Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema (2018)
Synopsis
The complete film will be made up of forty “chapters” to be narrated by Tilda Swinton and other key women in cinema. Following in the footsteps of Mark Cousins’ 'The Story of Film: An Odyssey', giving a guided tour of the art and craft of the movies. Using almost a thousand film extracts from thirteen decades and five continents, Cousins asks how films are made, shot and edited; how stories are shaped and how movies depict life, love, politics, humour and death, all through the compelling lens of some of the world’s greatest directors – all of them women.
“Many films about cinema feature mostly male directors – 'Women Directing Film' challenges that. It tries to change the canon. It’s not about the lives of these great directors, it’s about their work. It is a film school, where all the teachers are female. The intention of this film is to, as Diaghilev and Cocteau said, “astonish us.” To campaign for equality in cinema is compellingly right and part of that campaign must be to celebrate the great women directors from around the world and from every decade, to insert them into the canon where they rightly belong and from which they have been excluded by many film historians, mostly male.” (Mark Cousins)
“Cinema: the great empathy machine. The ultimate invitation to walk in other people’s shoes, to look through their eyes, follow their thoughts, make their connections. This is the radical project of cinema itself. It transforms - it liberates us as we watch. It makes us fit for evolution.” (Tilda Swinton)
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2018 - TIFF Docs
Details
- Year
- 2018
- Type of film
- Features
- Running time
- 240 mins
- Director
-
Mark Cousins
- Producer
- John Archer
- Executive Producer
- Tilda Swinton, Clara Glynn
- Editor
- Timo Langer
- Screenwriter
- Mark Cousins
- Sound
- Becky Thompson
- Music
- Germaine Tailleferre, Suite Burlesque, Clinton-Narboni Duo
- Principal cast
- Tilda Swinton
- Running Time Note
- Complete version running time will be c. 960 mins
Categories
Production Status
Production Company
A Dogwoof Hopscotch Films production
Hopscotch Films
John ArcherFilm City Glasgow
401 Govan Road
Glasgow
G51 2QJ
Dogwoof
19-23 Ironmonger RowLondon
EC1V 3QN
Sales Company
Dogwoof
19-23 Ironmonger RowLondon
EC1V 3QN
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See also
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Cinema Has Been My True Love
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Year: 2023
Cinema Has Been My True Love: The Work and Times of Lynda Myles<br /> <br /> In Mark Cousins’ meditative documentary, Lynda Myles, an influential connoisseur of cinema, reflects on her adventures in the film culture she helped establish. From 1973 to 1980, as the first female director of any festival, Myles transformed the Edinburgh Film Festival into a vibrant, iconoclastic mecca of discovery, championing the work of overlooked auteurs including Hitchcock, Sirk and Sam Fuller.<br /> Official selection Telluride Film Festival 2023 - World premiere
A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things
Director: Mark Cousins
Year: 2024
A creative biography of the Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. One of the most important women in British modern art, the painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was a highly inspirational figure, whose work was deeply impacted by a pivotal event in her life. In May 1949, this leading representative of the modernist St. Ives group of artists climbed to the top of the Grindelwald glacier in Switzerland, an experience which was to transform the way she saw the world. She spent the rest of her life capturing its shapes and colours, indeed its very essence. In his essayistic portrait Cousins delves into complex themes of gender, climate change and creativity, while laying bare the artist’s character and vast imagination so pervasively that he creates the impression we are seeing the world through her eyes.<br /> Official Selection Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2024 - World premiere<br /> Official Selection Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024
The Story of Film: A New Generation
Director: Mark Cousins
Year: 2021
A decade after THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY, an expansive and influential inquiry into the state of moviemaking in the 20th century, filmmaker Mark Cousins returns with an epic and hopeful tale of cinematic innovation from around the globe. In this film Cousins turns his sharp, meticulously honed gaze on world cinema from 2010 to 2021, using a surprising range of works - including JOKER, FROZEN and CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR - as launchpads to explore recurring themes and emerging motifs, from the evolution of film language, to technology’s role in moviemaking today, to shifting identities in 21st-century world cinema. Touching on everything from PARASITE and THE FAREWELL to BLACK PANTHER and LOVER'S ROCK, Cousins seeks out films, filmmakers and communities under-represented in traditional film histories, with a particular emphasis on Asian and Middle Eastern works, as well as boundary-pushing documentaries and films that see gender in new ways. And as the recent pandemic recedes, Cousins ponders what comes next in the streaming age: how have we changed as cinephiles, and how will moviegoing continue to transform in the digital century, to our collective joy and wonder.<br /> Official Selection Cannes Film Festival 2021 - Cannes Classics - World premiere<br /> Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Create