Fandor has established itself as the premier digital film service for cinema buffs: in addition to their streaming library, they run Keyframe, a daily film essay and video blog. If you haven’t followed them already and like film, you probably should. For one of their videos (embedded above), Keyframe polled fifty film critics about their favorite works directed by women and created a montage of the top twenty results.
As with the cinematographer interviews, the question is whether it’s productive to view films primarily through the lens of the filmmaker’s gender. In short, it is. As the video’s creator Scout Tafoya says, women still face an uphill battle in terms of criticism, funding, and most troublingly acknowledgment for their work. “Unless we make noise,” Tafoya adds, “we’ll allow it to continue.”
Keyframe did their part, so we’re sharing it. Take at look at the striking imagery from twenty films by women. (Meshes of the Afternoon is unlike anything we’ve seen in a while.)