Bette Gordon (born June 22, 1950) is an American filmmaker and professor at Columbia University School of the Arts. [1] She is best known for her films Variety (1983) and Handsome Harry (2009), both of which received critical acclaim in North America and abroad. [1]
Gordon began making films in the mid-1970s in the Midwestern United States, including in Chicago, Illinois and Madison, Wisconsin. These short films were experimental, dealing with movement through place, sexuality, culture, and structure. [2] She cites French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard as a major inspiration to her as an artist and a filmmaker saying, "Having grown up through the '70s, I could not have found a more appropriate mentor. His radical approach to the use of sound and image helped shape me as much as the questions he asked the viewer to consider, most importantly, the relationship between truth and fiction." [3] She also lists Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love , R.W. Fassbinder, John Cassavetes and films like The Last Picture Show and Midnight Cowboy as inspirational for their portrayal of relationships and love. [3] She considers the time she spent in New York in the early 1980s instrumental to her career because she was able to collaborate with new artists for the sake of creating art rather than making money. [4] At that period, she also shifted to making more feature-length films. [5] She is a friend of actor Steve Buscemi and cast him in her film Handsome Harry because she felt as though it was a role unlike any he had ever played before. [4] Gordon married Australian filmmaker Tim Burns and they have one daughter, Lili Burns.
In December 2023, alongside 50 other filmmakers, Gordon signed an open letter published in Libération demanding a ceasefire and an end to the killing of civilians amid the 2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, and for a humanitarian corridor into Gaza to be established for humanitarian aid, and the release of hostages. [6] [7] [8]
Gordon is said to be "known for her bold explorations of themes related to sexuality, violence and power." [9] Her film Variety explores the relationship between women, pornography and voyeurism. The title character of the film "turns the tables on men" [10] by renegotiating the historically exploitative relationship between men and women with respect to pornographic films. She says, "My films have always focused on the visual aspects of storytelling. I've been drawn to stories in which color, texture and mood are as central to the narrative as character and plot." [11] Though much of her work is focused on women and the female experience, some of her recent work - most notably Handsome Harry - examines the social constraints placed on men and tensions between hetero-normative masculinity and homosexuality. [12] In the film, described as "relentless" [12] by a review in The New York Times, the main character is struggling to confront the emotional and physical trauma he and his friends inflicted on a homosexual friend while in the Navy many years prior.
Gordon holds a BA, MA, and MFA from The University of Wisconsin–Madison and is now a part of the film department of Columbia University School of the Arts. [13] Some of her films are now a part of permanent collections in several different museums including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. [1]
Víctor Erice Aras is a Spanish film director. He is best known for his two feature fiction films, The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), which many regard as one of the greatest Spanish films ever made, and El Sur (1983).
Maria Giese is an American feature film director and screenwriter. A member of the Directors Guild of America, and an activist for parity for women directors in Hollywood, she writes and lectures about the under-representation of women filmmakers in the United States.
Zoe Lister-Jones is an American actress and filmmaker who co-starred as Jen Collins Short in the CBS sitcom Life in Pieces from 2015 to 2019. She is also known for her roles in the television shows Delocated (2009–2010), Whitney (2011–2013), and New Girl (2015). Lister-Jones made her directorial debut with the 2017 comedy-drama film Band Aid. In 2020, she wrote and directed the horror film The Craft: Legacy. During the Covid-19 pandemic she co-wrote and co-directed the comedy-drama film How It Ends (2021) with Daryl Wein. In 2023 she produced, wrote, directed, and starred in the comedy series Slip for The Roku Channel, with Dakota Johnson as executive producer under her TeaTime Pictures banner. On December 5, 2023, it was announced that Slip was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards.
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Handsome Harry is a 2009 American film written by Nicholas T. Proferes and directed by Bette Gordon. The first project produced by Worldview Entertainment, it stars Jamey Sheridan, Steve Buscemi and Aidan Quinn. It premiered at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival and was released theatrically in 2010 by Paladin/Emerging Pictures and on DVD/VOD by Screen Media Films.
Aurora Guerrero is a writer-director from California.
Emily Carmichael is an American film director, screenwriter, and animator. Her short films have screened in competition at Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, Slamdance, and other US and International film festivals. Carmichael co-wrote the screenplay for the 2018 science fiction sequel Pacific Rim: Uprising and the 2022 film Jurassic World: Dominion.
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Amy Virginia Talkington is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, and author.
Sophie Barthes is a French-American film director and screenwriter best known for her 2009 film Cold Souls.
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Deborah S. Esquenazi is a documentary filmmaker, writer, radio producer, instructor, and investigative journalist. She is a native Texan and currently resides in Austin, Texas with her wife and two children. She is the acclaimed director of the award-winning documentary Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four, as well as half a dozen short films and essays. Her work focuses on the intersections of mythology & justice, and identity & power. Esquenazi is a Rockwood JustFilms Ford Foundation Fellow, Sundance Creative Producing Lab Fellow (2015), Firelight Media Producers’ Lab Fellow (2015), IFP Spotlight on Docs (2015), Artist on two Artplace America commissions (2015), and Sundance Documentary Film Fellow (2014).
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Nikyatu Jusu is an American independent writer, director, producer, editor and assistant professor in film and video at George Mason University. Jusu's works center on the complexities of Black female characters and in particular, displaced, immigrant women in the United States. Her work includes African Booty Scratcher (2007), Flowers (2015), Suicide By Sunlight (2019), and Nanny, which received the Grand Jury Prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
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