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 only U.S.-based film to date, Things We Lost in
the Fire (2008), starring Halle Berry and Benicio del
Toro, received mixed critical reviews. Her 2011 film,
In a Better World, received the Academy Award for
Best Foreign Language Film.
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.
 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. (See Appendix below for the full Vow
of Chastity.) 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 supertight 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 (2011), which won both an
Academy Award and a Golden Globe, was rejected by
the Cannes Film Festival. (Note the recent
controversy over the lack of females at Cannes!)
Jane Campion
 Jane Campion (1954- ) is an Australian-born 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 biopic Angel at my Table. 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, which looks at two sisters, one
of whom suffers from serious psychological disorders. For The
Piano, Campion has explored the fictional life of an arrangedmarriage 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.
 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.
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 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), and Julie and Julia (2009;
Producer, Director, and Screenwriter).
Nora Ephron
 Ephron was one of the most important female creative talents in
American film. Think of 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
 Ephron also distinguished herself as one of America’s most
prominent female directors. How does her work compare to that of
other female directors? In post‐silent Hollywood there were
essentially only two prior to the 1970s, Dorothy Arzner and Ida
Lupino. Later came Penelope Spheeris, Penny Marshall, Amy
Heckerling, Gurinder Chadha, Jane Campion, 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.’”
 end