Female Film Critics 24/375
It has been an incredible decade for animator and director Domee Shi. Beginning as a story intern at Pixar in 2011, she was promoted in April of this year to Vice President of Creative for the company where she has spent her entire professional career. She also won an Academy Award and directed a feature film along the way.
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Maya Cade is an accomplished, articulate communicator whose invaluable resource and audience development work broaden our understanding of the Black experience and film culture. Her Black Film Archive not only reveals white representations of Blackness, but also how the Black community has seen itself in feature films, shorts, documentaries, and other media. We believe this greater understanding will result in more nuanced, informed films that can help hasten the cause of equality for all people.
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This month, Elaine May is getting an Oscar! One of Hollywood’s funniest and most talented ladies will, at long last, receive an Honorary Academy Award for her long history of great work in the film industry. In announcing the honor, Academy president David Rubin said, “Elaine May’s bold, uncompromising approach to filmmaking, as a writer, director and actress, reverberates as loudly as ever with movie lovers.” Honoring Elaine May’s work and career accomplishments will introduce a new generation to her particular sensibilities, wit, unique perspective and voice.
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Nina Menkes is a trailblazer of American independent cinema and a crucial voice in our current reckoning with the ways film—both as an industry and an art form—treats women. More importantly, few living filmmakers have created work so virtually unprecedented in its stark originality. Her oeuvre is ripe for rediscovery.
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As a deeply committed film scholar whose work is resurrecting forgotten figures—particularly African American artists—in cinematic history, Jacqueline Stewart is changing face of American culture. Her contributions as an educator, curator, archivist, author, and popular presenter will ensure that diversity both of narrators and narratives will enrich our culture for years to come.
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While she won’t speculate on her own awards prospects, Ari Wegner recently told me how happy she is to see the way women are now being more welcomed in the field of cinematography. She hopes this will continue to increase as female DPs start to see the recognition that has eluded them for so long. She discusses both the art and science of filmmaking with such a degree of passion and poetry, that her love for the medium is contagious. She is a leader, a champion, and a gifted artist, giving the world not only beautiful images, but a sense of hope and fascination too.
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For Lauren Ridloff, the chance to perform on stage and screen and taking on a new starring role in Marvel’s Eternals, is not just an avenue for creative expression, but also gives her the space to open doors for others in the deaf community while also teaching the hearing community how to foster a more inclusive experience for everyone.
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2021 was the year the film world rediscovered Japanese actor and director Kinuyo Tanaka. Tanaka acted in more than 200 films for some of the greatest directors Japan ever produced during a career that spanned from 1924 through 1976—just a year before her death. Her work as a director, however, is largely unknown, but thanks to the restoration of some of her films by The Japan Foundation, audiences are gaining access to her ground-breaking work.
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Jane Campion has furthered the cause of women in film by holding steady to her own extraordinary aesthetic, unique career choices and creation of dazzling visual poetry. Throughout her career, her feminist approach to filmmaking has been expressed in her distinctive vision and directorial style, and in her consistent creation of strong, complex and fully fleshed out female characters who rank among the finest, most compelling in film history.
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Theo Park is a casting director with clout! Recently nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for casting Ted Lasso, the phenom freshman television series that set a record for its number of Emmy wins for the actors Park cast in the show (along with other categories), she’s shaping the population of performers who are beloved by audiences around the globe. She is unquestionably enthusiastic about her work and readily acknowledges that she’s been fortunate in finding opportunities that have brought her to the pinnacle of success.
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