldoror, Ariane Mnouchkine, Christine Lipinska, Jeanne Labrune.
Modern French directors to become well known in the 2000s and later include Cannes Film Festival winners Julia Ducournau, Céline Sciamma, Mia Hansen-Løve and Mati Diop, Marie Amachoukeli, Rebecca Zlotowski, Claire Burger, Julie Lopes-Curval, Houda Benyamina.
Other notable directors include Virginie Despentes, Valérie Donzelli, Alix Delaporte, Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, Marion Laine, Léa Mysius, Sophie Barthes, Marina de Van, Houda Benyamina, Karin Albou, Mona Achache, Lola Bessis.
Contemporary German women directors of note include Maren Ade, Doris Dörrie, Frauke Finsterwalder, Katja von Garnier, Nicolette Krebitz, Caroline Link and Angela Schanelec.
Other Polish film directors include Maria Kaniewska, Agnieszka Smoczyńska, Urszula Antoniak, Małgorzata Szumowska, Ewa Petelska, Teresa Kotlarczyk, Anna Kazejak-Dawid, Dorota Kobiela.
Other Portuguese female film directors include Teresa Villaverde, Catarina Ruivo, Raquel Freire, Margarida Gil, Cláudia Tomaz and Rita Azevedo Gomes.
Preobrazhenskaya created this picture together with the director Ivan Pravov, as many of her other films, designed in the spirit of socialist realism: And Quiet Flows the Don, Stepan Razin, The Lad from the Taiga.
Two of her most famous films—a lyrical story about unrequited love Woodpeckers Don't Get Headaches (1975) and a drama about young hooligans Boys (1983), which featured amateur actors, real troubled teens.
Other films include Segundo López, aventurero urbano (1953) inspired by Italian neorealism or Con la vida hicieron fuego (1959), about a former combatant of the Republican faction who tries to start a new life while battling the haunting memories of the Spanish Civil War.
[103] In Britain Jane Arden (1927–82), following up her television drama The Logic Game (1965), wrote and starred in the film Separation (Jack Bond 1967), which explores a woman's mental landscape during a marital breakup.
Partially as a result of funding from the UK Film Council (disbanded in 2010), a new generation of British female filmmakers has emerged in the 21st-century, including Penny Woolcock, Carol Morley, Joanna Hogg, Clio Barnard, Sally El Hosaini, Amma Asante, and Tina Gharavi.
[109] A number of filmmakers, including Jeni Thornley, Sarah Gibson, Susan Lambert, Martha Ansara, Margot Nash and Megan McMurchy, were involved in these groups.
[112][113] The 2020 film Brazen Hussies, a feature documentary about second-wave feminism in Australia, written and directed by Catherine Dwyer, despite having great difficulty in getting it financed, proved highly successful[114] Jane Campion (born 1954) is the most well-known woman director from New Zealand.