In 2023 I decided to conduct an experiment, one I didn't announce beforehand because I didn't know how it was going to come off. I decided to see if I could write a whole year's worth of "Great Directors" posts limited to female and non-white directors while still sticking to the arbitrary guidelines I'd set out for this series ten years ago when I started.
To be featured, I had to have seen at least ten films from a director, or half of their output if they were dead. Unfortunately, female and non-white directors tend to get less opportunity to direct than their white male counterparts, which makes the list of eligible directors pretty short. Among the most prominent female directors, for example, Jane Campion has directed nine films, Sofia Coppola eight, Ava Duvernay seven, and Elaine May four. This has been getting better over the last decade, clearly, but not as quickly as I would like.
Still, I was able to write six of the ten entries I posted last year about female directors: Chantal Akerman, Kathryn Bigelow, Penny Marshall, Lotte Reiniger, Clair Denis, and Mira Nair. Nair is also an Indian director, so she's the first non-white female director on the list. I also wrote entries for two more black directors - Ousmane Sembene and Melvin van Peebles - plus Guillermo Del Toro and Keisuke Kinoshita. There were several others that I couldn't manage to pull off. I've seen five Lina Wertmuller films now, enough to realize that I'm never going to be able to write a "Great Directors" post about Lina Wertmuller. My problem, not hers.
Why did I want to conduct this experiment? I've been trying to be more mindful of including female and non-white directors for a while now, and haven't been doing a great job. The first female director I featured was Agnes Varda in 2017, and there's only been one other, Dorothy Arzner, with an entry before 2022. Spike Lee has been the lone black director represented until now. I decided that I had to get serious and commit more fully to the idea.
This challenge ended up being one of the most fun and rewarding things I've ever done for this blog. I found myself in corners of the cinema landscape I'd never been to before. Chantal Akerman and Osumane Sembene were the only directors I actually planned on covering when I started, because I'd been prepping for their entries for a while, and had already watched a lot of the films. Clair Denis was someone I'd tried getting into in the past, and this was an excuse to make another attempt. This time I found some of her films that I liked and could connect to. Melvin van Peebles was someone I came across just researching every black director I could find, and I barely made it work because his later films are so difficult to get ahold of. Mira Nair was a last minute replacement for Lina Wertmuller. I did a frantic marathon of all her films, which was fantastic and has made me a lifelong fan. Lotte Reinger feels like a bit of a cheat since she only made one feature, but she was one of the pioneers of animation, and had a fascinating career. I've seen a good amount of her work in short forms, and I was glad to finally be able to write about her.
And yes, the renewed attention on some of these directors due to recent Criterion releases is not an accident. Having the Chantal Akerman entry publish right after the 2022 Sight and Sound list dropped, however, was just good luck.
Moving ahead, I have no definite plans for the "Great Directors" series for the foreseeable future. I'm tracking several directors and tallying up the numbers of films I've seen for them, but there are no nagging omissions I'm keen on correcting. I finally stopped being indecisive and added William Friedkin in January. Others in the queue include Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Ida Lupino, Douglas Sirk, Claude Chabrol, John Woo, Lars von Trier, and Terrence Malick. And Quentin Tarantino might release his tenth film this year and finally become eligible. You never know.
Finally, I've decided to incorporate two more previously written posts into the series:
Nobody Knows for Hirokazu Koreeda
The Grand Budapest Hotel for Wes Anderson
Happy Watching.
---
No comments:
Post a Comment