We salute the women – onscreen and off – of Hollywood’s most rousing triumphs and classics from around the world.
It's important to remember that brilliant women have been making, writing, shooting, editing and starring in brilliant films for the past hundred years. From Daughters of the Dust to The Piano, Agnès Varda to Gurinder Chadha, and Louise Brooks to Linda Hamilton, our list of the 15 greatest feminist films celebrate them in all their glory. This century of movies over the past century weren’t all directed by women, but they’re all feminist landmarks that demand to be revisited and reappreciated.
Have a watch party with friends, pop on any one of these best feminist movies, get some pizza ready, and start obsessing over all the women who have come before you. This is not the time to forget the history that women have made or the female characters that began on the page and live forever on the screen. Take a note and write your own story. But first, watch these films.
1. His Girl Friday (1940)
It's depressing that the 78-year-old comedy offers a more hopeful portrayal of gender relationships at work than most of today's films. Rosalind Russell's Hildi Johnson is a celebrity news reporter with a fast-growing career and unparalleled professional respect. Her predominantly male colleague treats her with caution, and her boss and her ex-husband (Cary Grant's Walter Burns) organize a Byzantine plot to regain her love, by the way. Not a name. After all, Walter claims to have taught her everything she knows, but Hildi is a woman who has always had her courage, confidence, and tenacity to do what she wants. The key to her shovel is the ability to listen, empathize, and give warm self-confidence better than her bright buddies, but she gets off even the lowest of all Muckrakers and tells a dirty story. You can land it. Her relationship with Walter is based on being smarter, more entertaining, and witty than anyone else, which is a feminist dream headline.
– Helen O'Hara
2. The Piano (1993)
Jane Champion has awakened generations of female filmmakers with a film about women who are too wild, too difficult, and too rebellious for a society that impedes women's independence. Her most popular movie is Holly Hunter as Ada,
a silent pianist living in Scotland in the 19th century who is married to a man she has never met in New Zealand (Sam Neill). After her husband refuses to carry the instrument from the beach to his home, Ada exchanges sexual favours with a local former boatman (Harvey Keitel) to retrieve it key by key. But Ada is not a victim. The piano explores eroticism and fetishism through the eyes of women. And like all the female protagonists of Champion, Ada is excitingly complex and inconsistent. The film received awards and awards, including the Palme d'Or in Cannes and three Oscars. Severe Statistical Warning: Champion was the second woman in history to be nominated for Best Director by the Academy. She lost to Steven Spielberg, but her movie is the greatest winner ever.
– Cath Clarke
3. A Woman Under The Influence (1974)
The phrase "strong female character" only gets you so far. What about women who are fragile or flawed and suffer from mental health problems that cannot be addressed? Among the wrecked women, Gena Rowlands offers one of the movie's sharpest performances as Mabel, a housewife who married a construction worker (Peter Falk). Her Mabel is working hard to keep herself together, but she is drinking and at the edge. Directed by Roland's husband and indie legend John Cassettes, the film is about a person who feels sick and is on the verge of collapse. But it's also about the role of Italian-American housewives in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Mabel was ignored and her spirit broke. A homage to the reality of the movie and the three-dimensional portraits of Laurans, what Mabel dreamed of was living in a one-bedroom apartment full of children and having no place to breathe. An eccentric woman was dreaming. Did you land?
– Cath Clarke
4. Daughters Of The Dust (1991)
A film unlike anything you've seen (or will see), Julie Dash's rapturous feature debut is set at a moment of wrenching cultural crisis, when the island dwelling Gullah—former African slaves living off the coast of South Carolina—decide in August 1902 to head to the nearby American mainland and endure the pain of a second separation from their past. The movie has the softness of a dream, from its pink hued beaches and painterly compositions (shot by Arthur Jafa) to the lilting, incantatory sound of these West African inflected accents. But a deeper attachment comes with the plot's evocation of old traditions slipping through the fingers of the matriarchal Peasant clan. Dash, which broke out at 1991's Sundance Film Festival alongside such nobodies as Richard Linklater and Todd Haynes, never enjoyed the career she rightfully deserved. But notably, Daughters of Dust would be the first film directed by an African American woman to gain theatrical distribution. The visual calm and rebellious forage tub of Beyonce's lemonade dash. Play your role and look at the source.
- Joshua Rothkopf
5. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)
Writer and director Christian Mungiu's view of the illegal history of Romanian women is clearly nervous in an era when American women's safe and easy access to health care is at stake. Set in 1987 at the end of Nicolae Ceausescu's oppressive government, four months unfold with elaborate long shots (one of which took five days to get correct). It helps her college roommate Gabisha (Laura Basiriu) get an illegal-and potentially deadly-abortion through an unpredictable plan with her predatory donor Otilia (Anamaria). Continue to Marinca). Immersed in an imminent physical threat, the Mungius Palmdor winner is a reluctant witness to the heightened despair needed by national tyranny in a world where women are not allowed to make decisions about their bodies. Turn the viewer into a person. The restlessness of the two characters on the screen grows with our sympathy for them and for people around the world who have lost their options.
– Tomris Laffly
6. Mad Max: Fury road (2015)
The road warrior meets his match in George Miller’s staggering, nutso Mad Max reboot. Boasting an entirely unprecedented cinematic marriage of exploding vehicles and feminist fury, its spark is lit by Charlie Theron’s enraged, full-throttle Imperator Furiosa, a woman who really doesn’t care if you think she looks cool in an armor-plated truck. In fact, the film’s putative hero, Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), is reduced to onlooker for most of the action, squirrelled away in the rig and kept away from the important buttons. It’s Furious who drives both vehicle and story, hitting back at the bilious patriarch Immortan Joe by liberating his wives and making a run for it. Is it a feminist masterpiece? Maybe the ending lets it down, with Max getting his hero moment while Furiosa lies wounded, and maybe the wives, sorta-clad and supermodel beautiful, are as much eye candy as mythical totems of womanhood. Maybe. But how many movies have a clutch of kickass women basically tearing down a malignant patriarchy with their bare hands? And how many action films stick the man in the passenger seat? This one deserves saluting.
—Phil de Semlyen
7. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1982)
The movie isn't as cool as this early 80's cult classic starring Diane Lane as Corinne Burns, the teenage leader of all-girl punk band Stains. The groups may not be the most musically talented, but they have a good style and cheeky self-confidence. This movie is a fiery proof of the lasting power of a teenager. As the popularity of dirt grows, hordes of female fans begin to worship Corinne (her harsh red and black look with Aladdin Sane's dark eye makeup) and to dresses. The crowd up shots moves strangely. Punk is a disrespectful twist and was often regarded as a male territory, but Fabulous Stain's ladies and gentlemen can be as important as women's rebellion and acts of self-expression. Was shown. Corinne can be widely quoted: her idea that "every girl should be given an electric guitar on her 16th birthday" is really inspiring.
– Abbey Bendor
8. Thelma & Louise (1991)
"What if someone did this to your mother, your sister, your wife?" Louise (Susan Sarandon) looking at a truck driver who makes nasty gestures on the freeway. .. Thelma & Louise, who has recently turned 25, is sadly more relevant than ever with enough messages to evoke sexual harassment and predators. When Louise shoots a creep trying to rape Therma (Geena Davis), she doesn't call the police because they know they are incredible. Do you do anything different in 2018? Thelma & Louise revolutionized the buddy film with a groundbreaking portrayal of the two fugitives. Was his victory limited? Sarandon of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival said: "After Thelma & Louise, they predicted that there would be so many movies with women, but that didn't happen." There is still time to make this happen.
- Cath Clarke
9. Diary Of A Lost Girl (1929)
This silent film is a horrifying misogyny catalog rather than a story of women's empowerment, but how Louise Brooks (which symbolizes only her Bob) changes from a rape victim to a sad whore, a late heroine. It's fascinating to see what you do. In contrast, Brooks was born himself as a fighter, embodying her entire flapper era and challenging the studio long before it became cool. – Helen O'Hara
10. Orlando (1992)
As far as the pitch of the film is concerned, "Tilda Swinton, bending gender across time and space" is a kind of guts of us. Although very loosely based on Virginia Woolf's novel (although all changes have a purpose), Sally Potter's unique Odyssey focuses on Swinton's majestic and mysterious presence with identity. A gorgeous celebration of the change in queenness.
– Abbey Bendor
11. Rosetta (1999)
Trailer-park-dwelling teen Rosetta (Émilie Dequenne, on fire) just wants to keep her crummy job at the waffle shack. But a fickle boss and an untrustworthy co worker take advantage of her in this knockout by Belgium's close-hovering Dardenne brothers. Impressively, a rumor arose that Rosetta inspired real-life tweaks to its country's worker-protection laws; that wasn't the case, but you could believe it.
— Joshua Rothkupf
12. Persona (1996)
There are few images that symbolize the complexity of femininity, like the abstract yet surprisingly intimate close-ups of Ingmar Bergman's art house classics Bibi Andesson and Liv Ullmann. An important visual reference point for over 50 years, this film thoroughly explores both the psychology of women and how they seduce and destroy.
– Abbey Bendor
13. Born In Flames (1993)
A sci-fi feminist slice with a punk spirit and an electronic soundtrack, Michigan's heretic Lizzie Borden's docudystopia is far from far away or traditional. Born in Flames was set 10 years after the Second American Revolutionary War in New York. There, women strive for equal rights with men, and armed groups are trying to take over women. Bowden himself continues to work on arming millennials. The fire is still burning.
– Phil de Semlyen
14. Meshes Of The Afternoon (1943)
This fascinating experimental short explores the identity of women when most avant-garde artists were obsessed with the spirit of helpless men. Rich in images, written by Maya Deren, co-directed with Alexandr Hackensch. Some commentators at the time commented that Hamid had done all the hard work, as if he couldn't imagine a female director.
– Anna Smith
15. My Brilliant career (1979)
In Gillian Armstrong's brainy adaptation of Miles Franklin's 1901 novel, the aspiring writer Sybylla Melvyn (Judy Davis) stubbornly resists the traditional demands of family, turns down eligible suitors and chases grand professional ambitions. Hardened by her non-negotiable life goals, she sketches a roadmap to autonomy, setting an enduring example.
—Tomris Laffly
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