For as long as most of us have been around, the canon – those books, plays, films and TV series anointed as the most important of their kind – has been defined by a singular commonality: most of it was created by white men. When I entered graduate school in theatre management and producing in the 1990s, we were required to read a series of books entitled Famous American Plays of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s etc. Everything I was assigned, except for two plays – Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding and Lillian Hellman’s The Autumn Garden – was by men.
Sadly, it hasn’t changed over the last couple of decades. When I spoke to female film students at the University of California, Los Angeles a couple of years ago, they said the films on their curriculum were virtually all by white men. These students were made to believe, through the films they studied, that women – our experiences, thoughts, decisions, passions and ideas – don’t rate. Women’s lives are pushed from centre stage into a corner. It is pretty full in the corner, because half the world is stuck there.
This is an all-pervasive problem. It is about how boys are hailed as geniuses and girls are not. It is about how men get given big-budget blockbusters to direct and women don’t. It is about how men get their plays on Broadway and women don’t. It is about how most of the critics are men. It is about how nearly all the talking heads on TV are men. And it is a vicious circle. If you can’t get the attention, the critical reception, the accolades, you can’t rise to the next level of recognition. So, you are stuck with a group of privileged, white, mostly men, who continue to rise to the top and become the purveyors of the culture.
In the early days of the film business, women thrived. The first acknowledged female director is Alice Guy-Blaché, and the most prolific and highest-paid screenwriter in the 1920s was Frances Marion. Women were successful across the industry until the rise of the studio system, when men imposed their rule and pushed women out. To see just how women were tamped down onscreen, look to the Motion Picture Production Code AKA the Hays Code, which was in effect from 1930 until, technically, 1968 (when the MPAA started its ratings system) and required stars to conform to a series of morality clauses. These rules were used to neuter women and their sexuality as well as to enforce other forms of censorship and moral policing.
As film continued to rise in importance as a medium, there were decades where there is nary a female director to be seen. By the 70s, when the term auteur had become more widely used, male directors such as Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, who still dominate our landscape, rose to prominence. They became stars themselves and their films became those that everyone wanted – and wants – to emulate. These are the films that are taught to students because these are the films that their teachers, who are still mostly men, learned are the ones that mattered. These are our cave paintings. This is how people in the future will learn what counted. And women are left out.
But no more. Women and people of colour are demanding the canon be rethought, since it was not based on our shared culture, but on the experiences of one particular group that became the dominant voice. The time has come to rethink which films should be valued, taught and appreciated. The last few weeks have unmoored the industry and caused worldwide reverberations. The allegations against Harvey Weinstein have caused the floodgates to open.
Rethinking the canon should have happened long ago, but let’s use this opportunity – a time when people are searching for change – to create at least one positive outcome: a new and inclusive canon for the future.
Yentl (dir Barbra Streisand)
Streisand directs, co-writes, sings and, of course, stars as a Jewish girl who must live as a man in order to receive the education she deserves.
Selected by Amma Asante, director of A United Kingdom
“Yentl had a profound impact on me as a 13-year-old. I knew who Streisand was because my dad was a big fan of her music and, subsequently, so was I. So, when I discovered she was directing a movie that she had also co-written and was starring in, I was blown away. Yentl might be the first movie directed by a woman that hit me, in a world where I had learned that such a thing was very rare. It was epic with enormous themes, beautifully drawn characters and performances, and stunning production values. But it was important because it showed what a woman could achieve, given the opening.”
The Babadook (dir Jennifer Kent)
First-time director Kent transforms themes of maternal exhaustion and isolation into the cult horror of the decade. A sleeper hit that leaves you sleepless.
Photograph: Sportsphoto/Allstar
Selected by Emily V Gordon, screenwriter of The Big Sick
“The Babadook, written and directed by a woman, is a gorgeously told female-focused story of grief, longing, loneliness and what mourning can become. All that, plus it has one of the most iconic monsters of any horror movie in the last 20 years.”
Beau Travail (dir Claire Denis)
Denis’s spellbinding ballet of a film provides a woman’s take on men-only environments. It’s set mostly on a French Foreign Legion outpost in east Africa, and Denis Lavant is the grizzled sergeant major recalling the events that led to his court martial.
Selected by Lynne Ramsay, director of We Need to Talk About Kevin
“The darker side of masculinity, immaculately realised. I can never hear the disco of Corona’s Rhythm of the Night without thinking of the remarkable scene at the end of the film – man’s dance between life and death and resignation, so many emotions in one scene. Denis is a master, one of the world’s best film-makers. A modern classic.”
Monsoon Wedding (dir Mira Nair)
Indian director Nair said that she wanted to make a Bollywood film her way – and she hit the jackpot with this big-hearted boisterous wedding movie, which swept along audiences around the globe.
Selected by Gurinder Chadha, director of Bend It Like Beckham
“Entertaining, deeply steeped in the cultural specificity of its characters and searingly political in advocating social change to make the depicted characters’ lives better.”
The Ascent (dir Larisa Shepitko)
Soviet director Shepitko’s fourth and final film is a haunting war drama, following two starving partisans across the frozen wastes of Belarus in 1942.
Selected by Sally Potter, director of The Party
“Shepitko – who sadly died in a car crash after making this film – took on one of the most difficult subjects for the Russian population: war and its catastrophic effects on individual psyches. Her canvas was huge. What stands out is her choice of complex subject matter – political and spiritual – explored without limits and directed with aesthetic precision and daring. And as a postscript, let’s not forget the great (and overlooked) Betty Comden, who co-wrote such classics as Singin’ in the Rain and other brilliantly subversive American movies: a reminder that the female authorial voice can tackle any subject, in any genre, with brilliance. It’s just a matter of opportunity and practice.”
Daughters of the Dust (dir Julie Dash)
Recently rediscovered as an inspiration for Beyoncé’s Lemonade, this is a visually sumptuous, narratively distinct family saga about African-American womanhood on a South Carolina island.
Selected by Nadia Latif, writer and director
“Dash’s much-loved but little-seen 1991 gem was, horrifyingly, the first ever film directed by an African-American woman to gain theatrical release. Based in part on Dash’s own family history, the film is mainly written in Gullah creole. Watching it forces you to abandon how you ordinarily understand film, and makes you submit yourself to something more primal. Maybe it’s OK to not understand everything, to let go. It’s a joyous celebration of black womanhood in all its forms, and a total escape from the broken black bodies one is used to seeing in mainstream western cinema.”
An Angel at My Table (dir Jane Campion)
Three years before she became the first woman to win the Palme d’Or for The Piano, Campion directed this powerful biopic of the New Zealand writer Janet Frame, who was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia in her 20s, and given electroshock treatments.
Selected by Hope Dickson Leach, director of The Levelling
“Campion’s second feature (after the wonderful Sweetie, which was booed at its presentation in Cannes) is a masterclass in screen craft, formally ambitious, narratively expansive and anchored by an incredible central performance by Kerry Fox. The work not only succeeds as a staggering piece of cinema, but reminds us how many stories are still to be told on the screen.
Vagabond (dir Agnès Varda)
A young drifter (Sandrine Bonnaire) -wanders though southern France in winter, meeting various people before continuing her travels. Is this a freedom to be envied? Or feared?
Selected by Pratibha Parmar, producer, director and writer
“Vagabond is a stunning, austere cinematic poem and belongs in cinema’s universal canon. Centring on the story of a young woman, a vagrant and an outcast, Varda’s brilliant weaving of fiction, documentary and musical set pieces is a work of sublime grace going beyond story and into the crevices of the human condition.”
Suspense (dir Lois Weber)
A 10-minute-long thriller that Weber directed with her husband, Phillips-Smalley. She stars as a woman alone at home with her baby when a tramp attempts to break in.
Selected by Pamela Hutchinson, critic and historian of silent film
“An ingenious home-invasion thriller by one of the great directors of the silent era. Weber went on to make many fantastic and far more ambitious films. But this early effort neatly expresses her mastery of film technique and narrative. It’s 10 minutes of cleverly manipulated action and still raises the blood pressure more than a century after it was made.”
The Silences of the Palace (dir Moufida Tlatli)
Set in 1950s Tunisia, this 1994 film tells the story of a woman coming to understand her place in a world shaped by female servitude.
Selected by Kim Longinotto, documentary film-maker
“I first saw this film a long time ago. I remember the experience vividly. I went with my friend Hanan and, even though the film was sad, we came out of the cinema feeling inspired and invigorated. We waited to see what she would make next, but I don’t think she ever managed to make another film.”
Red Road (dir Andrea Arnold)
With her debut effort, Arnold announced herself as one of British film’s biggest talents – taking social realism, and thickening it with something deeper and darker. A drama of obsession and revenge, it stars Kate Dickie as a Glasgow CCTV operator with a dark secret.
Selected by Sarah Solemani, actor and activist
“Red Road by Andrea Arnold is undoubtedly the most masterful thriller I’ve ever seen. Every beat of the film meticulously builds the mystery towards a dazzling plot twist, making Hitchock look like panto. It’s muscular, powerful, disturbing and female to its core.”
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (dir Ana Lily Amirpour)
Cinema’s “first Iranian vampire western” more than lives up to its enticing tagline. Sheila Vand stars as the chador-clad undead who truly takes back the night.
Selected by Kate Gerova, head of marketing, Curzon cinemas
“Amirpour creates an otherworldly landscape in Bad City, a town home to prostitutes, junkies, pimps … and vampires. Namely, a skateboarding Sheila Vand (The Girl), who wears a chador and takes out bad men. What’s not to love about this premise?”
Monster (dir Patty Jenkins)
She’s now best known for Wonder Woman, but Jenkins’s 2003 portrait of serial killer Aileen Wuornos presented a very different version of female power.
Selected by Penelope Spheeris, director of Wayne’s World
“Such a tough subject matter, so brilliantly handled by Jenkins. She told me quite a few years back that she was determined to make an “action movie”, even though we ladies aren’t allowed. That wonder woman is unstoppable.”
Boys Don’t Cry (dir Kimberly Peirce)
Hilary Swank won the Academy Award for her portrayal of Brandon Teena, a young trans man whose lifelong struggles culminated in a brutal crime.
Selected by Valerie Faris, co-director of Battle of the Sexes
“Boys Don’t Cry deserves to be considered an American classic. It dealt with gender identity long before it became a prominent part of the cultural conversation. It’s visually compelling, romantic and heart-wrenching.”
Lost in Translation (dir Sofia Coppola)
Coppola became just the third women to be nominated for the best director Oscar with her dreamy valentine to Tokyo, starring Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray.
Selected by Melanie Lynskey, actor, Heavenly Creatures
“I saw it in the theatre when I was 26, and it was the first time I’d seen an older man/younger woman narrative told from a female perspective. It felt empowering, romantic and sexy. There’s something about the way the camera takes in Johansson in that movie that feels undeniably feminine. The film balances a lot of complicated things delicately and with complete honesty. Plus it’s hilarious. I love it.”
Howards End (James Ivory, screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala)
Period drama fans know Merchant Ivory, but just as important to the success of their movie-making powerhouse was Ruth Prawer Jhabvala – the novelist who penned many of the scripts, including this adaptation of EM Forster’s Howards End, for which she won the second of her two Oscars.
Selected by Jingan Young, playwright and journalist
“Growing up in Hong Kong, I was exposed to many acclaimed British films on television, but it was Howards End that inspired me to pursue a career as a writer. German born Jhabvala’s Jewish émigré background and life in India undoubtedly affected her writing, which expertly and intricately weaves the political beneath the emotional. Without Jhabvala, there would be no Merchant Ivory.”