Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field now overlaps with queer studies and men's studies. Its rise to prominence, especially in Western universities after 1990, coincided with the rise of deconstruction.
The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary films, animation, web documentaries, and alternative dramas. In total, the NFB has produced over 13,000 productions since its inception, which have won over 5,000 awards. The NFB reports to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of Canadian Heritage. It has bilingual production programs and branches in English and French, including multicultural-related documentaries.
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is the world's largest documentary film festival held annually since 1988 in Amsterdam. Over a period of twelve days, it has screened more than 300 films and sold more than 250,000 tickets. Visitors to the festival have increased from 65,000 in 2000 to 285,000 in 2018.
Paris Is Burning is a 1990 documentary film directed by Jennie Livingston. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender communities involved in it.
The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is the largest documentary festival in North America. The event takes place annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 27th edition of the festival took place online throughout May and June 2020. In addition to the annual festival, Hot Docs owns and operates the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, administers multiple production funds, and runs year-round screening programs including Doc Soup and Hot Docs Showcase.
Blue Vinyl is a 2002 documentary film directed by Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand. With a lighthearted tone, the film follows one woman's quest for an environmentally sound cladding for her parents' house in Merrick, Long Island, New York. It also investigates the many negative health effects of polyvinyl chloride in its production, use and disposal, focusing on the communities of Lake Charles and Mossville, Louisiana, and Venice, Italy. Filming for Blue Vinyl began in 1994. It was aired on HBO as part of the series America Undercover.
Lovesong is a 2016 American drama film directed by So Yong Kim, who co-wrote the film with Bradley Rust Gray. It stars Jena Malone, Riley Keough, Brooklyn Decker, Amy Seimetz, Marshall Chapman, Ryan Eggold, and Rosanna Arquette.
Yvonne Welbon is an American independent film director, producer, and screenwriter based in Chicago. She is known for her films, Living with Pride:Ruth C. Ellis @ 100 (1999), Sisters in Cinema (2003), and Monique (1992).
Julie Casper Roth, is an American artist, documentary filmmaker, experimental video artist, and writer based in Connecticut.
The Munich International Film Festival is the largest summer film festival in Germany and second only in size and importance to the Berlinale. It has been held annually since 1983 and takes place in late-June/early-July. The latest festival was held from June 23 to July 2, 2022. It presents feature films and feature-length documentaries. The festival is also proud of the role it plays in discovering talented and innovative young filmmakers. With the exception of retrospectives, tributes and homages, all of the films screened are German premieres and many are European and world premieres. There are a dozen competitions with prizes worth over €250,000 which are donated by the festival's major sponsors and partners.
Land Ho! is a 2014 adventure comedy film, co-written and co-directed by Martha Stephens and Aaron Katz. The film made its world premiere at 2014 Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2014. It also screened at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, Nantucket Film Festival, Locarno International Film Festival, and BFI London Film Festival.
Driving with Selvi is a Canadian documentary film that focuses on South India's first female taxi driver, a young woman named Selvi who had previously escaped a child marriage. The film was directed by Elisa Paloschi, who also acted as producer for the project.
Gamechanger Films is an American company that finances independent films directed by women.
Gudrun Johanna Bjerring Parker was a Canadian filmmaker, writer, and producer. She worked on films with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) during the Second World War and in the early 1950s. Parker wrote the script for The Stratford Adventure, which was nominated for an academy award, and directed part of Royal Journey, which won a BAFTA. She married fellow NFB filmmaker Morten Parker. They often worked as a team on films and in 1963, they established a production company, Parker Film Associates.
Women are involved in the film industry in all roles, including as film directors, actresses, cinematographers, film producers, film critics, and other film industry professions, though women have been underrepresented in creative positions.
The female gaze is a feminist theory term referring to the gaze of the female spectator, character or director of an artistic work, but more than the gender it is an issue of representing women as subjects having agency. As such all genders can create films with a female gaze. It is a response to feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey's term "the male gaze", which represents not only the gaze of a heterosexual male viewer but also the gaze of the male character and the male creator of the film. In that sense it is close, though different, from the Matrixial gaze coined in 1985 by Bracha L. Ettinger. In contemporary usage, the female gaze has been used to refer to the perspective a female filmmaker (screenwriter/director/producer) brings to a film that might be different from a male view of the subject.
Whose Streets? is a 2017 American documentary film about the killing of Michael Brown and the Ferguson uprising. Directed by Sabaah Folayan and co-directed by Damon Davis, Whose Streets? premiered in competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, then was released theatrically in August, 2017, for the anniversary of Brown's death. It was a nominee for Critics' Choice and Gotham Independent Film awards.
Ro Haber is a transgender writer and director of commercial, music, and documentary films based in Los Angeles, California. They attended NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. In 2013, they were selected for the Outfest 2013 Screenwriters Lab for their feature screenplay Soledad. In 2014 their short Jellyfish won Outfest's Grand Jury Prize. Their works have gained popularity and recognition for their work exploring LGBTQ life in a number of different styles and formats. These works include films like Relapse (2015), We've Been Around (2016), Ink (2016), as well as documentary works like New Deep South (2017), Stonewall Forever (2019) and PRIDE: Ep 106, Y2GAY (2021).
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).
Julia Bell Reichert was an American Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, activist, and feminist. She was a co-founder of New Day Films. Reichert's filmmaking career spanned over 50 years as a director and producer of documentaries.
