Set your PVRs!
Every Tuesday between September 1 and December 1, cable channel TCM is playing an incredible line-up of female-directed movies as part of their Women Make Film program.
Centred around filmmaker Mark Cousins’ (The Story Of Film) 14-hour Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema, TCM’s programming is an epic journey through the lens of some of cinema’s most-prized filmmakers. Airing on TV in North America for the first time, the documentary series previously played at TIFF, Telluride and the Venice Film Festival and features a cadre of A-list women as narrators, including Jane Fonda, Tilda Swinton, Thandie Newton and Debra Winger.
Each Tuesday, the evening of programming will kick off with an episode of Women Make Film, followed by one of the female-directed features discussed in the episode. If that’s not enough to get excited about, TCM’s programming continues through the night with an additional six films directed by women.
In total, the TCM program will span 100 films from 100 filmmakers featuring movies from six continents, 44 countries and 12 decades of cinema, many of which are hard to come by on streaming sites and physical media.
Kicking things off in week one with Dorothy Arzner as the featured director, the program will also highlight films by Chantal Akerman, Lucretia Martel, Lina Wertmuller, Nicole Holofcener, Barbara Kopple, Sofia Coppola, Mira Nair, Elaine May, Julie Dash, Ava DuVernay, Claire Denis, Andrea Arnold, Kimberley Pierce, Kelly Reichardt, Alice Rohrwacher, Martha Coolidge, Ida Lupino, Sally Potter, Naomi Kawase, Gillian Armstrong and many, many more. And yes, Barbara Streisand’s Yentl is among the offerings.
As well, Reichardt, Holofcener, Nair, Cousins and Kopple are among the special guests who will feature in TCM’s introductions and discussion.
Each week of programming is broken down into themes that touch on everything from love, death, sex, and comedy to exploring practical techniques such as framing, editing, close-ups and POV.
With a microsite dedicated to the program, TCM has created a vast collection of film titles, clips, profiles of directors and links to resources that is worth exploring and hammering out your own schedule. Check out the full list of films and program themes on their website.
