British Women Film Directors in the New Millennium Stella Hockenhull

British Women Film Directors in the New Millennium Stella Hockenhull British Women Film Directors in the New Millennium Stella Hockenhull British Women Film Directors in the New Millennium Stella Hockenhull Department of Film Studies University of Wolverhampton Wolverhampton, United Kingdom ISBN 978-1-137-48991-3 ISBN 978-1-137-48992-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-48992-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016962789 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Chris Graythen/Spanner Films Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom To Sam and Thea ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks go to friend and colleague Fran Pheasant-Kelly for her unceas- ing support of my work and careful proof reading of this book. Similarly, I would like to thank friend and mentor, Ulrike Sieglohr, for her insightful comments and advice on this project. I would also like to express grati- tude to the following for supplying the images: Franny Armstrong for the book cover; Agatha Nitecka for Wuthering Heights; Clio Barnard for The Selfish Giant; Megan Davis from Rise Films for Dreamcatcher and Rough Aunties; Will Wood for Belle. In addition, I acknowledge the University of Wolverhampton for its generous support of my research and, finally, the staff at Palgrave, including Lina Aboujieb, Kannayiram Ganesh and Karina Jakupsdottir, for facilitating this publication. vii CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 2 Women and British Cinema Funding: From the UKFC to Creative England 31 3 Women Directors and Documentary Cinema 59 4 Women Directors and Poetic Realism 109 5 Popular Cinema from a Female Perspective 149 6 Alternatives to Mainstream and Classic Modes of Narration 187 7 Conclusion 213 Bibliography 219 Index 255 ix LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 3.1 Ordinary people living transformative lives, Rough Aunties, 2008 80 Fig. 3.2 Hope of social mobility, Dreamcatcher, 2015 82 Fig. 4.1 Poetic imagery in Arnold’s films,Wuthering Heights, 2011 121 Fig. 4.2 Lyrical and elegiac interludes on urban wastelands, The Selfish Giant, 2013 126 Fig. 4.3 Amma Asante on set, Belle, 2013 142 Fig. 5.1 The new womens’s blockbuster, Mamma Mia!, 2008 157 xi CHAPTER 1 Introduction The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), formerly the British Film Academy, was formed in 1947 and includes an annual awards ceremony with a Best Director category.1 Since its inception there have been few female nominees for this honour and even fewer winners, the exception being in 2009 when American director Kathryn Bigelow was successful with The Hurt Locker.2 The only female British nominee for the award is Lynne Ramsay in 2011 for We Need to Talk About Kevin. This not only reflects the fact that there are not many female film directors currently working in Britain, or indeed the world, but also that their productions escape recognition even though their output is innovative and diverse. There is no easily stated thesis in this book, but my overall aim is to present a survey of British women film directors making films post- 2000 (or women working in Britain making British films), and to broadly review their output at a time of significant change within the UK film industry. Amid a period of increased awareness of the paucity of women in above-the-line3 positions, I identify key female film directors and analyse the rich potential of their productions through various dimensions, taking into account funding strategies, production, distribution and exhibition methods, as well as aesthetics and genre. Prior to 2000 the proportion of women directors compared to men was minimal, and statistically their numbers remain meagre, although they peaked in 2009 when women comprised 17.2% of all British film directors.4 I suggest that this is partly attributable to UK Film Council (UKFC) © The Author(s) 2017 1 S. Hockenhull, British Women Film Directors in the New Millennium, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-48992-0_1 2 S. HOCKENHULL funding, which not only addressed serious concerns over diversity from as early as 2003 but also increased spending in general on low-budget films. Whether coincidentally or not, this rise in women filmmakers also corre- sponds to New Labour’s positive strategies regarding women in the work- place, thus making the post-millennial period a fruitful one to discuss. Some of the films featured in this book offer a feminist stance or present a female perspective, although I do not propose that all the directors included here are feminists or that all the films analysed are feminist texts. Rather, the filmmakers discussed are judged auteurs in the broadest sense of the word, the notion of authorship itself engendering a position that is critical for feminist Film Studies because, historically, women have not enjoyed easy or full admission to the industry. This is not to argue that the women directors that I consider here correspond to the auteur notion of an individual patriarchal controller, a transcendental figure revered in Hollywood discourse. In reality, many work collaboratively and I acknowledge unequivocally that the production team is equally important to the completed work. Those discussed demonstrate authorial control in various ways, not least because they often write, produce and are camera- women on their own films. As the titleBritish Women Film Directors in the New Millennium suggests, this study focuses on women film directors or women making British films.5 However, those that I include do not necessarily seek a female audience, although the subject matter is often directed at women, particularly in the work of many of the documentary filmmakers. Furthermore, I argue that these films are empowering in some way for the female spectator, either implicitly or explicitly incor- porating a significant message. This occurs either by means of their subject matter, through the representation of characters or the use of real people, or via the visual strategies deployed. Thus, arguably, a distinctive aesthetic is created, interpreted here as a female imprint and, as Cecilia Sayad notes: They [women filmmakers] reclaim a voice in the theoretical articulations of cinematic authorship by inviting us to think of it [the film] not as critical construction, but as self-construction – not as an artificial attempt to humanise the source of the film’s discourse through a reading practice, but as the filmmaker’s performance of the processes that lead to the fabrication of meaning. (2013: xxii) Although some theoretical input is deployed in this examination of British women’s films, the focus is not on feminist theory. Indeed, much has INTRODUCTION 3 already been written about women and film over the past 40 years, particularly with the introduction of theories on representation, some of which have been used here as a framework for analysis. Early feminist criticism was aimed at Hollywood stereotypes (Haskell 1974; Johnston 1973 [2008]) which were perceived as negative misrepresentations. Claire Johnston, for example, draws on the work of Roland Barthes to argue that woman as sign is ideological and represented as ‘not man’ and is therefore absent from the text. However, perhaps the most groundbreak- ing work in feminist film theory emanates from Laura Mulvey (1975) and her psychoanalytical approach to Film Studies in relation to Hollywood cinema. According to Mulvey, the text denies a female point of view, and implicates the spectator as colluder in the patriarchal act of voyeurism, thus producing a male authoritarian sexual power relationship. As a result, she proposes an oppositional women’s cinema to offer a counterpoint to the dominant mode of filmmaking. Mulvey’s arguments are seminal to Film Studies, and they provide a theoretical paradigm which is furthered by Mary Ann Doane (1987) who regards the representation of women as a response to male fear and anxiety. Alternatively, Teresa de Lauretis’s work, written as a series of essays in the 1980s, purports that narrative cinema goes hand in hand with feminist awareness, advancing the notion of a text which addresses the female spectator (de Lauretis 1987), and, in turn, actual communities (de Lauretis 1990). Other feminist theory on representation, particularly the work of Tania Modleski (1999) and Christine Gledhill, examines the ways in which women engage with par- ticular genres.

Load more