Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema

UK writer/director Mark Cousins turns his acutely enquiring and perceptive eye to an alternate history of Cinema that elevates and celebrates the work of more than 180 women directors.

In this comprehensive work spanning 130 years of film history, Mark Cousins (The Story of Film: An Odyssey) enlists a roster of narrators – Tilda Swinton (who was also an executive producer), Adjoa Andoh, Jane Fonda, Kerry Fox, Thandie Newton, Sharmila Tagore and Debra Winger – as explorer-guides in a wide-reaching journey beyond the English-speaking world, as well-represented as it is, that also includes films and directors from countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Tunisia, Japan, Norway, Russia, Iran, China, South Korea, Senegal and Sri Lanka.

Told in five blocks, Women Make Film is divided into forty chapters within which Cousins sets himself a variety of "how-to" questions – "how to create tension", "how to visually represent love", "how to change gears", and so on – in an approach that yields rich insights beyond a simple showcase of under-seen or under-appreciated works by female directors; Cousins mines the visual ideas and strategies, social and psychological impulses at work here too. A rich visual compendium of sounds and images, illuminated with analysis and context, this New Road Movie through Cinema is a journey of discovery and reappraisal well worth taking.

To complement your Cinema 3 viewing, we've put together a slate of narrative works by women directors featured in Women Make Film. Browse the Women Make Film shelf on Cinema 3 for new fortnightly titles and visit womenmakefilm.net to explore screen grabs of the almost one thousand film excerpts featured in the series.