Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema

"Openings". With examples from 1943 to 2013, from China to Iran, Australia to Finland, we look at how to open a film: from mysterious, direct, floating, foreboding beginnings to plunging straight in. All are instructive in how to create an immediate world. "Tone". What's the tone of a film—not its story or theme, but what its world feels like? This chapter looks at the myriad ways in which directors set the tones of their films: delight, anger, poetry, double tones, moral seriousness, caring, edginess, and violence.

"Believability". It's easy to spot, but not so easy to understand. Believability is about simple human stories, the truth about life, real emotions, and responding to the world. How do directors create a reality without it feeling fake? True stories can help. But what's the trick? "Introducing Character". Going to a house, overhearing people, witnessing bizarre action -- there are many ways to meet people and be introduced to characters in films. "Meet Cute". The classic Hollywood trope of a "meet cute" invites a variety of interpretations, from intimate glimpses to worlds colliding spectacularly.

"Conversation". A basic human interaction -- how to make it cinematic? "Framing". Frames describe and paint the scenes. They shape the cinematic world. "Tracking". Tracking shots are to many an essence of filmmaking magic. They can ask questions and speak when hardly anyone else in the film is talking. Kinetic in nature, tracking can help dynamically show and express a desperate escape.

"Staging". Scene staging is an element of film form pointing clearly to cinema's origin: theater. "Journey". Movement is key to a motion picture, and journeys in film can be horizontal as well as vertical (into the self). Travel can be like glue and bind characters from two different worlds. "Discovery". Discovery and revelation shape some of cinema's most iconic moments. But beyond the best-known scenes, there lies the humanity, craft, and insight of discovery.

"Adult/Child". Most famous movie genres -- war pictures, westerns, etc. -- are about adults, but in this chapter, Jane Fonda narrates the story of eighteen films about children, from Germany, Belgium, Mongolia, Sweden, Russia, Canada, Senegal, Argentina, and Scotland. "Economy". We've all seen overblown films, but what are the visual and story lessons we can learn from Claire Denis, Maria Louisa Bemberg, Kinuyo Tanaka, Agnès Varda, Valeska Grisebach, and Desiree Akhavan about keeping things simple? "Editing". How have filmmakers like Ava Du Vernay, Kathryn Bigelow, Sarah Maldoror, Leni Riefenstahl, and Drahoméra Vihanová and their editors pushed the techniques of editing to their limits?

"POV". Is cinema the art of point of view? Jocelyn Moorhouse, Ida Lupino, Edith Carlmar, Sofia Coppola, Liliana Cavani, Kelly Reichardt, Larisa Shepitko, Jennifer Kent, and other great directors demonstrate the art of POV. "Close-up". Films from Belgium, Hungary, Australia, Finland, China, the United States, France, Germany and Ukraine, shot over ten decades, show how close-ups create intensity. "Dream". One of the great movie stars, India's Sharmila Tagore, narrates this bold chapter that looks at dreams in films, including Wayne's World, Jane Campion, Sally Potter, and silent movies.