Women on Film: Sight & Sound’s coverage of female filmmaking

2020

Fifty years of feminist cinema at the Berlinale: still waiting for a revolution

This year’s Berlin Film Festival offered an opportunity to reflect upon a half-century of highlighting women’s voices in cinema, of solidarity and slow progress, writes Ela Bittencourt.
Tuesday 10 March 2020
No man’s land: Céline Sciamma on Portrait of a Lady on Fire

In Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma’s exquisite love story set in pre-Revolutionary France, the director presents a female-centred vision of equality, solidarity, romance and sex. Here she explains to Isabel Stevens why she was determined to up-end the clichés and assumptions of traditional cinema.
Tuesday 3 March 2020
Portraits of young women on fire: Céline Sciamma on female art, identity and intimacy

What sparks fly when the female gaze grows intimate? Céline Sciamma talks us through her portraits of girlhood and womanhood, culminating in the the heat and light of her Portrait of a Lady on Fire, in this video essay by Leigh Singer.
Friday 28 February 2020
A womb of one’s own: a short history of abortion on film

A tenderly handled subplot in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire reminds us how rarely the termination of a pregnancy features in cinema, and how such stories tend to turn out, writes Violet Lucca.
Monday 24 February 2020

2019

Merata: the Maori film legend and her legacy

Pioneering filmmaker Merata Mita was “the spark that actually set the fire” for indigenous cinema, as a new Netflix documentary about her by her son Hepi reminds the world, writes So Mayer.
Monday 7 October 2019
“May God burn their livers”: nonfiction Furies in Shooting the Mafia, The Disappearance of My Mother and Honeyland

Feminine anger surges through some of 2019’s best documentary subjects, from one filmmaker’s firebrand mother to a pioneering news photographer and a duo scraping a living in rural Macedonia, writes Sophie Brown.
Monday 16 September 2019
Maureen Blackwood: “I wanted to make films about lives and issues that were forgotten”

Ahead of a rare chance to see the work of the acclaimed writer-director on the big screen, she talks to Karen Alexander about her pioneering, radical career, and offers advice for new filmmakers today.
Wednesday 24 July 2019
Nell Shipman: an auteur in the wild

In the frame shots bracketing her 1920 western-with-an-automobile Something New, the silent-film pioneer wrote her own claims to cinematic authorship directly into the movie – decades before men coined the auteur theory, writes Brad Stevens.
Wednesday 1 May 2019
Barbara Hammer obituary: an experimental pioneer who put lesbian life on screen

Sex, experimentation and the urge to change the world for the better run through the fascinating oeuvre of the filmmaker who almost singlehandedly defined lesbian cinema, writes So Mayer.
Thursday 4 April 2019
Seven silent self-willed heroines at HippFest 2019

As a corrective to the stereotype of women in silent cinema as invariably passive and helpless, Falkirk’s go-get Hippodrome Silent Film Festival this year showcased an international spectrum of female protagonists young and old, reports Pamela Hutchinson.
Thursday 4 April 2019
Invisible women: how film history erases female filmmakers

“With footnotes, parentheses, half-sentences, or no mention at all, many talented, hard-working women of the past have become virtually invisible in recorded film history,” Cecile Starr here noted in 1980.
Friday 8 March 2019
The films of Márta Mészáros: power, feminism and transindividuality

A retrospective at the Berlinale revealed the radical energy running through the Hungarian director’s work, and connections both with her contemporaries and with modern cinema, writes Ela Bittencourt.
Thursday 28 February 2019

2018

Female firsts: four debut features by women at London Film Festival 2018

Gender inclusivity was at the heart of the LFF agenda this year with 38 per cent of films directed by women. These distinctive female-directed debuts bode well for future parity, writes Alex Ramon.
Friday 26 October 2018
The delights of Muriel Box

A retrospective at San Sebastian reveals Britain’s most prolific female director to be one of its best, especially when it comes to the ambitious satire of The Passionate Stranger or the magical realism of Happy Family, writes Neil Young.
Tuesday 23 October 2018
Lois Weber: it’s time to celebrate this pioneering director

Once regarded as one of America’s finest directors, Lois Weber was all but written out of film history. Now – with two of her works on Blu-ray and upcoming screenings in Cambridge and Bath – we can see what the fuss was about, writes Pamela Hutchinson.
Thursday 18 October 2018
Grace Elliott: a woman filming a woman interviewing a man

A mysterious female director created these short and surprising publicity segments in the early 1930s. What else could she have done on a larger canvas, asks Brad Stevens.
Thursday 11 October 2018
Skate and awake: how Skate Kitchen confronts skateboarding’s wall of machismo

Crystal Moselle’s fictionalised verité portrait of New York’s all-women Skate Kitchen collective remakes the language of skate cinema to show us a more open, emancipated and inspiring culture, says Sander Hölsgens.
Thursday 27 September 2018
Alienation and the limits of access at Edinburgh 2018

The festival that prides itself doing things differently made room for some welcome outsider voices in its programme this year, but it was far from inclusive for everyone, reports Rebecca Harrison.
Wednesday 11 July 2018
Raze the red carpet: Cannes 2018 responds to #MeToo

To the #TimesUp moment and the world after Weinstein, Cannes offered an anti-harrasment hotline – but mostly just ceded its platform to women themselves to make the change, says Rebecca Harrison.
Friday 18 May 2018
Breaking the silence: Hot Docs 2018 addresses the #MeToo moment

Toronto’s international documentary film festival showcased a series of films that reckon with our moment of sexual-relations redress – offering a vision of creative nonfiction as a space to transcend victimhood, writes Simran Hans.
Thursday 17 May 2018
All tease, no tale: Hollywood’s misplaced lady lands

The dumping-to-Netflix of Alex Garland’s women-led sci-fi thriller Annihilation, like the elided matriarchies of Wonder Woman, Thor: Ragnarok and Godless, suggests that cinema’s gatekeepers still aren’t ready to see any vision of women in charge, says Charlotte Richardson Andrews.
Thursday 15 March 2018
Girl friends on film: the rare case of lifelike female friendships on the big screen

While male ‘buddy’ movies are a genre to themselves, films about women’s relationships are remarkable for their scarcity – to say nothing of those that dare to depict the bonds of female kinship in the round, writes Hannah McGill.
Monday 5 March 2018
Women on a Bergman screen – a video essay

Swedish master Ingmar Bergman’s fascination with female experience and emotions underpinned one of the cinema’s greatest virtual communities of women on screen. In this video study Leigh Singer invites Bergman’s talented actresses and their creations into closest possible correspondence.
Friday 2 February 2018

2017

All I desire: women watching men at the movies

To mark the publication of Christina Newland’s new collection of women’s film writing She Found It at the Movies, here’s her manifesto for a proudly subjective, impressionistic and lusty female film criticism, from our October 2017 issue.
Tuesday 31 March 2020
Listen to the actress: Annette Bening, directly

Against the backdrop of breaking Harvey Weinstein disclosures, the star of The Grifters and Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool held forth on stage at the London Film Festival – bringing home how rare it is for women in the industry to be truly heard, writes Thirza Wakefield.
Friday 24 November 2017
What next after Harvey Weinstein?

Key figures from the UK film industry on what steps need to be taken in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
Monday 6 November 2017
No guide to the future: the BFI Filmography reveals the thin wedge of female British filmmaking past

The BFI’s new searchable graphic database of British film production credits since 1911 shows us the stark historical lack of opportunities for women – but behind the dismal numbers there are characters with stories to be told, says Pamela Hutchinson.
Friday 29 September 2017
“We will be the mainstream”: female filmmakers talk revolution in Seoul

At the Seoul International Women’s Film Festival, a new generation of politically engaged feminists flocked to see female directors and their trailblazing films, reports Sophie Mayer.
Tuesday 27 June 2017
The black feminine on screen: 11 key auteurs

From Daughters of the Dust to Lemonade, a distinctly interior, subjective aesthetic binds a number of films made by and about black women. Tega Okiti spotlights 11 of the varied individuals and collectives at the heart of this often marginalised cinematic tradition.
Saturday 17 June 2017
Six films by new and emerging female filmmakers at Cannes 2017

The competition may have been lacklustre overall but that wasn’t the case elsewhere at Cannes, where the sidebars were brimming with great films by first- and second-time female directors, reports Isabel Stevens. Distributors take note!
Friday 2 June 2017
Ishtar, Elaine May and the road not taken

This misunderstood 1980s comedy critiqued 1980s American foreign policy and parodied male narcissism, which is probably why it also destroyed its director’s career, writes Brad Stevens.
Monday 24 April 2017
Rewind Fast Forward: Sandi Hughes’s radical film archive

By preserving images of black and gay life in and around Liverpool, Hughes has created a powerful archive of her own, and raw material for other filmmakers to refashion into revelatory new works, writes Grace Barber-Plentie.
Thursday 6 April 2017
Different for Girls: a lesbian series that dramatises sex and life

Jacquie Lawrence’s sexy lesbian La Ronde, set in and out of the households of south-west London, has been brought to life by Campbell X’s direction, and no one dies. Is that why it isn’t on TV, asks Sophie Mayer?
Friday 17 March 2017
Signature Move review: Jennifer Reeder revives the 90s’ New Queer Cinema

An amateur-wrestler lawyer navigates love, family and coming out in this heartfelt and cleverly constructed multicultural queer romance, writes Sophie Mayer.
Tuesday 21 March 2017
Hooray for Jeni LeGon: the Hollywood pioneer who “danced like a boy”

Hollywood’s ingrained racism deprived Jeni LeGon of a great dance career – an emblematic injustice that’s both recounted and countered in Zadie Smith’s brilliant new novel Swing Time, writes Pamela Hutchinson.
Wednesday 8 March 2017

2016

Lemonade review: Beyoncé’s tribute to black female artists

In the iconic singer’s visual album, marital infidelity prompts a retreat to a poeticised world of women in the American South, where she rewrites traumas of black history, finds Kelli Weston.
Thursday 8 December 2016
The (few) women breaking through in Korean cinema

Women are unusually well-represented on screen in Korean cinema. Behind the camera is a different story – for reasons that say more about our own biases than we might care to recognise, reports Darcy Paquet.
Friday 11 November 2016
Hex appeal: how witches charmed the cinema

Witches are not just for Halloween, or for horror movies. Charlotte Richardson Andrews celebrates the screen’s sexier, more sisterly sorceresses: symbols of divine feminine magic and healing rather than bloodthirsty she-devils. With video by Leigh Singer.
Friday 28 October 2016
Regrouping, again: Lizzie Borden’s “diabolical hour” comes around

Forty years after Lizzie Borden put away her radically feminist, reflexive portrait of four artists in a women’s group, the film has more to say to us than ever, says Sophie Mayer.
Wednesday 20 July 2016
A love letter to Carol White

Catharine Des Forges remembers a Ken Loach romantic heroine and a genuine working-class 1960s British movie star, half a century after their quartet of classics that culminated in Poor Cow.
Friday 17 June 2016
The rise of female documentary makers in Mexico

Mexico may not be the easiest country in which to be a woman, and its cinema’s pecking order is as macho as most. But at this year’s Ambulante documentary festival, six female-directed finds show the country’s subordinate sex finding its voice, reports Neil Young.
Friday 10 June 2016
The invisible woman: film’s gender bias laid bare

Three recent reports conclusively prove that female filmmakers are underrepresented across all sectors of the international industry, and urge institutional change to redress the balance. By Nikki Baughan.
Wednesday 11 May 2016
Women’s work: ten female filmmakers at Cannes 2016

From veterans to newcomers: Isabel Stevens picks out ten female talents at this year’s festival, and their work to watch.
Tuesday 17 May 2016
Jessica Jones: the antihero we need

Marvel’s TV series brings us the superhero as super survivor, says Charlotte Richardson Andrews.
Friday 1 April 2016
Westward the women! Distaff furies of the psychological west

There’s never been anything quite like Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar, but many other post-war westerns of the era also found great post-frontier roles for women, writes Imogen Sara Smith.
Monday 9 May 2016
Thieves in the temple: reframing the archive with Miranda Pennell and Sarah Wood

Sophie Mayer takes flight with the post-colonial, border-transcending archival documentaries of two contemporary British film essayists.
Wednesday 16 March 2016
Love and work differently: Anne-Marie Miéville’s cinema of companionship

Jean-Luc Godard’s partner has been a working filmmaker for 40 years – with him and independently. Albertine Fox offers us a closer look.
Friday 26 February 2016
Video essay: Lines of resistance – Anne-Marie Miéville’s The Book of Mary

Counterpointing Godard: Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin offer a taste of Anne-Marie Miéville’s cinema, and a look at the patterns at play in her prologue to her partner’s Hail Mary.
Friday 26 February 2016

The Female Gaze (2015)

Sight & Sound: the October 2015 issue

The Female Gaze: 100 underrated films directed by women, with contributions from Agnès Varda, Jane Campion, Claire Denis, Isabelle Huppert, Tilda Swinton, Greta Gerwig and more. Plus Tom Hardy and Legend, Horse Money, Mia Madre and Lucrecia Martel.
Women with a movie camera

Behind every great female-directed film is a female director. It’s time to make them iconic, says Isabel Stevens.
Monday 7 September 2015
Scissor sisters

Given the maleness of the industry, it’s a surprise to realise just how many classic films have been crafted by female editors, says Mark Cousins.
Monday 7 September 2015
Year of the Woman – and archives full of women!

Sophie Mayer on the internet debut of Sandra Hochman’s Year of the Woman – and the visions of feminism now emerging from the archives.
Monday 7 September 2015
Archives online: Margaret Tait’s rooms of her own

Thirza Wakefield on the homespun, one-woman cinema of Margaret Tait in the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Image Archive: 48 emblems of a cinema “what’s welling up in people to make”.
Friday 25 September 2015
Target: equality

Holly Aylett on calls from European leaders for action to foster change in the film industry.
Friday 11 September 2015
Washed away: lost films by female directors

Cinema’s pre-segregated heyday of female filmmaking is sadly also its most hidden from history. Here seven critics nominate lost treasures they hope might yet be rediscovered.
Friday 2 October 2015
Toons by women at Encounters 2015

Female animators weren’t on the wane at this year’s Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival. Alex Dudok de Wit picks a handful of the standouts.
Wednesday 21 October 2015
Different strengths: women to the fore (and aft) at London 2015

Women were in the spotlight at this year’s London Film Festival, from Suffragette’s opening-gala platform to the Geena Davis Institute’s campaign on gender representation. But did the emphasis on symbols overshadow subjects and sensibilities, asks Simran Hans?
Friday 30 October 2015
‘Strong’ women – latinate quarter at London 2015

With women on film centre-stage at this year’s London Film Festival, Mar Diestro-Dópido rounds up ten films with a female flavour from Latin America, Spain, France and Italy.
Thursday 5 November 2015
A pantheon of one’s own: 25 female film critics worth celebrating

A selection of critics and curators each nominate a vital female voice in film criticism, with an example of their writing.
Sunday 8 March 2015

2014

Seeing plenty: women on film

Sight & Sound must recognise the wealth of women making and commenting on movies, write two correspondents. Plus our response.
Tuesday 2 December 2014
An invitation is not enough

Sight & Sound received the following response to our editor’s editorial The Equalizers, which invited more introductions and pitches from good female writers.
Monday 1 December 2014
The equalizers

Nick James on the ongoing search for more women in films, and in film.
Friday 28 November 2014
It gets dystopian: where are the female superheroes?

When it comes to winning female superheroes in 21st-century Hollywood blockbusters, Katniss Everdeen really is one in a million, says Bidisha.
Saturday 22 November 2014
Knocking on the celluloid ceiling: movies directed by women in the London Film Festival 2014

One fifth of the films in this year’s are directed (or co-directed) by women. It’s as good as it gets but not good enough, festival director Clare Stewart tells Sophie Mayer.
Friday 10 October 2014

Women on Film: Female film reporter competition (2013)

Hollywood mamas

Hollywood may be a boys’ playground, but women rule its reporting roles. Adam Dawtrey counts the doyennes of a remarkably equal-opportunity trade.
Thursday 25 April 2013
Female film reporter competition: the results

Nick Bradshaw surveys the entries – and reveals the winners – of our hunt for women film sleuths.
Wednesday 8 May 2013
Picking up The Stoker

How Edinburgh’s Filmhouse is expanding cinema – into other cinemas. By Harriet Warman.
Wednesday 8 May 2013
It’s not so grim up north: programming the Cornerhouse

An insight into contemporary film culture Manchester-style with Cornerhouse programmer Rachel Hayward. By Simran Hans.
Wednesday 8 May 2013
Point Break – not coming to a cinema near you!

How hard can it be to screen Kathryn Bigelow’s surf classic, asks Sophie Brown?
Wednesday 8 May 2013
Where the girls are: female filmmakers at the 10th London Short Film Festival

Boys got to make nearly all the big films in 2012 – yet further down the film chain women directors are flourishing. Ghetto or headway, asks Anna Coatman?
Wednesday 23 January 2013

Women on Film: the Sight & Sound competition for female film writers (2011)

Women on Film: The Sight & Sound competition for female film writers

New views wanted!
Saturday 26 March 2011
Women on Film competition: the results

Tallying the entries for our amateur female film scribes’ challenge.
Monday 18 July 2011
Women on Film: The ladies vanished

Hannah McGill wonders where all the women critics went – and why.
Saturday 26 March 2011
Women on film, online

Sophie Mayer follows the trail of female film critics into the digital realm, finding both community and quandaries.
Friday 15 April 2011
Women on Film: Critics’ inspirations

Our female writers offer thumbnail descriptions of their own film-world inspirations.
Wednesday 30 March 2011
Women on Film: Entrants’ inspirations, part one – Actors

All the competition entries fit to print!
Friday 27 May 2011
Women on Film: Entrants’ inspirations, part two – Directors, A-H

More submissions from our female film writers’ competition mailbag: nominations from Chantal Akerman to Alfred Hitchcock.
Wednesday 1 June 2011
Women on Film: Entrants’ inspirations, part three – Directors, K-W

Amateur female film critics salute directors from Krzysztof Kieslowski to Billy Wilder.
Friday 10 June 2011
Women on Film: Entrants’ inspirations, part four – Other collaborators, crew – and critics

Our female film-writers’ competition entrants on their behind-the-camera inspirations, from cinematographer Robert Krasker to Alfred Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville.
Thursday 16 June 2011
Women on Film: Entrants’ inspirations, part five – Film characters

Our female film-writers’ competition entrants’ world-of-fiction inspirations, from horror’s ‘final girl’ Laurie Strode to Up the Junction’s Polly Dean.
Tuesday 12 July 2011
Women on Film: Entrants’ inspirations, part six – Films (and a cinema)

Our female film-writers’ competition entrants’ celluloid and concrete inspirations, from Autumn Leaves to Hasting’s Electric Palace cinema.
Tuesday 12 July 2011
FrightFest 2011: Women and horror

Mark Pilkington on The Woman, and two female-directed discoveries that bring “warmth and rounded characterisation to a genre that so often lacks it”.
Thursday 1 September 2011