Women Make Film - Tuesdays in September

TCM kicks off its monumental three-month-long festival, Women Make Film, celebrating female filmmakers with one groundbreaking, 14-part documentary from Mark Cousins, Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema (2020), and three dozen movies by women directors. Cousins' extensive documentary is a TCM premiere, as are 23 of the 36 films in this installment of the festival. By the time it is completed, we will have paid tribute to 100 films and 100 filmmakers spanning six continents, 44 countries and 12 decades!

Filmmaker Barbara Kopple will appear with TCM hosts Alicia Malone and Jacqueline Stewart to introduce the films. A producer-director who specializes in documentary films, Kopple won Academy Awards for Harlan County, USA (1976), about a Kentucky coal miners' strike, and American Dream (1990), about a strike at a Hormel plant in Minnesota.

Kopple's other films include The Dixie Chicks; Shut Up and Sing (2006), Miss Sharon Jones! (2015) and This Is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous (2017). Harlan County, USA will air on TCM Tuesday, September 15, as part of the Women Make Film festival.

Director Mark Cousins was born in Coventry, England, and raised in Northern Ireland. This producer-director-film critic is remembered by TCM fans for his massive documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011). This 15-hour film was shown in 2013 on our network and accompanied by screenings of relevant films. For this endeavor, TCM received a coveted Peabody Award for "its inclusive, uniquely annotated survey of world cinema history."

Cousins' other works as director and writer include I Am Belfast (2015), Stockholm, My Love (2016) and The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018).

Women Make Film: A New Road Through Cinema runs for a total of 14 hours and looks at the work of 183 female directors. The documentary is narrated by Adjoa Andoh, Jane Fonda, Kerry Fox, Thandie Newton, Tilda Swinton, Sharmila Tagore and Debra Winger. The film premiered in 2018 at the Venice Film Festival and was released on the British Film Institute Player in May 2020.

The five "chapters" of the documentary, as shown on TCM are listed below, along with the TCM premieres, their filmmakers and countries following the episode title.

"Episode 1: Openings and Tone"
Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), Dorothy Arzner (U.S.A.); Olivia (1951), Jacqueline Audry (France); Sleepwalking Land (2007), Teresa Prata (Mozambique); Seven Beauties (1975), Lena Wertmuller (Italy); Je tu il Elle (1974), Chantal Akerman (Belgium)

"Episode 2: Introducing Character and the Meet Cute"
El Camino (1963), Ana Mariscal (Spain); Lovely & Amazing (2001), Nicole Holofcener (U.S.A.); The Watermelon Woman (1996), Cheryl Dunye (U.S.A); In the Empty City (aka Hollow City) (2004), Maria Joao Gonga (Angola); Entre Nous (1983), Diane Kurys (France)

"Episode 3: Framing and Tracking"
The Virgin Suicides (1999), Sophia Coppola (U.S.A.); Loving Couples (1964), Mai Zetterling (Sweden); Zero Motivation (2014), Talya Lavie (Israel); 10 to 11 (2009), Pelin Esmer (Turkey); Strangers in Good Company (1990), Cynthia Scott (Canada)

"Episode 4: Staging, Journey and Discovery"
The Cave of the Yellow Dog (2005), Byambasuren Davaa, (Mongolia); The Juniper Tree (1990), Nietchka Keene (Iceland); Women Who Loved Cinema (1 & 2) (2002), Marianne Khoury (Egypt)

"Episode 5: Adult/Child, Economy, and Editing"
Adoption (1975), Márta Mészáros (Hungary); We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), Lynne Ramsay (UK); Wasp (2003), Andrea Arnold (UK); XXY (2007), Lucía Puenzo (Argentina); My American Cousin (1985), Sandy Wilson (Canada)

For more information about these films and each director in our lineup, visit the official Women Make Film website.