Women in Film at MOMA
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You don’t have to have a degree in cinema studies to know that most films are made from male point of view. No highfalutin terms like “male gaze” or “objectification” are necessary when scanning a list of Hollywood directors. They’re mostly guys. We live in a media world dominated by images that have been created by men.
For this reason, viewing films by women—particularly early films—can be a radically unusual, even destabilizing experience. What if women had turned out to be the primary makers of media instead? What would the language of cinema then be? A recent trip to MOMA’s exhibit on the legacy of Maya Deren, where I also saw a series of shorts by early filmmaker Alice Guy, led me to these questions.
The Maya Deren exhibit takes up the bottom floor of MOMA, a small space where several of her films are on a constant loop. Nearby are three screens playing the work of three women filmmakers she influenced—Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Hammer, and Su Friedrich. Equally present, though unacknowledged, are the ways Deren’s work has influenced commercial photography. A scene from her 1944 film At Land is so reminiscent of Madonna’s “Cherish” music video that it’s uncanny. Yet seeing Deren direct herself to lie on the beach in a tight black dress is somehow a very different experience than seeing Madonna do the same thing.
I had seen Deren’s work before I went to MOMA, but I was new to the work of Alice Guy, credited as being the first woman filmmaker and a pioneer of narrative cinema. Her shorts elicited many laughs from the audience, delighted at the inventiveness and innocence that we see in many early films, and also at her choice of subject matter. Working at Gaumont in France, she made films that featured women as main characters with desires of their own. In one memorable short, The Lady Has Needs(1906) a very pregnant woman steals food from people on the street, gleefully munching while her husband struggles to keep up and push the baby carriage. In another, The Epileptic Mattress (also 1906) a woman hired to clean a mattress accidentally seals a drunk man inside and much slapstick hilarity ensues. In both films, women are seen in traditional roles, but that doesn’t keep them from being the stars of the films.
The Deren and Guy films are in part supported by WIFT’s Women’s Film Preservation Fund - “the only program in the world that works to preserve the cultural legacy of women in the industry.” I’m thankful that someone is doing this important work—preserving the vision of early women filmmakers. While today’s women filmmakers are in dialogue with a century of mostly male directors, early women in film show us what it was like to come to this new medium with a female gaze.
by Mattie Akers
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| Posted on July 28, 2010
Comments
Great piece! I’m a MoMA member and was thinking about checking this out—now I definitely will!
Posted on 2010 07 28 by Jen Gallardo
That certainly is an interesting thought, What if women had turned out to be the primary makers of media instead? The mind ponders. I know I have my next dinner party topic though.
Interesting and thought provoking read.
Thank you,
Julz.
Posted on 2010 11 10 by Juliette
The premise of the early film about the pregnant woman is so clever and sounds hillarious. I never think about whether a man or a woman made the film but rather, do I like it. The film world is saturated with men but hopefully women filmmakers will be on the rise for a refreshing series of films.Stefanie H.
Posted on 2010 12 06 by Chicago DUI Lawyer