Women Make Film

Fr, 02.12.2022 - So, 04.12.2022

Lichtspiele Kalk

Fr, 09.12.2022 - So, 11.12.2022

Niehler Freiheit

Three intensive days (Friday 2.12, Saturday 3.12 and Sunday 4.12 at Lichtspiele Kalk) watching Women Make Film by filmmaker and film critic Mark Cousins followed by three intensive days discussing filmmaking by women, with guests (Friday, 9.12, Saturday 10.12 and Sunday 11.12, at Niehler Freiheit).

“Cousins started thinking about missing female films in the mid-90s when he curated a season of great documentaries, and realised that he had included only one by a woman, Barbara Kopple’s powerful mining story Harlan County, USA (1976). “Afterwards I thought, that’s gunk.” (Gunk is a Northern Irish term meaning “a shock of disappointment”.) Cousins gathered a team at Hopscotch Films in Glasgow to rectify the situation. It began as an unpaid labour of love, years in the making. “I wanted to be an ally with the great female activists who are pushing for change in the film industry today.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/may/08/its-a-mistresspiece-the-14-hour-film-about-forgotten-female-directors

Women Make Film focuses on the legacy of women filmmakers and brings to light footage which was deemed obsure or lost. The film consists of 40 chapters on a variety of topics, distributed over 14 hours, featuring the work of 183 directors of around the world. More information: https://www.womenmakefilm.net

During the second weekend we will discuss both theoretical and historical questions about (the invisibility of) women in film history and in canons as well as hands-on issues about the situation of Women* in the industry nowadays.