No Penis Required: Films from Female Directors @ GFF 2013

We preview the films from female directors at this year's Glasgow Film Festival

Preview by Jamie Dunn | 04 Feb 2013

There are many qualities that can help make a great filmmaker. Some are practical: a meticulous attention to detail, the stamina of an ox, being good at persuading people to give you ridiculous amounts of money. Others are less tangible: a great eye, a flair for storytelling, a deft sensitivity to mood and human emotion. Having a Y chromosome, however, is not a make or break requirement, although you’d never know by looking at the names of the directors on posters of films playing at your local multiplex or art-house cinema. The male/female director ratio at Glasgow Film Festival is far better than average, but it’s still a sausage fest. In a bid to redress the balance, we’ve scoured this year's brochure to recommend five great films at GFF from directors who sit down to pee.

Where better to start than Breaking the Frame (24 Feb), an intimate portrait of legendary filmmaker and feminist Carolee Schneemann, whose body of work is still a vital roadmap to our collective understanding of sexuality and gender. Canadian director Marielle Nitoslawska gives Schneemann space to tell her own story while nimbly incorporating fragments from the artist's iconic oeuvre, creating a fractured essay of her extraordinary career. As anyone who's seen any of Schneemann's firebrand films will know, the 73-year-old is a riot.

There are some wry laughs to be had too in Susanne Bier’s sweet romantic comedy Love is All You Need (19-20 Feb). Like the Danish director’s best work, the film centres on an eventful family gathering, in this case the wedding between a young Danish couple in Italy. The Mediterranean setting will warm your cockles on a cold February day in Glasgow, as will the film's charismatic lead Pierce Brosnan, who miraculously looks even more dapper today than when he was driving a tank through Saint Petersburg in GoldenEye.

Like Nitoslawska's picture, Love, Marilyn (15-16 Feb) is a love letter to an icon. Based on recently discovered diaries and letters, Liz Garbus’s film chips away at Monroe’s blonde bombshell persona to find a sensitive young woman who craved fame and knew the power of her own sexual allure. Bringing Monroe’s words to life are a range of contemporary actors, including Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood and Lili Taylor, who bravely attempt to get under the complex star’s skin.

Few films are coming to GFF with as much festival acclaim as Cate Shortland’s Lore (15-16 Feb). Like Somersault, the Australian director’s dreamy debut, Lore is a coming-of-age story of sorts. Set in the aftermath of WWII, it follows the 15-year-old title character, the daughter of an SS officer who's gone missing in the chaos that followed the fall of the Führer, as she shepherds her younger siblings across war-ravaged Germany to her grandmother’s home.

Finally there’s documentary Village at the End of the World (19-20 Feb), from Brick Lane director Sarah Gavron, about the people of Niaqornat, a small Greenland community on the icy fringes of the Arctic circle. Gavron deftly weaves several residents' stories into a charming, unsentimental snapshot of a hard-scrabble way of life in terminal decline.

http://www.glasgowfilm.org/festival/information/festivals_within_the_festivals/gyff