Women Directors and Their Films

Mary G. Hurd is Director of Film Studies at East Tennessee State University. She has been a contributor to major reference works from Oxford University Press and Salem Press.

Hurd offers a representative survey of 29 women who became directors in a film industry (both in the US and abroad) that never welcomes women directors. She begins with Dorothy Arzner, who transitioned from silents to talkies and directed 17 Hollywood films, and Ida Lupino, an accomplished actor who directed films noirs and other film genres along with many television shows from 1949 to 1966. Toward the end of the 20th century, Hollywood was finally accepting women directors for mainstream films, and in this era Hurd discusses Nora Ephron, Kathryn Bigelow, Mimi Lederer, and others. In looking at independent, experimental, and documentary film, Hurd lists experimenter Maya Deren, Mary Harron and her wonderfully bizarre films, and documentarian Barbara Kopple. A chapter on international film highlights Jane Campion, Agnes Varda, Leni Riefenstahl and her beautifully edited Nazi documentaries, and Lina Wertmuller with her satiric comments on masculine ego and its drive for power. A newcomers chapter lists four, including Sofia Coppola, and an actor-turns-director chapter includes Anjelica Huston, Penny Marshall, Barbra Streisand, and Elaine May. A feminist perspective is evident throughout, and Hurd also analyzes the industry's financial evaluation of the directors….Recommended. All collections; all levels.