Joey’s review published on Letterboxd:
TCM Spotlight: Women Make Film
An academy of Venus . . .
I've been a fan of Mark Cousins since high school. The Story of Film: An Odyssey is a film class in its own right, so when TCM announced this incredible feat of programming at the end of the summer, I was overjoyed. Not only was this series finally becoming available to see after its premiere at Telluride a couple of years ago, but they were going all in on it, curating an incredible showcase of films that were featured in the documentary, as well as an expansion of it, immediately driving home the idea that there is no one definite list of the greatest films ever made, or the greatest films ever made by women. There's always one more.
The documentary series itself is a marvel. It is totally different in structure than Story of Film, which I think it needed. A simple rehashing of the former series (a mostly-chronological history of filmmaking around the world) would have grown monotonous; choosing instead to focus in on specific elements that make film film, jumping around in time and space and mood, was the best thing he could have done with this.
It's clear from the jump that there is no real reason that these films and these filmmakers have been excluded from the conversation and the study of the medium. Wendy Toye should be as highly regarded as The Archers; Miranda July should be as well known as Wes Anderson; Kathryn Bigelow becoming the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar was no fluke. The troupe of narrators, from Tilda Swinton to Kerry Fox to Thandie Newton, guide us through them all, providing clear examples of cultural differences and gender differences when you exclude them from the conversation, without ever having to show a clip from Kane or Vertigo.
The chapters on bodies, sex, and tension were the standouts for me, as were comparisons in German cinema in relation to WWII, from each side of the political divide.
TCM aired 100 films over these 14 weeks. These films came from each of the six filmmaking continents, and covered 13 decades of filmmaking, from 1906 to 2018. I was able to watch (in a bit more than 14 weeks) 30 of these films, covering each continent and decade. Each of these films were new to me, as were the majority of the directors, and even a few countries. Each had their own surprises, and many were introduced by a wonderful selection of commentators who joined Alicia Malone and Jacqueline Stewart at TCM: Kirsten Johnson, Penelope Spheeris, MIra Nair, and so many others.
I'm incredibly grateful to have gone on this journey, one that would have been tremendously more difficult had it not been for the incredible programming team at TCM. Many of these films and filmmakers would have remained unknown or inaccessible to me without their work.
Let's look at film again.