Theorist and filmmaker Laura Mulvey - best known for her work on the notion of the male gaze - has chosen a selection of films that have made a difference to her. This exceptional carte blanche is being organised to coincide with the Close-up dedicated to her at Bozar.

"I am very pleased and honoured to have been invited by LaCinetek to select films from their collection to be screened in the context of ‘Chantal Akerman: Travelling’ and ‘Close-up: Laura Mulvey’ at the BOZAR. Given the context of the relation between women and film, I decided to divide my selection into two parts. One part celebrates a few of the women who, struggling against discrimination and marginalisation, managed to become film directors in the hostile world of male dominated cinema. The other part celebrates some male directors whose vision and understanding produced moving and revealing ‘portraits’ of very differing women characters.

In 1972, I collaborated on a Women and Film Event at the Edinburgh Film Festival that focused on bringing both lost films by forgotten women directors and new films by women, inspired by feminism, to the screen. For instance, we learnt, for the first time, about Dorothy Arzner, who directed twenty films between 1927 and 1943 at the height of the Hollywood studio system. Not mentioned in the standard histories and her films long out of distribution, Arzner was a key ‘rediscovery’ for the Festival. I have chosen Dance Girl Dance (1940) in memory of the impact the film had on us and the Edinburgh audience, most particularly for one startling moment: Maureen O’Hara halts her performance, walks to the front of the theatre and denounces what we would now call ‘the male gaze’.

My second choice celebrates the extraordinary Japanese director Kinuyo Tanaka (a full retrospective is available on LaCinetek subscription). Well known as a leading actress in Japanese cinema (and particularly for her work with Kenji Mizoguchi), she managed, in the face of prejudice and discouragement, to make six films in the 1950s and early 60s. Quite quickly they disappeared from distribution. Recently, due particularly to feminist interest, they have been restored by the Japanese Film Archive. I have selected Eternal Breasts (1955) to screen; the film’s emotional power and narrative originality echoes the story of its woman poet protagonist.
My next film is Rakshan Bani Etemad’s Under the Skin of the City (2001). Bani Etemad is well known in her native Iran, where her films are successful critically and at the box office. However, she failed to find international and festival distribution with the Iranian New Wave of the 1990s with her less austere, more woman centered, family melodramas. So, it was due to a special initiative on the part of two women curators at London’s National Film Theatre that I was able to see Bani Etemad’s films. Under the Skin of the City revolves around the story of a working-class family in Tehran, centrally around the mother; Bani Etemad uses cinematic language and sound effects to evoke the difficulty of articulating emotion and feelings in the face of increasing economic and social pressures.
I know that Agnes Varda needs no introduction nor does her rightfully well-known Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse. Although there is, of course, nothing particularly gendered about the essayistic, Varda beautifully integrates a rambling narrative, the personal and the subjective and the topic of gleaning itself into a completely poetic but politically hard-hitting film – a masterpiece of women’s cinema.
The four male directors I have chosen are all key figures in film history. A few words in the space I have left. Max Ophüls is one of my favourite directors and Mme de… (1953) one of my favourites of his films. It is a complex portrait of class and the performance of gender within the aristocracy. Ultimately, Ophüls reveals that Louise the beautiful, charming protagonist, is tragically impotent in the face thetranscendent power of patriarchal society. Med Hondo’s Sarraounia (1986) is a portrait of a very different female figure: an African princess, leader of her tribe, who defeats the French colonial army, using, as well as strength and strategy, her command over optical illusion to confuse her enemy. Finally, I like the juxtaposition between Boris Barnet’s young woman, Natasha (The Girl with the Hat-box 1927) and Eric Rohmer’s Delphine (Le Rayon Vert 1986). Both are caught up in wandering stories, uncertain romance, inconclusive encounters. Both are independent young women, at odds with their surroundings, given a somewhat happy end by their directors, but with a touching sisterhood across such a gulf of cinematic style and historical context."

- Laura Mulvey

Discover her selection on LaCinetek:
https://www.lacinetek.com/fr-en/selection/laura-mulvey-presents
LaCinetek gathers the recommendations of directors from all over the world to offer them on VOD (in France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria).