Greatest Female Director of All Time?

[Jon1]

Is there a definitive one?  I can think of very few.  Sofia Coppolla is the only woman ever to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar I believe.

I guess half the reason I made this topic is to provoke somebody to say Leni Riefenstahl.

[The Firecracker]

They exist?

[Jon1]

Apparently not!

" "The U.S. Senate is more progressive than Hollywood. Female Senators: 9%, Female directors: 4%." That's according to a study undertaken at San Diego State University..."
--  http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/movies/feature/2002/08/27/women_directors/index.html

[The Firecracker]

I know, it's a joke.


I have seen a few movies directed by the opposite sex myself.

All terrible stuff.

Like this one...

"Gas, food and lodging" by Allison Anders.


Words cannot describe what utter nonsense this movie is.

Coppolla's "LIT" and that virgin movie aren't my cup of tea either.

[Jon1]

Which is strange...seeing that I believe that adult females make up the biggest percentage of the movie going public.

[Aguirre]

Jane Campion is actually amazing, and her film The Piano easily ranks up as one of the best pictures I have ever seen. Really one of the most touching dramas, and housing Harvey Kietel's best performance.

[Franks Harmonica]

Amy Holden Jones for "Slumber Party Massacre!"

Actually my favorite is Ida Lupino for "The Hitchiker"

[Leone Admirer]

Jane Campion is actually amazing, and her film The Piano easily ranks up as one of the best pictures I have ever seen. Really one of the most touching dramas, and housing Harvey Kietel's best performance.

I've never been a fan of Campion, always found her work (especially The Piano) overrated. I agree with Ida Lupino The Hitchhiker is great stuff!

[Juan Miranda]

Kiwi film maker Alison Mclean made a superb drama called CRUSH back in 1992, which is well worth tracking down. Marcia Gay Harden made a memorable nutter in it. My fave film by a woman however is IL PORTIERE DI NOTTE, directed by the  Italian Liliana Cavani. It's an intense and extremely controversial portrayal of the bizarre relationship between a former Nazi concentration camp commander (Dirk Bogarde) and his victim (Charlotte Rampling). The thing is a weird and uncomforatble assemblage of Freudian scenarios and the Nazisplotation imigary then rife in Italian exploitation movies.

[CISCO]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107756/  can't comment. havent't seen it yet.

[Jon1]

So nobody is biting on Leni Riefenstahl, director of the infamous (but revolutionary apparently in terms of film techniques) Nazi propaganda piece, "Triumph of the Will"?

[CISCO]

So nobody is biting on Leni Riefenstahl, director of the infamous (but revolutionary apparently in terms of film techniques) Nazi propaganda piece, "Triumph of the Will"?

TOTW is a giant natzi documentary. it's an awsome piece of work. i can't imagine rene going up to hitler and saying let's do more takes  and this time really get yourself worked up adolf. her subjects are just marching around as we see just how big the natzi war machine had grown.  she did an icredible job of placing the cameras so the enormity of the rallys could be seen.  it's very important what she did so future generations could witness such mass insanity. everytime i see it i think the world isn't going to let this happen much longer and a lot of men are going to be wasted badly.

[grandpa_chum]

I hate to say this because I can't stand her in general, but penny marshall ain't bad... and she definitely seems to be the only woman director I can think of that actually has a spot in hollywood, I mean she gets budgets and makes "hollywood" type movies, she's not an independent or anything like that... the only other female directed movie I've ever liked is Tamara Jenkins Slums of Beverly Hills, which I have to give her special credit for because she wrote and directed it.

[CISCO]

penny marshall is an exceptional director. i was going to mention her. she's the first female director to make o film that grossed over 100 million dollars.

[Juan Miranda]

So nobody is biting on Leni Riefenstahl

Well, I might have given her a nibble, she was a good looking woman when she was young. TRIUMPH OF THE WILL has some interesting stuff in it, but overall is tedium beyond belief to sit and watch all the way through. The "dramatised" moments are just embarrassingly bad (the "roll call of the Reich" sequence, f' instance), and the sheer number of painfully fawning speeches going on and on about great Hitler was... (where is the "yawn" emoticon when you need it?)

OLYMPIA is more bearable to watch, and arguably uses more innovative techniques than TOTW, and Leni gets her kit off in it too, but it's still a long haul, she may have denied being a Nazi, buts she was certainly in thrall of the National Socialist sense of theatricality, and her work suffers from an overdoes of it's equal love of bombast, verbosity and silly, drawn out ceremonies.

Totally unrealated, I like Catherine Bigalow's action flick, POINT BREAK, even with Keanu's dumb performance. "I! AM! AN! FBI! AGENT!!"