Woman Film Makers Coursework Worth
Instructions are on the uploaded pdf file for this work. You will be needed to choose one of the options there. If you think you are comfortable for this big worthy assignment and decide to work, I will give a link of an online library so that you can incorporate ideas from 3 relevant peer-reviewed critical sources. Also note that these are the films we are seeing in class; Alice Guy Blache,The Ocean Waif(1916) – Lois Weber,The Blot(1921) – Dorothy Arzner,Dance Girl Dance(1940) – Ida Lupino,The Bigamist(1953) – George Cukor,Dinner at Eight(1933) – Howard Hawks,Gentleman Prefer Blonder(1953) – Alain Renais,Hiroshima Mon Amour(1959) – Germaina Dulac, The Smiling Madame Beudet(1922) – Agnes Varda,Cleo de 5 a 7(1961) – Claire Denis,Nenette et Boni(1996) – Catherine Breillat,36 Fillette(1988) – Andrea Arnold,Fish Tank(2009) – Sofia Coppola,Lost in Translation(2003) – Sarah Polley,Stories We Tell(2012) – Lena Dunham, Tiny Furniture(2010)

In this paper you will get an opportunity to do further research on films and directors from the
course or alternatively from outside the course. In addition to discussing the films you will also
incorporate ideas from three relevant peer-reviewed critical sources. Document your references
in MLA style. If you have any questions about sources or film choices or any questions related to
the writing of the paper I would be happy to help.

a) Compare two classical Hollywood films scripted or directed by a woman which subvert
or expose the “ideological contradictions centred on sex and the family” (Lapsley and
Westlake 29). You may choose works from the course by Dorothy Arzner, or Ida Lupino,
or films which we have seen that were written by Frances Marion or Anita Loos, or you
may go outside the course in making your choice of writer, director or films. One option
though, would be to consider how the films written by Marion (Dinner at Eight) or Loos
(Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) or directed by Arzner (Dance, Girl, Dance) provide a A
challenge to the conventional role of woman as spectacle.

b) Robert Lapsley and Michael Westlake note that some women filmmakers see cinematic
language as ‘findelibly complicit with the dominant ideology” and that therefore women
artists who want to challenge the traditional ideology of thought and representation have
had to engage self-consciously with the form of cinema itself in making their films.
Choose from one of the following radical avant-garde filmmakers and explore the ways
in which her cinema is an attempt to challenge both the form and the expressive content
of more traditional cinema: Chantal Akerman, Yvonne Rainer, Marguerite Duras, Sally
Potter, Germaine Dulac, or Maya Deren.

c) Choose from the contemporary women filmmakers on the course, Agnes Varda, Claire
Denis, Catherine Breillat, or fihnmakers from outside the course such as Coline Serreau,
Diane Kurys, Julie Bertucelli, Agnes J aoui, Catherine Corsini, Julie Delpy, Doris Dorrie,
or Cate Shortland. Discuss two films by the filmmaker of your choice, or one film from
two different directors, and compare the films in terms of how the director explores the