The 100 Best Movies Written by Women
Welcome to our guide of the best movies written by women: These are highly Certified Fresh films (nothing on the list falls below 94%) whose screenplay credit goes in part or fully to women.
The journey begins nearly a century ago with 1925’s
Battleship Potemkin, written by Nina Agadzhanova, inspired by her own participation in Soviet uprisings. Just two years later,
Metropolis, cinema’s first sci-fi feature masterpiece, emerged out of Germany, written by Thea von Harbou. The 1930s were one of those peak decades for movies, in no small part thanks to
King Kong (co-written by Ruth Rose),
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The best cinematic performances don’t share some standard of craft or technique; what they have in common is a feeling of invention and discovery, of emotional depth and power, and a sense of self-consciousness regarding the idea and the art of performance itself. They also reflect broader transformations in the art of cinema during their times. Such actors as Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, and Jimmy Stewart were already stars in the high studio era of the nineteen-thirties, but their work became more freely expressive, more galvanic, in the postwar years, when the studios lost their tight grip on production and when a new generation of directors made their mark in that freer environment. The French New Wave, developing new techniques with a new generation of actors (and crew), lifted layers of varnish from the art of acting to fill the screen with performances of jolting immediacy, spontaneity, and vulnerability.
Loni Love to host Salute Her Awards honoring Cynthia Erivo, Holly Robinson Peete and more
Other honorees to be recognized include LaTosha Brown, co-Founder of Black Voters Matter, and Pinky Cole, founder and CEO of Slutty Vegan.
Cynthia Erivo and
The ceremony is a celebration of Women’s History Month. It is the first virtual event of Café Mocha’s ‘Saluting Our Culture’ award series, according to a press release. Future ceremonies will be held in June and September “honoring the phenomenal impact and contributions of African Americans globally.”
The Salute Her Awards theme of “creating a legacy,” recognizes women who go above and beyond through resilience and innovation to establish a legacy of connections for generations to come. Performers slated to take the virtual stage include
THE INVISIBILITY OF black women has been much on my mind of late. Asked recently to speak on the topic “Can women artists take back the nude from a voyeuristic male gaze as a site to represent their own subjectivity?” I have to discard the premise: from mass culture to high culture, white women may have been objects of the fetishizing gaze, but black women have had only the blank stare. In fact we feel lucky when we get to take our clothes off. Manet’s
Olympia, Picasso’s
Demoiselles d’Avignon, and Judy Chicago’s
Dinner Party, 1973–78, are landmarks in our unseeing erasure by both the multicolored male and the white female. I believe in the mathematics of myth, which is why I’m always asking, How many black women in this anthology? in this exhibit? in this picture? What are they made to signify? Of the 39 places at Chicago’s dinner table, 35 are set with plates painted with vaginas that glow miraculously. Sojourner Truth, the only black guest, must make it with
By Rachel Kramer Bussel | Feb 26, 2021
Penguin Classics introduced the Penguin Vitae hardcover series in 2020 as a way to highlight what it calls “seminal works” by “a diverse world of storytellers from the past.” Many of the featured authors are women, with books by Nella Larsen and Audre Lorde on the launch list. A new edition of 1982’s The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor, due out in May, joins forthcoming reissues from several publishers that convey a variety of female experiences.
Gretchen Schmid, associate editor at Viking/Penguin, tapped
An American Marriage author Tayari Jones to write the foreword to