Right here, right now… Women Make Film (2020), BFI Player and Blu-ray

"Our story is about 183 film makers, as artists. Ours is the story of their work..."

I watched a preview of this series in an actual cinema, sat next to people after drinking in a bar! This was way back in early March and now, as the BFI is about to unleash the entire series on the BFIPlayer, there could not be a better time for us to receive the benefit of Mark Cousins' - and his team's - endless research and informed recommendations.

There’s a certain irony in watching excerpts from a film based almost entirely on excerpts from other films and not being quite certain how it ultimately holds together but this taster more than whet the appetite. There are 40 episodes in Mark Cousins’ mammoth documentary which took years to assemble and which includes some 1,000 snippets from 183 different film makers from around the world. I watched a preview of just four and, I suspect the pattern builds the more you watch and the more you watch the more you want to watch. As with Cousins’ Story of Film, throughout there were films that I instantly wanted to see in their entirety and you will find yourself frequently pausing to note them down, keep a pen and paper next to your drink of choice!

This undertaking is firmly focused on the work of these filmmakers and there is no biographical element examining just why so many are not better known or have been almost forgotten. The Director instead wanted to answer direct questions about movies, “… how do you do a great opening shot, a great tracking shot? How do you film work, politics and love?” In using their work to provide the answers Cousins hopes to be “an ally with the great female activists pushing for change…” and whilst he wrote and directed, he chose his collaborators well with narration from executive producer, Tilda Swinton along with Jane Fonda, Kerry Fox, Thandie Newton and others.

Women who made film.

As lauded film historian Cari Beauchamp says in her introduction to the impending Blu-ray: "Perhaps Women Make Film is a bit of a misnomer. It definitely gives away the punch line. Maybe calling it Chapters in Filmmaking is too on the nose but that is what it is – an examination of different aspects of making a movie where all of the teachers are women."

The opening section, on opening sections... , worked perhaps the most successfully starting off with a superb opening sequence from Bika Zhelyazkova’s 1961 war film, We Were Young in which a young man goes looking for his lover and all we see is there two torch lights on the floor before the briefest of reunions is interrupted by Nazi troops. It is so well done, characters, narrative and tension is established in a few minutes of expert direction. The film won a prize at the Moscow Film Festival in 1962 and over half the adult population of Bulgaria saw it and yet it is not widely known now.

This was followed by some delicious footage from British director Wendy Toye’s On the 12^th Day of Christmas, which is funny, strikingly designed and, incidentally, produced by silent film legend (it says here) George K Arthur. Three films in and that’s two I definitely want to watch and right now – luckily 12^th Day is on the BFI Player.

Rumyana Karabelova in Bika Zhelyazkova’s We Were Young (1961) 

The hits keep on coming all introduced by Tilda Swinton driving through endless roads from nameless countries; the subtitle of the series being A New Road Movie Through Cinema. The films travel through time as well as space in service to the theme and the “Openings” episodes features a Dorothy Arzner from 1948 as well as Lotte Reiniger’s Thumbelina (1965) all the way up to Mia Hansen Love’s Things to Come from 2016. It’s a deluge of new references – for me – and, as Cousins says, “all are instructive in how to create an immediate world”.

How to create an impactful opening is probably an easier question for Cousins’ compiled narrative to answer than more general ones about Bodies and Sex, the next two episodes. Jane Fonda narrates Bodies and I could listen to that voice all day as she highlighted the expertise Claire Denis brings to physicality in Beau Travail (1999) and Celine Sciamma in Tomboy (2011) in which physical presence is key to character and plot.

It was pleasing to see a clip from Lois Weber’s Hypocrites (1915) in which a naked woman is used as a motif for pure truth in the face of so much dishonesty. Margaret Edwards, former winner of a body beautiful competition - "the most perfectly formed girl in the world..." wore a body stocking but this remains a brave device from Weber, one rooted so much in the Christian sensibilities of the era yet which, at the same time, made it guaranteed to offend some/many folk.

Not Joe Wicks. Claire Denis' Beau Travail (1999)

This clip is immediately followed by one from Mary Harron’s American Psycho (2000) in which Christian Bale’s body is used to illustrate his fantasy world and his self-absorbed self-deception. Nakedness is not truth and Patrick Bateman is one of the most entertainingly unreliable witnesses in film – I mean, did he really prefer Genesis with Phil Collins' lead vocals?

There’s more than 85 years between these two films and it is a lot to take in which is where the calm voices of the actors and the intercutting of the gentle road trips help to pace the points Cousins is trying to make. The episode on Sex or, Sexysode if you will, is narrated by Kerry Fox – yes, I remember – and has more explaining to do than answering.

It’s easy to see the skill in Andrea Arnold’s American Honey for example where her actors are believable and well-choreographed, sex scenes probably rely more on context than almost any other narrative moments. Donna Deitch’s Desert Hearts features one of the most genuinely sensitive scenes – Greta Garbo was so moved she wrote to Helen Shaver, whilst my friend Beverly was – literally – never the same again, which is why I remember this film so well. More than sex though, Desert Hearts is a love story and you need to see it all to appreciate why the two women are doing what they’re doing. This will always be the issue with Cousins’ methodology but there's so much ground to cover; this is a series you'll want to study rather than simply watch.

Donna Deitch’s Desert Hearts

The last excerpt was from the Scif-fi episode, narrated by Thandie Newton, which ranged from the Wachowski’s The Matrix (1999), Rachel Talalay’s Tank Girl (1995) to The Handmaid’s Tale (2017). That’s quite the stretch in terms of tone especially when Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman (2017) is included. Jenkins the first woman to direct a huge-budget superhero film and shows how a woman can treat genre fiction differently, with Diana Prince going over the top to help allied troops advance against the Germans in WWI. She’s woman from an isolated race of Amazons seeing “Man’s World” for the first time and finding only slaughter; she takes the side of what she sees as honourable men, enabling their victory not winning it on her own as Superman usually does.

Every snippet tells a story that can only be truly understood through viewing the films in their entirety and following this screening there are so many added to my watch list. That is Cousins’ success with this celebration but the road is long with many a revelatory wind and turn; best to enjoy the journey and let Tilda, Jane, Kerry, Thandie and friends take the wheel.

Women Make Film starts streaming on the BFIPlayer from Monday 18th May - there's a mouth-watering trailer here. Parts 1 – 5 are up first and the next four more segments will follow each week until 15th June.

You can see the whole thing though as it's also released on a four-disc Blu-ray on 18th and available from the BFI Shop.

There's a fascinating making of film over on Vimeo, it's key to understanding Cousins' objectives and method as well as the team around him, men and women, who helped cover the ground and turned his hand-written lists and notations into the work we can start seeing today.

By the end of the series you will know who all these women are and be compulsively watching their films!