Real Women Make Movies

Photo by Zena Holloway courtesy of Rhinestone Armadillo

Zena Holloway Photo courtesy of Rhinestonearmadillo.typepad.com

A long time ago I watched a rare and beautiful film, of the sort that will probably never be remade. It was shot in the breathtaking landscape of New Zealand. There were tall, elegant, ageless trees in a forest that reminded me of the ancient redwoods in Northern California. The cinematography captured hilly scapes and craggly branches like witches against the gray matter of sky. I was swept into this strange fairy tale of the wilderness and all its deathly hauntings. I remember pondering how the forest seemed at battle with the confines of civilization that tapered its edge. But what I feel even to this day are the deeper themes of enslavement, the fall of natural wonders, and what it means to be a woman at its rawest sense.

The movie was Jane Campion’s The Piano. It told a story about a mute woman who expresses her passion for life through her piano. She and her daughter are sold by her father to a wealthy frontiersman who expects her to be a dutiful if not subservient wife and dismisses every part of her that exists outside that realm including her passion for the piano. It’s an odd, nuanced film that won critical and box office acclaim with a young Anna Paquin and completely luminescent Holly Hunter. This film moved me so much I bought the soundtrack (by Michael Nyman) and I have never forgotten the pining longing expressed in its notes. This film remains one of my all time favorites and a reference for Repass on many levels. I especially love the last underwater scene which is simple, lyrical and magical all at the same time. The picture above refers to that quality I hope to capture with Marie’s underwater scenes.

But what I revere about The Piano is its unflinching and unapologetic portrayal of a woman who did not confine herself to roles of motherhood and wife. She was childlike, maternal, elegant and sensual. She laid with a man who was not her husband but who treated her with compassion and respect. She did not allow her disability to be a weight, she let it enlighten her and bring us into to a new space. This woman refused to surrender to the obligations and eventual threats pushed on her by the man that owned her. She made choices about her life every step of the way without remorse or regret for satiating her personal desires. As a black woman who has entered middle age, I see more and more how subtle the expectations placed on women can be, and how dangerous it can be to want otherwise.

What disturbs me about this film and why I write about it now is that there has not been a film made like it in all the years that have passed since its release in 1993. What saddens me more is that there has been little attempt to allow these kinds of films to made. Films that are written and directed by and about women.

I must confess that when I look at the canon of female directors there are only enough to really count on your hands, and even fewer that are American. My own favorite directors are mostly a list of men: Kurosawa, Kieslowski, Kubrick, Wong Kar Wai, Charles Burnett. The only woman I add to this list is Jane Campion. She is truly one of the greatest filmmakers of her time. Every shot, every gesture, every movement, even the fabric in the costumes has been selected to express these connected themes—of nature, womanhood, captivity—and allowed to reverberate through an infinite emotional continuum. Other films have done that for me as well, but they have traditionally been the work of male directors. That is not to say that women are incapable of completing that kind of measured work; my point is that they have not been given the opportunity to do so.

Certainly there are other female directors whose work I’ve admired but not to the same extent: I loved Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days, but as her canon of work has expanded I’ve noticed a movement away from the complex female characters of her younger years, Near Dark, Blue Steel, and Strange Days—I lament that as she has become a more accomplished filmmaker, her female characters have grown less important, less time onscreen and less complex. I miss the Angela Bassett who was alternately in love and condemning love and broke the boundaries of our expectations of what being in love means in Strange Days.

And there are other women filmmakers too. Nancy Meyers has long prevailed in the romantic comedy category as Amy Heckerling has with comedies. I admire the work of Mira Nair who continues to strive to make big budget Hollywood movies but had to return to her roots to reconnect with her material. Deepa Metha has done tremendous work in south Asia and Susanne Bier’s work is notable as she has attempted working in the Hollywood system as well but left seemed to leave as soon as she got there. I do greatly love the work of Claire Denis which is always moving and poignant but hasn’t entered the foray of the Hollywood system, and perhaps never needs to. And there are others, not many, but others: in the American system whose work I also adore Nicole Holofcener, Allison Anders, Lisa Cholodenko, and Kimberly Pierce.

But the fact of the matter is that women don’t get to make movies, not commercial ones that capture large audiences and appeal. Women films are reserved for small indie or rom-com audiences despite the fact that women actually hold the ticket buying power in the movie marketplace. I love seeing films directed by women, Meek’s Cutoff was a tough and tender film by Kelly Reichardt that was here and gone before I even knew it existed.

Black female filmmakers are even rarer and their pieces most often fit into that extra category of ethnic film: I’ve enjoyed Kasi Lemmon’s Eve’s Bayou and even Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love and Basketball; but Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust barely even made it out of the theater after decades of work and could only appeal to a niche market. I was proud but simultaneously horrified to learn that my friend Ava Duvernay won Sundance’s directing award; she was the first female African American to win it EVER—really? This climate of filmmaking for women and women of color causes me to question are we telling our stories or have we been given tacit permission of what we CAN tell, what we are expected to tell, and even the budgets we’re allowed?

These stories are tender heartfelt visions but they don’t push the envelope and we, African-American women, are consistently told that movies about black people just don’t sell, even though it seems to happen overseas all the time. These filmmakers have struggled to make their films, and they have been more or less successful but none have been blockbuster. But I don’t blame them. I blame a system that doesn’t allow, doesn’t support, does not enable women to make movies that push boundaries, but are also big, that can be commercial. No filmmaker makes a successful movie every time—even the greats, Lucas, Spielberg, Cameron—but we don’t get to fail and be forgiven. We don’t get to make Batman or even the Hunger Games, a film about a girl written by a female author –whatever happened to Penny Marshall who once made inspiring commercial movies like Big long ago running through film like it was candy. In the wake of Kathryn Bigelow’s success it seems that women don’t get to play with the big boys unless we turn into one of them.

I question the slew of films that have come out by but not about women or not by but about women (and girls). I love Pans Labyrinth and Edward Scissorhands—I love and admire these directors. But when do women get to make films about women that aren’t chick flicks? I don’t even like chick flicks or the term itself–and it has no male equal. But I believe that the industry wouldn’t know what to do with a mainstream movie that had a women’s perspective. The fear that a movie like Terminator might combust into Bridesmaids in a female director’s hands is unreal. Have they forgotten Mary Harron’s American Psycho? Women can make gruesome and terrifying, action and political movies as well. We deserve and have earned more alternatives than The Hurt Locker’s and the Zero Dark Thirty’s. But perhaps Zero Dark Thirty, with the under-promoted Jessica Chastain, will surprise me.

Repass is a story about a little Creole girl who endures the horrors of a city facing its mortality and saves her family. I wrote this story and I unabashedly love it because it is a director’s film, not some watch it on my iPhone or Samsung dilly, or even play it at home dally. It’s a MOVIE. Wide panoramic shots, elegant plateaus, dreamy landscapes that transform you to new places. It’s dark and brutal—voodoo is not for the weak even if it is misunderstood. It’s scary—Marie maneuvers between the horrors of the living and the dead and creates a new reality among the cemeteries. It’s dramatic—the conflict arises not only out of the storm but also out of the tragedy that affects a family. It’s nostalgic—it reminds me of the old films of the 50’s when an ending isn’t some 10 minute crunched in quickie, the end is a ceremony to the film like A Gone with the Wind where you feel a movie has truly taken place. It’s powerful, big and intimate—it tells a personal story in the context of a broader issue that affects the world. That’s the kind of movie I want to make, and I know my vision is not cookie cutter—because I am unique; it’s mine.

So when people ask who is going to direct this movie, I say “me” and watch them scoff that someone like me could make that film. Admittedly, there was a time when I would have agreed. It’s not that I think that no one else could make this film and make it their own and of their vision. I know some fantastic directors who could truly do something powerful with my work. But my vision and perspective have value. So as I ponder the question of whether I should direct my film, I reflect on the 6 years I’ve invested developing my craft, hiring crew, knocking on doors, building business plans, finessing financiers, and locking down locations,  and I think, “Yes, someone else could make it, but isn’t it about time that someone like me did.”