BFI's The Female Gaze: 100 Overlooked Films Directed by Women

"The story of an 18-year-old Iranian girl (a fine performance by Flora Shabaviz( living in a poor village on the edge of a new town whose personality slowly breaks down under the pressure of modern and western influences. SHe refuses to get married and the new ideas of her younger sister and others eventually create an individuality and a pressure that erupts in an hysterical nervous breakdown. There are almost no camera movements and the usual transition is a fade. it's very quiet and still and beautiful but with a great deal of feeling concealed beneath its calm exterior." (Ken Wlaschin, Film and Filming).

When her best friend and roommate abruptly moves out to get married, Susan (Melanie Mayron), a wannabe gallery artist slumming it as a bar mitzvah photographer on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, finds herself adrift in both life and love. Could a new job be the answer? What about a fling with a married, older rabbi (Eli Wallach)? A touchstone of American independent filmmaking that went on to influence an entire subgenre of films and television shows (most famously Lena Dunham’s “Girls”) about young women trying to make it in the big city, Claudia Weill’s 1970s New York time capsule captures the complexities and contradictions of women’s lives and relationships during the era of second-wave feminism with both wry humor and refreshing frankness.

Writer and filmmaker Assia Djebar explores Algerian history, the psychological impact of war, and post-colonial female identity in this 1979 classic of film literature. Named for (and taking its structure from) a traditional song with five distinct movements, the film combines documentary-style observation with loose narrative form to tell the story of Lila, an Algerian expatriate returning to her country 15 years after independence has been won. In comparing her life with the lives and experiences of rural Algeriennes, Lila is able to put her childhood demons to rest and discover a new history -- one written in the ongoing strength of generations of women. Like much of Djebar's writing, the film has a strong subtext dealing with resistance to patriarchy and women's desire to appropriate the means of power and expression -- one of which, of course, is the filmmaker's camera.

At the beginning of the XX century two men from the Spanish countryside were condemned for a crime they swore they hadn't committed. After endless sessions of torturing they confessed.

Song tells the story of the women who worked in Victorian London's clothing sweatshops, eschewing a conventional narrative in favour of a series of still photographs and acted reconstructions to show that this story has been rewritten/written-over many times before.

The film chronicles filmmaker Joel DeMott, significant other/film partner Jeff Kreines and filmmaker Mark Rance as they head to Michigan to make a low budget horror film.

Little Ida's mother is working for the Germans during WW2, and she is also having a relationship with a German SS-officer. Ida is experiencing the problems of having a mother who is involved with the enemy, without being old enough to understand what is actually going on.

Trouble ensues when a motorcycle gang stops in a small southern town while heading to the races at Daytona.

1981 film by Margarethe von Trotta

After the Allies liberate Naples in 1943, the life for the locals is not much easier, especially for women. Many sacrifice their dignity and morale to survive.

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English | Bengali (Harcoded Eng Subs for Bengali dialogue)

A girls’ basketball coach battles a heroin addiction while mentoring a 12-year-old street kid adopted by Will and his wife.

Sara, a cold college professor, and her husband, an ecstatic painter, spend a summer away from the city, straining their rocky relationship.

When three women with no previous acquaintance kill a male shopkeeper in the middle of the day, the female psychiatrist assigned to the case sets out to understand why.

Special Features
Audio Commentaries on Each Film
All-New Three-Part Documentary, Sleepless Nights: Revisiting The Slumber Party Massacres
Photo and Poster Still Gallery
Theatrical Trailers
Editorial Reviews
All Three Films In One Collection With New Bonus Features
When Trish (Michelle Michaels) decides to invite her high school girls basketball teammates over for a slumber party, she has no idea the night will be ruined by an escaped mental patient with a portable drill in the cult classic The Slumber Party Massacre.
The only sane survivor of the first incident, Courtney (Crystal Bernard), dreams of the driller killer returning in the first sequel, Slumber Party Massacre II. She cannot help shake the feeling that she and her friends will be viciously tormented by the killer. Her nightmare becomes reality when the killer returns, reincarnated as an evil rocker with a deadly guitar.
After a relaxing day at the beach, a group of teens decide to have a slumber party. Their boyfriends predictably show up to scare them, but there is something much scarier lurking in the shadows as the group starts getting attacked by an unknown killer in the second, and last, installment, Slumber Party Massacre III.

Martinique, in the early 1930s. Young José and his grandmother live in a small village. Nearly everyone works cutting cane and barely earning a living. The overseer can fine a worker for the smallest infraction. The way to advance is to do well in school. José studies hard and succeeds in an exam allowing him to attend school in the capital. With only a partial scholarship, the tuition is very costly. José and his grandmother move to Fort-de-France to make José's studies easier...

In the winter of 1942-43, a Jewish family leaps from a train going through Silesia. They are separated in the woods, and Leon, a local peasant who's now a farmer of some wealth, discovers the woman, Rosa, and hides her in his cellar. Leon's a middle-aged Catholic bachelor, tormented by his sexual drive. He doesn't tell Rosa he's seen signs her husband is alive, and he begs her to love him. Rosa offers herself to Leon if he'll help a local Jew in hiding who needs money. Leon pays, and love between Rosa and him does develop, but then Leon's peasant subservience and his limited empathy lead to tragedy. At the war's end, a ray of sunshine comes from an unexpected place.

Made for only $350,000 in 1985 when no one wanted to fund or star in a movie about lesbians, Desert Hearts is widely considered the first full-length lesbian love story, and its success paved the way for the proliferation of lesbian films we enjoy today.
Directed by Donna Deitch and set in 1950's Reno, Nevada, Desert Hearts tells the story of a 35-year-old uptight female professor Vivian (Helen Shaver) who comes to town to file for divorce and ends up falling in love with a free-spirited 25-year-old casino worker Cay (Patricia Charbonneau).
Although Vivian left her husband because she had "drowned in still waters," she is not quite prepared for the tidal wave-effect Cay has on her life. As Vivian herself admits, her life is all about "order," and her image of herself as a scholar and a professional, upstanding woman does not include a relationship with a woman. Cay, meanwhile, is living at home with her stepmother, Frances (Audra Lindley) while she waits to meet someone who "counts"--and she almost immediately recognizes that Vivian is that someone.
Both women struggle with conflicting desires and a sense of obligation to others, and are ultimately drawn together not just because of their attraction to each other, but because each woman offers the other something she has been unable to find on her own.

Macabéa has just moved to the big city after her aunt, who raised her, died. She gets a job as a typist and moves into a boarding house with three other women. In her spare time, she listens to a radio station called Time; on Sundays, she likes to ride the metro. Then she meets Olímpico, a northeasterner like herself, who has dreams of becoming a congressman.

1985 film by Fina Torres