Contemporary Women
Filmmakers
Some Key Examples:
Susanne Bier
Jane Campion
Nora Ephron
Susanne Bier
 Susanne Bier (1960- ) is a Danish film director. She
studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts & Design in
Jerusalem and also studied architecture in London
before attending film school at the National Film
School of Denmark (a 1987 graduate). Since 1990, her
feature films have gained increasing attention both in
Denmark and internationally.
Susanne Bier
 The cinema of Denmark has a long and highly respected
history, from the films of Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968;
considered to be one of the greatest directors of all time;
e.g., The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1928; Vampyr, 1932) to the
works of contemporary masters Gabriel Axel (e.g.,
Babette’s Feast, 1987), Bille August (e.g., Pelle the
Conqueror, 1988), Thomas Vinterberg (e.g., The
Celebration/Festen, 1998), and Lars von Trier (e.g., Breaking
the Waves, 1996; Dancer in the Dark, 2000; Dogville, 2003;
Melancholia, 2011). Note that among these important
Danish directors, Susanne Bier is the sole female.
Susanne Bier
 After the Wedding (2006) was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film,
but lost to the German film The Lives of Others.
After the Wedding garnered a number of other
international awards, however.
 Other Bier films of note are The One and Only (1999),
Open Hearts (2002), and Brothers (2004). Her first
U.S.-based film, Things We Lost in the Fire (2007),
starring Halle Berry and Benicio del Toro, received
mixed critical reviews. Her 2010 film, In a Better
World, received the Academy Award for Best
Foreign Language Film. Her second U.S.-based film,
Serena, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley
Cooper, will debut in the U.S. in 2015.
Susanne Bier
 Like many of Bier’s films, After the Wedding was produced
by the Danish film company Zentropa, founded in 1992 by
Danish National Film School grads Lars von Trier and Peter
Aalbaek Jensen. In an ethnographic study of Zentropa
conducted over a ten-year period, scholar Jesper
Strandgaard (2011) concluded that the company uses a
prototypical “auteur model” for production—i.e., a
director-centered model characterized by artistically driven
logic. This is as opposed to the more typically American
“high concept” model for production, which is market
driven, producer-centered, and employs integrated
professionals who tend to work within the conventions of
the film industry.
Susanne Bier
 Zentropa principal Lars von Trier and fellow National
Film School of Denmark graduate Thomas Vinterberg
in 1995 organized a collective of film directors called
Dogme 95. The group issued a 10-point “Vow of
Chastity” aimed at refuting the “auteur” approach to
filmmaking and infusing contemporary cinema with
new life. Bier’s 2002 film, Open Hearts, was made
under the Dogme 95 requirements (it is also known as
Dogme #28).
Susanne Bier
 Susanne Bier’s films have been variously described as:
 Celebrating the “unpredictability of life” (Thompson, 2007)
 “Kitchen-sink realism” (Sauntved, 2011)
 Using clichés to “force us to challenge those short-cut judgments
and ill-conceived assumptions we too often use to gauge the
world around us” (Chahine, 2007)
 Featuring “happy, comfortable characters [who are] jolted by
events of unfathomable sadness” (Gold, 2007)
 Demonstrating a strong ability to empathize with others
(although Bier herself has had a privileged life) (Gold, 2007)
 Having a recurring focus on the family, with an idealized “good
family” (Marklund, 2008)
 Including some consideration of Third World issues
 Often including the loss of a parent by a child
 Heavy use of elliptical (jump) cutting, hand-held camera, long
takes, and super-tight CUs
Susanne Bier
 Bier’s films have generally been “overshadowed”
internationally by those of her countryman Lars von
Trier (Sauntved, 2011). Critics and film festival
programmers have found her work “too commercial”
or “insufficiently artistic.” It should be noted that her
film In a Better World (2010), which won both an
Academy Award and a Golden Globe, was rejected by
the Cannes Film Festival.
Susanne Bier
 TRAILER for After the Wedding (2006)
 TRAILER for In a Better World (2010)
Jane Campion
 Jane Campion (1954- ) is an Australianborn New Zealand screenwriter,
producer, and director. Her most famous
film is The Piano (1993), which won a
great many awards, including Best Origin
Screenplay Academy Award and the
Palm D’Or at Cannes.
Jane Campion
 Jane Campion’s films without exception focus on female
characters who push the boundaries of what society sees
as acceptable behavior for women. Some are based on
real people, such as Janet Frame, a New Zealand author
whose life story is told in the 1990 biopic Angel at my Table.
Her 2009 film Bright Star explores the relationship
between 19th-century British poet John Keats and his muse
Fanny Brawne. Other female protagonists are purely
fictional, as with Sweetie (1989), which looks at two sisters,
one of whom suffers from serious psychological disorders.
For The Piano (1993), Campion has explored the fictional
life of an arranged-marriage bride, mute by choice, and her
quest for identity and independence in colonial New
Zealand.
Jane Campion
 A Cleveland State University masters thesis by Patrika
Janstova, completed in 2007, systematically content
analyzed all of Jane Campion’s films, comparing their
content and form to that of a matched set of other films in
order to test “auteur theory.” The thesis found that
Campion’s films are significantly more likely to: (a) present
a female point of view, (b) include characters that exhibit a
psychological disorder, appear to be lonely, and are not
happy, (c) depict characters traveling, notably to other
countries, and (d) include characters who must deal with a
variety of family issues and dysfunctions. It seems clear
that these thematic motifs are present in The Piano.
Jane Campion
 Patrika Janstova’s thesis also found Jane Campion’s
films to be significantly different from the films of
others in terms of film production techniques. It was
found that Campion’s films are significantly more
likely to: (a) incorporate closeups of the extremities
of the human body (i.e., arms, hands, legs, feet), as
well as tight closeups of touching, (b) use extreme
closeup images of mirrors and windows, (c) use a
handheld camera, (d) use slow motion, and (e) use
color filters.
Jane Campion
 TRAILER for The Piano (1993)
 Note the 2012 controversy over the lack of females at
Cannes…and:
 Jane Campion comments on this at Cannes!
Nora Ephron
 Nora Ephron (1941‐2012) was a journalist, playwright,
novelist, producer, screenwriter, and director. She
was one of the most prominent female talents ever to
work in American film.
Nora Ephron
 Nora Ephron was the eldest of four daughters born to screenwriters
Henry and Phoebe Ephron (Belles on Their Toes, Carousel, Desk Set,
There’s No Business Like Show Business, Take Her She’s Mine (loosely
based on the letters Nora sent home from college)). Growing up in
Beverly Hills, Nora had contact with many great Hollywood writers
of the 1940s and 1950s (e.g., Charles Brackett, Julius Epstein). At
then all‐female Wellesley, she encountered many young women
seeking their “MRS” degree; she later claimed that her alma mater
had turned out a generation of “docile women.” She chose a career
track, working as a journalist for The New York Post and Esquire,
and eventually transitioned into novels and screenplays. All four of
the daughters of Henry and Phoebe Ephron became successful
writers.
 Nora’s mother Phoebe Ephron is oft‐quoted as saying, “everything
is copy.” Even on her deathbed, Phoebe reportedly told her
daughter, “Take notes, Nora, take notes.”
Nora Ephron
 Nora Ephron wrote the roman à clef Heartburn in 1983, a
novelization of her volatile second marriage to Carl Bernstein of
Washington Post/Watergate fame. The novel was adapted for film
in 1986, with friend and frequent collaborator Mike Nichols
directing.
 Some other Ephron films you might recognize are:
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Silkwood (1983; Screenwriter)
When Harry Met Sally (1989; Producer and Screenwriter)
My Blue Heaven (1990; Producer and Screenwriter)
Sleepless in Seattle (1993; Director and Screenwriter)
Michael (1996; Producer, Director, and Screenwriter)
You’ve Got Mail (1998; Producer, Director, and Screenwriter)
Julie and Julia (2009; Producer, Director, and Screenwriter).
Nora Ephron
 Ephron was one of the most important female creative
talents in American film—a writer/director in the oldschool sense (e.g., Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges).
 Other female writers in American cinema:
 Early Hollywood screenwriters Anita Loos and Frances Marion
 Mid‐century screenwriters Jay Presson Allen, Leigh Brackett,
Betty Comden, Ruth Gordon, Sally Benson, Ruth Prawer
Jhabvala
 Contemporary writers Diablo Cody, Allison Anders, Sofia
Coppolla, Nancy Meyers
Nora Ephron
 Other female directors in American cinema:
 In post‐silent Hollywood through 1970s…there were
only two: Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino
 1970s and beyond: Penelope Spheeris, Penny Marshall,
Amy Heckerling, Kathryn Bigelow, Agnieszka Holland,
Betty Thomas, Mira Nair
Nora Ephron
 Nora Ephron has often been noted for her “devastating wit,” and
even compared to the legendary Dorothy Parker.
 In Tom Brokaw’s book Boom: Voices of the Sixties, he refers to
Ephron as a “sharp‐eyed observer or her life and times. . . a muse
and a gold standard of smart thinking.”
 From Jack Hart’s book Storycraft: “Nora Ephron, one of the most
self‐reflective practitioners of the narrative craft, said [that
reporters] were the kind of people who seemed most comfortable
on the sidelines, hanging back with a certain kind of detachment
while they watched others play the game of life. ‘I always seem to
find myself at a perfectly wonderful event,’ she wrote, ‘where
everyone else is having a marvelous time, laughing merrily, eating,
drinking, having sex in the back room, and I am standing on the side
taking notes on it all.’”
Nora Ephron
 Nora Ephron interview on “Makers” (4:15)
 Nora Ephron on Creativity in Hollywood (27:00; a 2005
interview for the documentary Dreams on Spec)
 There are many interviews additional with Ephron on
YouTube!
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