Women's Pictures - Dee Rees's Pariah

Anne Marie returns after a brief break...

Over the course of this year, the purpose of our weekly "Women's Pictures" has been to explore the vast variety of female filmmakers. We've seen that women are not only present and working, but also highly diverse in their genre, style, and subject matter. Gender has often been a factor, but it has rarely been a focus. For the last month of the year, we're going to be watching films by two directors for whom gender, sexuality, and race are their focus: Dee Rees, and Celine Sciamma. Though both filmmakers have comparatively small filmographies, they have already established themselves as new, strong voices in contemporary cinema.

Dee Rees's 2011 film Pariah, based on the short of the same name, is an empathetic examination of a person usually invisible in cinema: the young black lesbian.

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Topic Du Jour: Female Directors

If you haven't read Vulture's list of 100 female directors Hollywood could be hiring you should. It's a great 'shut your mouth' argument for those suits that hilariously say 'well, we would hire female directors if there were any!' Bless Kyle Buchanan for spearheading this -- though I hope he had interns helping.  Naturally there will be passionate responses. Diversity arguments will always promote some degree of snark -- see Anthony Mackie's recent comments about the Black Panther movie's search for a director -- and nitpicking, including here.

But we nitpick with love.

David Poland argues that "strategy," not shaming, is what's required and that statistics and math won't help. He neglects to detail the strategy though. As for myself I (mostly) love the list and think it's important that a wake up call like this is out there -- what did happen to Laverne herself, Penny Marshall, who directed so many huge hits in the 80s and 90s? It's smart to make the list far reaching and extensive but some of the people are not reasonable for an argument either because their careers have been over for so long or because...wait for it... they aren't good directors. (Obviously there are many bad directors with penises who get lots of work. But we'd like them to find other jobs, too!)  

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Review: Bessie

TFE's newest contributor Angelica Jade Bastién on HBO's latest biopic

For over two decades Queen Latifah has been trying to bring the life of Bessie Smith, the legendary "Empress of the Blues" who found success in the 1920s and 1930s, to the screen. Despite Bessie's life being a perfect mix of glamour and tragedy that seems tailor made for a biopic I'm not surprised it has taken Latifah this long to bring her story to life. Bessie Smith (Queen Latifah) is a rough hewn, country, bisexual, and passionate broad. The film doesn't sand off her edges or shy away from her contradictions instead it embraces them. Bessie tracks the legend from her early days as a singer with her older brother/manager, Clarence (Tory Kittles) always in her corner to the Great Depression when all her personal and professional success falters. 

Anyone familiar with women's pictures knows the emotional terrain Bessie is covering. But what makes this women's picture downright transgressive is its sympathetic,multi-layered portrayal of black queer desire...

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#TeamLink

Anne Helen Petersen has 5 crotchety excellent questions about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Bad Ass Digest a terrific piece on Margaret & #TeamMargaret, the time between Christmas & New Years and the space between Mess & Masterpiece
Daily Mail Christina Hendricks returning to the 1960s for Bomb a political period piece from sporadic director Sally Potter. The film is about two teens who get involved in the "Ban the Bomb" movement. The film will star Elle Fanning and Alice Englert. Englert is actually the daughter of the great filmmaker Jane Campion though most sites are missing this info since people keep spelling her last name wrong. 

Movie|Line interviews Dee Rees on her feature Pariah which is about to open at long last. Go see it!
Black Book interviews the incomparable Sandra Bernhard before her New Year's Eve shows.
Awards Daily Sasha looks back on box office versus Oscar and how drastically things have changed over the years from when Terms of Endearment could end the year at #2 just behind a Star Wars movie. We covered this topic in great detail a few years ago but it's always worth contemplating if crazy depressing. Basically what it boils down to is adults started watching pay cable and left the movie theaters and the industry got really good at making films exactly like television: i.e. your favorite series returns on ____ . Stay tuned!

Oh look! It's one of our first official stills from Soderbergh's stripper drama Magic Mike (2012) with all of the boys four of the boys accounted for: Joe Manganiello, Alex Pettyfer, Matthew McConaughey, and Mike's leading man Channing Tatum. 

top ten bonanza! 
Beiber fever caps the Top Grossing Documentaries of 2011 according to IndieWire -- It's interesting to note that the list contains only two of the movies from Oscar's 15-wide finalist list: Buck and Bill Cunningham New York | Our friend Katey Rich delivers her top ten for Cinema Blend and boy has she stayed loyal to Meek's Cutoff  | Acid Cinema has a fun snarky preface and an individualistic top ten | Paste Magazine offers up a bizarre top 50 (Happythankyoumoreplease???? Really?) | Guy Lodge at In Contention doubles up for a top twenty with high marks for Weekend and Drive, of course, which he famously offered to have sex with at Cannes last summer |  Now Toronto's list reminds us that release dates differ greatly from country to country.