Six Independent Female Filmmakers Who Really Ought to be Allowed/Made to Direct More

By Matt Prigge
Add Comment Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Apr. 16, 2008

Tamara Jenkins: Nine long years separate Philadelphia-born Jenkins' smart semiautobiographical debut Slums of Beverly Hills (1998) and her smart, apparently not-so-autobiographical follow-up The Savages (2007). In the downtime Jenkins shuffled through aborted projects, essentially learning, like Terrence Malick before her, that time sure can fly.

Darnell Martin: With 1994's sharp I Like It Like That, the Bronx-born Martin became the first African-American woman to direct a major studio picture. And then ... not much. Just a lot of TV, a disastrous rap musical called Prison Song and then more TV. Martin is currently filming another all-star musical, Cadillac Records with Beyonc�, Mos Def and Adrien Brody, so fingers crossed.

Alison Maclean: Canada's Maclean did the near-impossible, translating Jesus' Son, Denis Johnson's episodic account of a loopy, well-meaning smackhead (named Fuckhead), to the screen without losing what made the source special. Hell, she even figured out what to do with Billy Crudup, usually a wet blanket on-screen. And yet it's been nothing but shorts and episodes of The Tudors since. Don't directors with indie hits usually direct the next superhero franchise?

Kimberly Peirce: See Tamara Jenkins; swap in Boys Don't Cry and Stop-Loss.

Lynne Ramsay: Please go to Lynne Ramsay's IMDb page. Yep, there's nothing in development. This is a travesty. The most talented director on this list, Ramsay's a first-rate visual stylist whose Morvern Callar (2002) is as eerily opaque as it is a beaut to look at. She was about to adapt The Lovely Bones until Peter Jackson stole it from her. We as a society, as a species, need to intervene right now.

Kelly Reichardt: Roughly three people saw Reichardt's inventive lovers-on-the-lam indie River of Grass in 1995. Luckily several times that saw 2006's Old Joy, a film that expanded on Grass' promise, if a decade later. But no need for pessimism: Wendy, starring Michelle Williams, is already in the works. Good.

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