7 Days, 7 Women, 7 Movies: Recognizing Female Filmmakers

Erika Lust BTS a feminist erotic film shoot

7 Days, 7 Women, 7 Movies: A Celebration of Women in Film

Erika Lust | May 03, 2017 | 3 min. read

Let’s take a minute to forget about the porn for women and the adult film industry and talk about the mainstream, multi-million dollar, Hollywood movie industry…

Where are all the female directors?

Erika Lust BTS

Last year, only 7% of the 250 top grossing films in the U.S. had female directors. That’s decreased from the year before (but only by 2%)! But enough about stats. Surely there are talented, creative, revolutionary female directors out there trying to get there foot in the door? In this article on Women And Hollywood, the author talks about setting themselves the challenge of watching only female-directed movies, every other month, for a year. By March they gave up! They found that even after trawling through Netflix, there just simply weren’t that many options. Doesn’t this leave us with a gaping hole where we should be empathizing with women or where men should step into someone else’s shoes for a few hours? Don’t we need to broaden our views to include the female gaze as well?

Women In Film launched a powerful initiative to get more people watching more female-directed films. #52filmsbywomen encourages us all to take the pledge to watch a female-directed film once every week for a year! Sound easy? You’d be surprised… Encouragingly, 10,000 people have already made the pledge!

So why not have your own #WomenDirectorWeek? 7 films, 7 days, 7 female directors! Here are my suggestions!

#1 Lost in Translation by Sofia Coppola
A faded movie star and a neglected young woman form an unlikely bond after crossing paths in Tokyo.

#2 A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night by Ana Lily Amirpour
In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.

#3 The Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow, for some serious female-directed action!
During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work.

#4 An Education by Lone Scherfig
A coming-of-age story about a teenage girl in 1960s suburban London, and how her life changes with the arrival of a playboy nearly twice her age.

#5 Tomboy by Celine Sciamma
A family moves into a new neighborhood, and a 10-year-old named Laure deliberately presents as a boy named Mikhael to the neighborhood children.

#6 Big by Penny Marshall, perfect for a lazy hungover Sunday!
After wishing to be made big, a teenage boy wakes the next morning to find himself mysteriously in the body of an adult.

#7 The Taste of Others by Agnès Jaoui
Three men, three women, opposites, possibilities, and tastes.

#BONUSROUND Hot Girls Wanted by Rashida Jones
A documentary about young women who have been drawn into the sex trade – and how easy it is for a web-savvy generation to end up making porn.

FYI, these upcoming 2017 movies are all female-directed: Wonder Woman, Raw, Fear of Flying, The Beguiled, Loving Vincent and XX!

Tell me your #WomenDirectorWeek choices in the comments!

by Erika Lust

Erika Lust is an award-winning filmmaker, producer, and writer who's focus on female pleasure, cinematic values, and ethics in adult cinema have helped to change how pornography is consumed. Erika Lust Films was born in 2004 and since then Erika has ... Read More